Newsgroups

Introduction

In the USENET NEWS system, 'server' computers maintain compilations of people's posted messages organized hierarchically into newsgroups. Individuals use a newsreader programme to read messages of interest and to post their own messages.

Categories of newsgroups

The RISQ news server includes over 60 000 news groups.

Newsgroups are organized hierarchically. The seven official Usenet categories are the following.

(The numbers in parentheses are the numbers of newsgroups within each category, as found on McGill news server on 1998 April 7 and 2001 Apr 11, and on Google on 2006 Mar 15.)

comp	computers (1090/1158/1193 groups)
misc	miscellaneous topics (148/206/231 groups)
news	information about newsgroups (35/41/55 groups)
rec	recreational topics (806/881/901 groups)
sci	science (232/234/233 groups). Includes sci.bio.* (19 groups), sci.med.* (33 groups)
soc	society (327/309/334 groups)
talk	debates about various issues (37/42/44 groups)

In the Usenet categories listed above, there is a formal process for proposing, discussing and voting on the formation of new newsgroups. There are also many unofficial categories in which the rules don't apply.

Some widely known non-Usenet categories of groups are the following:

alt	'alternate' groups that don't follow the Usenet rules (2390/9174/13833 groups)
bit	mostly mirrors of BITNET LISTSERV groups (267/234/276 groups)
clari	ClariNet (UPI) world news (commercial) (370/575/100 groups)

There are also local newsgroups, for example -

mcgill	McGill University (43/139/3 groups) including 83 in the School of Computer Science (mcgill.socs, not counting 81 socs.* groups) in 2001, none in 2006
mtl	Montreal (9/10/9 groups)

Finding relevant newsgroups

Web sites for finding relevant newsgroups:

• Google Groups (formerly Deja News) provides lists of selected newsgroups by category, as well as searching of their message archive
• Harley Hahn's Master List

Reading and posting to newsgroups

You can read messages in newsgroups, and post your own messages, using a newsreader client programme such as the Discussion Group component of Netscape. The name of the news server at McGill is news.mcgill.ca.

In Netscape 4 you specify the name of the news server by selecting Edit Preferences... Mail & Groups Groups Server.

In Netscape 7, set up a Newsgroup account: in the Mail window do New Account Newsgroup account. Specify your identication information, then the server name.

In Mozilla, do Edit Mail & Newsgroups Account Settings.

In Mozilla, go to Window Mail & Newsgroups. In the list of e-mail folders on the left will be an entry that says news. Click on it and help will appear on the right. Click on Manage newsgroup subscriptions - a Subscribe dialogue box will open and a hierarchical list of the available newsgroups will be displayed. Select the one(s) you're interested in and click on Subscribe. When you're done, click on OK. The names of the selected newsgroups will appear in the list of e-mail folders on the left. Highlight one of them and a download window will appear, to download the messages for that newsgroup. To subscribe to another group, select File Subscribe.