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Mining newsgroups

Newsgroups are amazing sources of information and support. Learn how to make the most of this vast Internet resource.

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Topic links:

newsgroup types

where to find newsgroups

using a newsreader

For most people, the Internet consists of the Web and email. While those are two important components of the Net, there's more to it than that. Before the Web there was the Usenet, a huge collection of newsgroups where people exchanged information and ideas. The electronic equivalent of the cork noticeboard, newsgroups were the first arena for mass global sharing of information. At the height of their popularity, there were hundreds of thousands of newsgroups on topics ranging from computer design to collecting laminated boxes.

Over the years, the attraction of newsgroups has waned, partly due to the growth of the Web and email and partly because spammers turned thousands of vibrant newsgroups into quagmires of irrelevancy and obscenity.

Despite the dive from popularity, newsgroups still abound on the Net and many of them are real goldmines of information. If you're looking for an answer to a particular problem and there's a newsgroup on the topic, posing your question in that newsgroup is likely to yield fast and helpful results. If you haven't take the time to investigate newsgroups, you really are missing out on an excellent source of information.

Newsgroup types

Each newsgroup is a forum for exchanging information on a particular subject, where members post (write), read and respond to messages. Moderated groups have a group owner who vets all posts to ensure they're on topic and abide by any other group-specific rules. Unmoderated groups are free for alls, where anyone can contribute and there are no holds barred on the content. Moderated groups provide a far better ratio of information to noise than unmoderated groups.

Discussions are usually organised into threads, with each thread consisting of a series of posts and responses on a specific topic.

Newsgroup names consist of a series of short words separated by full stops (periods) with the first word indicating the category (such as comp for computers or rec for recreation), the second a sub-category, and so on. Some examples are comp.ai.fuzzy (the use of fuzzy logic in artificial intelligence computing), soc.history.war.vietnam and microsoft.public.word.formatting.longdocs.

Most postings to newsgroups are text based, but there are also newsgroups for the purpose of swapping graphics, audio, programs and other files. Many of these contain the word binaries in their name, indicating they contain data rather than text.

Where to find newsgroups

Almost all Internet Service Providers (ISPs) offer their customers access to a set of newsgroups. The newsgroups are stored on a news server and your ISP can provide you with the address (and password) for its news server. Because there are so many newsgroups, ISPs usually choose a selection of 10 or 20 thousand newsgroups to feature on their news servers. If you want to find others, you'll need to go elsewhere.

A good place to explore newsgroups is Google Groups. Google snapped up the old Usenet archive in its entirety, with posts dating back to 1981. You can read anything in the archive and post your own responses. You can also search the archive just as you would search Google's Web index.

Google's archives don't include binaries. For those, try one of the subscription-based newsgroup sites. These services provide uncensored access to tens of thousands of text and binary newsgroups. The largest is probably Usenet.com, which features 100,000 newsgroups. Others are AthenaNews.com, GigaNews.com and Active News.

One of the most common use of newsgroups is for technical support. For that, you won't need a subscription site. Instead, you'll find access directly through company sites. To gain access to Microsoft's newsgroups, for instance, visit the Microsoft Communities. To locate other company newsgroups, check out the support page and look for newsgroups or forums.

Using a newsreader

It used to be to participate in a newsgroup you needed a newsreader. Many newsgroups these days are hosted on the Web and all you need is your browser to access them. Despite that, a good newsreader is far more efficient than Web-based news reading. Most of us have a newsreader on hand already in the form of Microsoft Outlook Express (Netscape, too, comes with a built-in newsreader).

To try your hand at newsgroups using Outlook Express:

1. Open Outlook Express and select Accounts from the Tools Menu.
2. Click Add -> News to launch the Internet Connection Wizard.
3. Type the name you want to use for posts and click Next; then your email address and click Next; and finally the address of the news server, such as msnews.microsoft.com, and click Next and Finish.
4. Close the Internet Accounts dialog and, when prompted, allow the list of newsgroups to download from the server.
5. In the Newsgroups Subscriptions dialog scroll through the list or type a keyword, such as games in the Display Newsgroups Which Contain box. When you find a group you want to join, double-click it. When you're finished, click OK.
6. Your subscribed groups will now appear in the left-hand folders window. To participate in a group, simply click its names and a list of the most recent messages will appear on the right. Click a message to see its contents; click Reply to reply directly to the message poster, or Reply Group to reply to the newsgroup as a whole. Click New Post to add your own new topic. To read earlier messages, click Tools Menu -> Get Next 300 Headers.

Using the built-in newsreader in Outlook Express (click the image to see a full-size screenshot).

© 2003  Rose Vines

  

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