A COMTECH98 seminar presented by J. Pennelope Goforth of CybrrCat Productions!

Panning for Information:
Newsgroups

Newsgroups are grouped in a USENET hierarchy:

  • alt. - (alternative) a myriad of volatile groups discussing nearly any topic
  • biz - business oriented, commercial services and advertisement groups
  • clari. - news services through ClariNet*
  • comp. - (computers)computer science and computing topics
  • ddn. - Defense Data Network
  • ieee. - Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineeers
  • info. - (information) informational topics which defy explanation
  • k12. - kindergarten through high school interests
  • misc. - (miscellaneous) a miscellaneous assortment of groups and topics
  • news. - (news) USENET news and news software
  • rec. - (recreation) games, sports, hobbies and entertainment discussions
  • sci. - (science) science and technical related groups
  • soc. - (society) social issues, current events and political discussion groups
  • talk. - (talk) ongoing and usually pointless discussions, debates and rants
  • *these groups are only available from profit-making entites.



    Finding USENET Newsgroups

    To get a complete list of newsgroups, in Netscape Navigator versions 2.0 and above, select Netscape News from the Window menu and then on the Options menu, select Show All Newsgroups. The newsgroups will be presented by topic, so you can select which hierarchies to view. To access a specific newsgroup, select Add Newsgroup from the File menu, and enter the name of the newsgroup in the dialog box.

    To get a complete list of newsgroups in Netscape Communicator, select Collabra Discussion Groups from the Communicator window (the lighthouse icon in the menu bar). Double click the news server name in the Collabra window, then click the "All Groups" tab in the Subscribe to Discussion Groups" window. You can expand and collapse hierarchies and select groups and subscribe to them. You can also search for a specific group.

    With Internet Explorer, select Read News from the Go menu or select Read News from the Mail button on the toolbar (you have to have Internet News installed). After Internet News opens, press the Newsgroups button on the toolbar or select Newsgroups from the News menu. A new window will open. If it is the first time you have used Internet News, it will take a few minutes while the list of newsgroups downloads for the first time. In the window "Display newsgroups which contain:", you can enter a search by topic or word and Internet News will display all the newsgroups containing the word. To subscribe to a newsgroup, highlight it in the "Newsgroups" window by clicking it once. Click Subscribe and then click OK, or click Go To start reading in that newsgroup. You can view the list of subscribed newsgroups by clicking the down arrow button on the right of the "Newsgroups" window.

    For a comprehensive listing of all known active Usenet newsgroups, consult the List of Active Newsgroups , available at :
    http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/hypertext/faq/usenet/active-newsgroups/top.html

    Here are just a few of the newsgroups that are available:



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    Thanks to the knowledgeable folks at the Knowledge Base
    - a database of about 4,500 answers to questions about computing at
    Indiana University at http://kb.indiana.edu/
    Last Modified: February 2, 1998.
    ©1998 J. Pennelope Goforth