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Newsgroups for the Internet - Lesson1

What are Newsgroups?

Newsgroup are a method for communicating by way of message boards. Newsgroups allow you to read message POSTED by individuals into pre-defined categories on News-servers. We will learn shortly that replying or posting to messages are quite easy, but deliver a strong communication skill needed for the the Internet in today's WWW.

What to know? 

There are two types for posting messages we can follow when posted onto a Newsgroup and server. 1 - The first is to have all messages placed in a category, which is Moderated. A moderated news area will mean someone a Newsgroup monitor more or less, will read all message related to a category location where messages are to be posted. This means there will be a slight transaction delay from the time of your message being posted, to the time you see the message show up on the related group. What is that someone will read all messages before posting? That is correct. A moderator reads the messages to make sure the are destine for the proper category and also contains proper category content. You should not post a message computer related to a category related to Social topics.

2 Un-moderated - Well un-moderated is the opposite of moderated, no person will read any messages before they are placed within a Newsgroup category. Why do they not read the message like a Moderated site? The un-moderated method gave people a kind of auto posting category where they could post a message without intervention of a moderator. This category however does carry all the subject matters that we can think of in relation to topics mentioned in this lesson. This un-moderated method does carry some warnings, since no person reads any messages, all content of any message is posted for all to read young or old. Be forewarned that you may most likely find Adult Language Content within the un-moderated category. However you will be able to avoid these subjects, you don't have to subscribe to all categories on or within a given Newsgroup topic.

What does a Newsgroup give us? 

Newsgroups allow us to find information on many different subjects, related to predefined groups on a News server. Newsgroups are like a gigantic listing of people, places and things Internet users are interested in sharing with other users of the Net. Lets say you were going on vacation to BC (British Columbia) and you wanted to know where some hot spots for shopping, dining, motels, camping grounds etc. that are located in the BC area. Well a Newsgroup setting may be the perfect place to find those answers and more. By posting a message to a Newsgroup in the BC area, would have the possibility of hundreds of responses or Reply's (Re:) from Newsgroup users in the BC area. 

What is Threading ?

You may even find someone who has visited the British Columbia area themselves before and pass their own personal interest spots onto you, and they may not be from the BC area. This form of threading having  a person posting a related answer to the posted message of interest. Threading would have the same method applied if a Newsgroup user from Australia Replied to your or any related posted posted message. The threading is usually signified by an adjacent (+) collapsed symbol telling us there are sub-messaging related to this posted message. 

Example:  A person in Egypt post a message about BC as related to our quest above and someone in France reads the message, then replies to the posted message this creating a threaded posted message. At the same time a Newsgroup user in Florida reads the same message and says to themselves "I have been to British Columbia myself", maybe I could give them my input of where to go while in BC. Another tread is added to the original message posted to the Newsgroup and it's category.

Are there any cost to this service?

This service is a free service, which allow you to tap into several categories or subject titles. Some of the categories are as follows. 

Who provides the News Server?

You may need to contact your ISP to gain the correct pointing coordinates to their Newsgroup server. Any examples I will use within this lesson will be related to Golden Triangle, since they are my ISP and will be the easiest to demonstrate.

On to Lesson 2

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