Newsgrouper Help

Introduction

Usenet is also referred to as Network News or Newsgroups. This is because it was originally conceived as a low-traffic distributed notice-board type system for publicising announcements to a particular community. It then grew into a general discussion medium, but the "News" name stuck.

Usenet later started to be used (or misused) as a means of distributing binary files such as images, videos and executable software. These require much larger storage and transmission capacity, and are often of doubtful legality, so this site does not support that use.

Note that Usenet is a collaborative system, there is no central authority in overall control. It exists on servers spread across multiple countries and cultures. Responsible administrators work to exclude illegal and exploitative content. However it is entirely possible you will come across postings you find objectionable. There are groups which have fallen into disuse over the years or become dominated by a few cranks, but there are also groups with active and constructive communities.

Wikipedia has more background on the Usenet system.

Logging In/Out

Any time you try to access the site without being logged in you will get the login page. When logged in you can click "Log Out" at the top right to log out.

Selecting Groups

• Groups previously read - If you have previously read any groups, you will see them listed first under this heading. If one of these is no longer of interest you can delete it from the list by clicking the X in the last column. The "New" column shows how many new posts have been made to that group since you last read it. Groups with new posts are highlighted. Clicking the group name will enter that group.
• Find groups to read - Here you can search for groups whose names and/or descriptions include some text you can enter. Note that if you select "Matching this pattern" the pattern-matching is done "glob" style, i.e.
  • * matches any sequence of characters, including none
  • ? matches any single character
  • [xyz] matches any single one of the characters inside the brackets
  Clicking "Search" will produce a list of matching groups, where you can click a group's name to enter that group.
• Find an article by message-id - Every posting in the Usenet system has a unique identifier which looks something like <[email protected]>. If you have a reference to a message in this form you can search for it here.
• Guide to the most active groups - Clicking this will take you to a page which tries to give some guidance on which groups are the most active, in three categories:
  • Top twenty groups most read here - the groups most read by users on this site
  • Top twenty groups with most posts globally - the groups with the most new posts in the past few weeks from any source
  • Active groups list from big-8.org - a list of groups recommended as being active and healthy by a reputable source
  Clicking on the name of a group in any of these lists will enter that group.

Reading a group

At the top right of this page there are three buttons related to the group:

• New Thread - this is only enabled for registered users, and only for groups which are still active. It lets you make a post to the group which is not part of an existing thread. You will get a page where you can type your Subject and message, then click Post to send it, or Quit to abandon it.
• Search - this leads to a page where you can search the history of this group, see the Group Search section below.
• Group Charter - this tries to display the charter i.e. the founding document of the group. This sets out the purpose of the group and any particular rules to be followed in it. However some groups have no charter that can be found.

• Older Posts - if there are more posts available in this group than currently shown, clicking this will take you to the next page of posts.

Reading a thread

Navigation

At the end of the current post shown on the right there are eight buttons:

• Next Article - this takes you to the next post in the thread. Keyboard shortcut: +
• Previous - this takes you to the previous post in the thread. Keyboard shortcut: -
• Next New - this takes you to the next new post in the thread. Keyboard shortcut: Enter
• Post Reply - this is only enabled for registered users, and takes you to a page where you can compose and send a reply to the current post. You will get a page where you can compose your message, then click Post to send it, or Quit to abandon it. The Subject will default to that of the post you are replying to, but can be changed. The text of the post you are replying to will be quoted at the start of your message - it is generally wise to trim this down to that part which is relevant to your reply, then add what you have to say after that.
• Block Poster - this takes you to a page where you can confirm or cancel that you do not want to see any more messages from the poster of the current message.
• View Source - this will display the current message in raw, unprocessed form. Keyboard shortcut: V
• Markup - this enables/disables the Markup option. When on, a few simple forms of text emphasis which are conventional on Usenet are applied:
  • *words* is shown in bold
  • /words/ is shown in italic
  • _words_ is shown underlined
  The current state is indicated by X for off and a Tick for on. It defaults to off. Keyboard shortcut: M
• Wrap - this enables/disables the Wrap Long Lines option. When on, text is displayed in a proportionally-spaced font and long lines are wrapped. When off, text uses a fixed-width font and long lines are not wrapped. The current state is indicated by X for off and a Tick for on. It defaults to off. Keyboard shortcut: W
• Rot13 - this applies a simple cipher to the article text, rotating each ASCII letter by 13 places in the alphabet. This is commonly used in Usenet posts to obscure information that might be considered sensitive, e.g. spoilers when discussing a film. The current state is indicated by X for off and a Tick for on. It defaults to off. Keyboard shortcut: R

At the end of the list of posts on the left there are three buttons:

• Next Thread - this takes you to the next thread in the group.
• Previous - this takes you to the previous thread in the group.
• Next with New Posts - this takes you to the next thread in the group which has any new posts, if such a thread exists. Keyboard shortcut: N

Preferences

• Groups To Show - this field contains a list of the groups which will appear on your home page. They are listed one per line, followed by the highest article number when you last read that group. You can edit this list, to re-order, add or delete groups, even to load a list of groups from another source. The article numbers can be omitted, in which case the whole group will appear to be unread when you next enter it.
• Newest Threads - here you can select whether the newest threads appear at the top or bottom of the list of group threads.
• Blocked Posters - this field contains a list of posters whose posts will be filtered out so you do not see them. It should have one entry per line. The entry should be the email address they use when posting, not the free-form name they may have also.
• Markup in Posts - this is the same Markup option described in the Thread Navigation section.
• Wrap Long Lines - this is the same Wrap option described in the Thread Navigation section.

• Posting Name - this is the free-form name which will be put in the From field of your posts. Note that the pseudo-email address which will be added after this is not editable.
• Signature - if anything is entered here it will be added as a signature at the end of each post you make.
• Extra Headers - if anything is entered here it will be added to the header section of your posts. This may be used to add optional header lines, such as Organisation: the Men In Black or an X-Face image. Beware, a malformed header may cause your posts to fail, so leave this empty unless you really know what you are doing.

Finally we have Save, Cancel and Reset Colours to Defaults buttons which do what they say.

Group Search

You can click on one of the subjects in the list to display that article. At the bottom of the page there is an Earlier Dates button which will show the next page of results if there are more for the current search criteria.

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