A short glossary on Usenet terminology

A short Glossary on Usenet terminology

Big8

All newsgroups within the comp, humanities, misc, news, rec, sci, soc, and talk hierarchies are following specific rules regarding the creation and the maintaining of the groups within these hierarchies. The short term for all these groups is 'Big8', since they are the hierarchies which do exist already since the very beginning of Usenet and are transferred nearly everywhere. (Sidenote: It was 'Big7' in earlier times, but the humanities hierarchy was added in 1994 (?))

Charter

Every newsgroup in the so-called 'Big8' hierarchy has a defined charter, a short description of the group's purpose and the way the group is organized (e.g., if it is moderated or unmoderated).

Email

Sending somebody an email means to send a private letter, very similar to sending out a 'normal' letter. This letter will only be seen by the addressee, unless you send that letter to multiple recipients, of course. Only one copy of that letter will be sent out and transferred - unlike a Usenet posting which will be copied onto every Usenet site that carries the group the message was posted into.

FAQ

'Frequently Asked Questions' . This is a document that contains the most frequently asked questions with answers onto specific topics. There do exist thousands of these documents - most newsgroups do have one or several, dealing with ever reappearing problems. A most valuable source of information. They are usually reposted regularly both in the group they deal with as well as in the newsgroup 'news.answers'. Many (if not all) of the available FAQs can also be found at ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet-by-hierarchy

Followup

A 'followup' is a posting that contains quotations from other postings to which it is directly replying. By posting followups , it is possible for the readers of the group(s) to follow discussions without having to look up every argument in the previous postings the author is referring to. Note: Some newsreaders use a 'Reply' function instead, that will do nothing else than creating a followup posting.

groupname

The name of a newsgroup usually gives you some hints on what the group does deal with. The hierarchical structure of Usenet newsgroups is mirrored in the way newsgroup names are to be resolved. Read the names from the left to the right - the general subject is the toplevel hierarchy name, followed by several sublevels. E.g., 'news.newusers.questions' would be resolved as being in the 'news' hierarchy (== has to do with news in general), is for 'newusers' and especially for their 'questions'. This suggests that the group deals with questions from new users that have to do with Usenet news.

IMHO

Short form of 'in my humble opinion'

Internet

It doesn't exist. What is generally addressed as 'Internet' is not a network per se, but a standard transfer protocol _between_ networks, called TCP/IP. (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) . The Internet is therefor a worldwide network of different networks that have agreed in a specific way of exchanging and transferring information. There's no 'head' and its organization is virtually nonexistent.

Moderation

Some newsgroups have a 'moderated' status. This means, that every posting into one of these groups doesn't automatically get posted worldwide, but is first sent as email to the moderator of that group. The posting will be checked whether or not it is conforming to the group's rules (topic, possibly damaging consequences) before it will actually get posted.

Netiquette

It will happen sooner or later - you inadvertently posted something into the wrong group, and will get some complaints about this 'breach of netiquette'. The concept of netiquette is just a list of 'what you shouldn't ever forget' or 'what you should never do' respectively. Since Usenet is a cooperation instead of a service you'd pay money for, Usenet users are asked to stay within some commonly accepted limits. Some of the netiquette rules include:

- Do not post into groups that don't deal with the subject of your message;

- Don't shout (writing in capital letters is the Usenet synonym for shouting);

- Think before posting :))

- Think again: Is the content of your message really of interest for
the group's readers or should you use personal email instead ?

- Never forget that there are real persons behind the postings.

News

News generally refers to postings into Usenet newsgroups.

Newsgroups

Usenet newsgroups are organized similar to pinboards. A user with access to a Usenet site may compose a new message and post it into one or several newsgroups. Since there are so many different newsgroups, it is strongly recommended to only post messages into groups where they are appropriate. Every newsgroup has once been created for a specific 'topic' it deals with. See 'charter'.

Newsreader

The newsreader is not the user reading news, but the program the user is using for doing so. Newsreaders are quite sophisticated programs that do include many different options and functions. There are many different programs existing and still in use - therefor it is quite important to add the name and the version number of the program the user is presently using if posting questions about its functions.

News server

A news server is a computer system that administers the newsservice. Basically, every simple PC could be used as news server, and this will quite often be the case if somebody is running a private Usenet site just for his personal use. But generally, the news server of an ISP will be a very powerful system, using lots of RAM (64 - 256MB or even more) since it has to be able to simultaneously answer to many incoming news requests as well as to accept new postings, check them and sort them into the different groups .

RTFM

This is not a radio station, but means 'read the f... manual'. Shortest possible answer to a question that has already been answered a zillion times within a newsgroup. Not a very nice, but sometimes understandable answer.

System administrator

The man behind the machine. A sysadmin is the person who administers a computer system (usually on a multi-user machine) or a local network. The sysadmin has the power to allow or deny you access to the equipment he's in charge of. Notices of a sysadmin usually are semi-automated messages about system maintenance. If you do receive a complaint signed with 'sysadmin', it may be a forgery, but if it isn't, you really messed up something.

Usenet

Usenet means Usenet newsgroups. There are different kind of newsgroups in different so-called hierarchies existing. Usually, a hierarchy will put together groups with similar topics. Some hierarchies will only be existing locally, especially national hierarchies using the local language. There is ,e.g., the de.* hierarchy that's containg a wide variety of different groups that are all in German. The 'Big8' hierarchies are sorted following different topics. Usenet newsgroups are _not_ transported everywhere. Unlike email, newspostings will be transported to those systems that have decided to carry the group(s). The transport mechanism is completely different from standard Internet transport. While Usenet newsgroups are partially transported using Internet connections, there are many other transfer mechanisms existing. Some of them are : UUCP (Unix-to-Unix-copy), CD-ROMs containing archived Usenet postings, packet radio and many others. While a Usenet 'site' must have some kind of connection to another Usenet site for exchanging news, it is not needed to have direct Internet access. Many people do still receive Usenet via UUCP using local phone calls. Those people (like myself) are strongly encouraging other users to post into the correct groups, since they have to receive _all_ postings in a given group, not just those with an interesting 'Subject:' line.