n             Goes to the next unread article in the newsgroup. 
 
N             Takes you to the next article in the newsgroup even if you've 
              already read it.
 
q             Quits, or exits, the current article. Leaves you in the current 
              newsgroup.
 
R             Reply, via e-mail only, to the author of the current article. 
              Includes a copy of his message in yours.
 
r             The same as above, except it does not include a copy of his 
              article.
 
s file        Copies the current article to a file in your News directory, 
              where "file" is the name of the file you want to save it to. 
              You'll be asked if you want to use "mailbox" format when 
              saving. If you answer by hitting your N key, most of the 
              header will not be saved. 

s|mail user   Mails a copy of the article to somebody. For "user" substitute
              an e-mail address. Does not let you add comments to the 
              message first, however.
 
space         Hitting the space bar shows the next page of the article, or, if 
              at the end, goes to the next un-read article.


3.6  ESSENTIAL NEWSGROUPS


With so much to choose from, everybody will likely have their own unique 
Usenet reading list.  But there are a few newsgroups that are 
particularly of interest to newcomers.  Among them: 

     news.announce.newusers     This group consists of a series of
                                articles that explain various facets of
                                Usenet.

     news.newusers.questions    This is where you can ask questions 
                                (we'll see how in a bit) about how
                                Usenet works.

     news.announce.newsgroups   Look here for information about new or
                                proposed newsgroups.

     news.answers               Contains lists of "Frequently Asked
                                Questions"  (FAQs) and their answers from 
                                many different newsgroups.  Learn how to
                                fight jet lag in the FAQ from 
                                rec.travel.air; look up answers to common
                                questions about Microsoft Windows in
                                an FAQ from comp.os.ms-windows; etc.

     alt.internet.services      Looking for something in particular on 
                                the Internet?  Ask here.

     alt.infosystems.announce   People adding new information services to
                                the Internet will post details here.


3.7  SPEAKING UP


"Threads" are an integral part of Usenet.  When somebody posts a message, 
often somebody else will respond.  Soon, a thread of conversation begins.  
Following these threads is relatively easy.  In nn, related messages are 
grouped together.  In rn, when you're done with a message, you can hit 
control-N to read the next related message, or followup.  As you explore 
Usenet, it's probably a good idea to read discussions for awhile before 
you jump in.  This way, you can get a feel for the particular newsgroup 
-- each has its own rhythms. 
 
Eventually, though, you'll want to speak up.  There are two main ways to 
do this.  You join an existing conversation, or you can start a whole new 
thread. 

If you want to join a discussion, you have to decide if you want to 
include portions of the message you are responding to in your message.  
The reason to do this is so people can see what you're responding to, 
just in case the original message has disappeared from their system 
(remember that most Usenet messages have a short life span on the average 
host system) or they can't find it.  

If you're using a Unix host system, joining an existing conversation is 
similar in both nn and rn: hit your F key when done with a given article 
in the thread.  In rn, type a small f if you don't want to include 
portions of the message you're responding to; an uppercase F if you do. 
In nn, type a capital F.  You'll then be asked if you want to include 
portions of the original message. 

And here's where you hit another Unix wall.  When you hit your F key, 
your host system calls up its basic Unix text editor.  If you're lucky, 
that'll be pico, a very easy system.  More likely, however, you'll get 
dumped into emacs (or possibly vi), which you've already met in the 
chapter on e-mail.  

The single most important emacs command is 
 
     control-x control-c
 
This means, depress your control key and hit x.  Then depress the control 
key and hit c.  Memorize this.  In fact, it's so important, it bears 
repeating: 
     
     control-x control-c
 
These keystrokes are how you get out of emacs.  If they work well, you'll 
be asked if you want to send, edit, abort or list the message you were 
working on.  If they don't work well (say you accidentally hit some other 
weird key combination that means something special to emacs) and nothing 
seems to happen, or you just get more weird-looking emacs prompts on the 
bottom of your screen, try hitting control-g. This should stop whatever 
emacs was trying to do (you should see the word "quit" on the bottom of 
your screen), after which you can hit control-x control-c. But if this 
still doesn't work, remember that you can always disconnect and dial back 
in! 

If you have told your newsreader you do want to include portions of the 
original message in yours, it will automatically put the entire thing at 
the top of your message.  Use the arrow keys to move down to the lines 
you want to delete and hit control-K, which will delete one line at a 
time. 

You can then write your message.  Remember that you have to hit enter 
before your cursor gets to the end of the line, because emacs does not 
have word wrapping. 

When done, hit control-X control-C.  You'll be asked the question about 
sending, editing, aborting, etc.  Chose one.  If you hit Y, your host 
system will start the process to sending your message across the Net. 

The nn and rn programs work differently when it comes to posting entirely 
new messages.  In nn, type 
 
     :post
 
and hit enter in any newsgroup.  You'll be asked which newsgroup to 
post a message to.  Type in its name and hit enter.  Then you'll be 
asked for "keywords."  These are words you'd use to attract somebody 
scanning a newsgroup.  Say you're selling your car.  You might type 
the type of car here.  Next comes a "summary" line, which is somewhat 
similar.  Finally, you'll be asked for the message's "distribution."
This is where you put how widely you want your message disseminated.  
Think about this one for a second.  If you are selling your car, it 
makes little sense to send a message about it all over the world.  But 
if you want to talk about the environment, it might make a lot of 
sense.  Each host system has its own set of distribution 
classifications, but there's generally a local one (just for users of 
that system), one for the city, state or region it's in, another for 
the country (for example, usa), one for the continent (for Americans 
and Canadians, na) and finally, one for the entire world (usually: 
world).

Which one to use?  Generally, a couple of seconds' thought will help you 
decide.  If you're selling your car, use your city or regional 
distribution -- people in Australia won't much care and may even get 
annoyed.  If you want to discuss presidential politics, using a USA 
distribution makes more sense.  If you want to talk about events in the 
Middle East, sending your message to the entire world is perfectly 
acceptable. One caveat: these rules are not absolute, some systems pick 
up messages from all over, regardless of the distribution you've set, so 
don't be surprised if, sooner or later, you get a response to a "local" 
message from several thousand miles away. 
    
Then you can type your message.  If you've composed your message 
offline (generally a good idea if you and emacs don't get along), you 
can upload it now.  You may see a lot of weird looking characters as 
it uploads into emacs, but those will disappear when you hit control-X 
and then control-C.  Alternately: "save" the message (for example, by 
hitting m in rn), log out, compose your message offline, log back on and 
upload your message into a file on your host system.  Then call up 
Usenet, find the article you "saved." Start a reply, and you'll be asked 
if you want to include a prepared message.  Type in the name of the file 
you just created and hit enter.

In rn, you have to wait until you get to the end of a newsgroup to hit F, 
which will bring up a message-composing system.  Alternately, at your 
host system's command line, you can type 
 
     Pnews
 
and hit enter.  You'll be prompted somewhat similarly to the nn 
system, except that you'll be given a list of possible distributions.  
If you chose "world," you'll get this message:
 
                                                                               
 This program posts news to thousands of machines throughout the entire         
 civilized world.  Your message will cost the net hundreds if not thousands of  
 dollars to send everywhere.  Please be sure you know what you are doing.       
                                                                               
 Are you absolutely sure that you want to do this? [ny]                         
 
Don't worry -- your message won't really cost the Net untold amounts, 
although, again, it's a good idea to think for a second whether your 
message really should go everywhere. 
 
If you want to respond to a given post through e-mail, instead of 
publicly, hit R in nn or r or R in rn.  In rn, as with follow-up 
articles, the upper-case key includes the original message in yours. 

Most newsgroups are unmoderated, which means that every message you post 
will eventually wind up on every host system within the geographic region 
you specified that carries that newsgroup. 

Some newsgroups, however, are moderated, as you saw earlier with 
comp.risks.  In these groups, messages are shipped to a single location 
where a moderator, acting much like a magazine editor, decides what 
actually gets posted.  In some cases, groups are moderated like scholarly 
journals.  In other cases, it's to try to cut down on the massive number 
of messages that might otherwise be posted.  


You'll notice that many articles in Usenet end with a fancy "signature" 
that often contains some witty saying, a clever drawing and, almost 
incidentally, the poster's name and e-mail address.  You too can have 
your own "signature" automatically appended to everything you post.  On 
your own computer, create a signature file.  Try to keep it to four lines 
or less, lest you annoy others on the Net.  Then, while 

connected to your host system, at the prompt, type 
 
     cat>.signature
 
and hit enter (note the period before the s).  Upload your signature 
file into this using your communications software's ASCII upload 
protocol.  When done, hit control-D, the Unix command for closing a 
file.  Now, every time you post a message, this will be appended to it. 

There are a few caveats to posting.  Usenet is no different from a Town 
Meeting or publication: you're not supposed to break the law, whether 
that's posting copyrighted material or engaging in illegal activities.  
It is also not a place to try to sell products (except in certain biz. 
and for-sale newsgroups). 


3.8  CROSS-POSTING
 

Sometimes, you'll have an issue you think should be discussed in more 
than one Usenet newsgroup.  Rather than posting individual messages in 
each group, you can post the same message in several groups at once, 
through a process known as cross-posting. 

Say you want to start a discussion about the political ramifications of 
importing rare tropical fish from Brazil.  People who read rec.aquaria 
might have something to say. So might people who read 
alt.politics.animals and talk.politics.misc. 

Cross-posting is easy.  It also should mean that people on other systems 
who subscribe to several newsgroups will see your message only once, 
rather than several times -- news-reading software can cancel out the 
other copies once a person has read the message.  When you get ready to 
post a message (whether through Pnews for rn or the :post command in nn), 
you'll be asked in which newsgroups.  Type the names of the various 
groups, separated by a comma, but no space, for example: 
 
     rec.aquaria,alt.politics.animals,talk.politics.misc
 
and hit enter.  After answering the other questions (geographic 
distribution, etc.), the message will be posted in the various 
groups (unless one of the groups is moderated, in which case the 
message goes to the moderator, who decides whether to make it public). 
     
It's considered bad form to post to an excessive number of newsgroups, or 
inappropriate newsgroups.  Probably, you don't really have to post 
something in 20 different places.  And while you may think your 
particular political issue is vitally important to the fate of the world, 
chances are the readers of rec.arts.comics will not, or at least not 
important enough to impose on them.  You'll get a lot of nasty e-mail 
messages demanding you restrict your messages to the "appropriate" 
newsgroups. 
Chapter 4: USENET II
 
 
4.1  FLAME, BLATHER AND SPEW
 

Something about online communications seems to make some people 
particularly irritable.  Perhaps it's the immediacy and semi-anonymity of 
it all.  Whatever it is, there are whole classes of people you will soon 
think seem to exist to make you miserable. 

Rather than pausing and reflecting on a message as one might do with a 
letter received on paper, it's just so easy to hit your R or F key and 
tell somebody you don't really know what you really think of them.  Even 
otherwise calm people sometimes find themselves turning into raving 
lunatics.  When this happens, flames erupt.  

A flame is a particularly nasty, personal attack on somebody for 
something he or she has written.  Periodically, an exchange of flames 
erupts into a flame war that begin to take up all the space in a given 
newsgroup (and sometimes several; flamers like cross-posting to let the 
world know how they feel).  These can go on for weeks (sometimes they go 
on for years, in which case they become "holy wars," usually on such 
topics as the relative merits of Macintoshes and IBMs).  Often, just when 
they're dying down, somebody new to the flame war reads all the messages, 
gets upset and issues an urgent plea that the flame war be taken to e-
mail so everybody else can get back to whatever the newsgroup's business 
is.  All this usually does, though, is start a brand new flame war, in 
which this poor person comes under attack for daring to question the 
First Amendment, prompting others to jump on the attackers for impugning 
this poor soul...  You get the idea. 

Every so often, a discussion gets so out of hand that somebody predicts 
that either the government will catch on and shut the whole thing down or 
somebody will sue to close down the network, or maybe even the wrath of 
God will smote everybody involved.  This brings what has become an 
inevitable rejoinder from others who realize that the network is, in 
fact, a resilient creature that will not die easily: "Imminent death of 
Usenet predicted. Film at 11.'' 

Flame wars can be tremendously fun to watch at first.  They quickly grow 
boring, though.  And wait until the first time you're attacked! 

Flamers are not the only net.characters to watch out for.  

Spewers assume that whatever they are particularly concerned about either 
really is of universal interest or should be rammed down the throats of 
people who don't seem to care -- as frequently as possible. You can 
usually tell a spewer's work by the number of articles he posts in a day 
on the same subject and the number of newsgroups to which he then sends 
these articles -- both can reach well into double digits. Often, these 
messages relate to various ethnic conflicts around the world. Frequently, 
there is no conceivable connection between the issue at hand and most of 
the newsgroups to which he posts.  No matter.  If you try to point this 
out in a response to one of these messages, you will be inundated with 
angry messages that either accuse you of being an insensitive 
racist/American/whatever or ignore your point entirely to bring up 
several hundred more lines of commentary on the perfidy of whoever it is 
the spewer thinks is out to destroy his people. 

Closely related to these folks are the Holocaust revisionists, who 
periodically inundate certain groups (such as soc.history) with long 
rants about how the Holocaust never really happened.  Some people attempt 
to refute these people with facts, but others realize this only 
encourages them. 

Blatherers tend to be more benign.  Their problem is that they just can't 
get to the point -- they can wring three or four screenfuls out of a 
thought that others might sum up in a sentence or two.  A related 
condition is excessive quoting.  People afflicted with this will include 
an entire message in their reply rather than excising the portions not 
relevant to whatever point they're trying to make.  The worst quote a 
long message and then add a single line: 
 
     "I agree!"
 
or some such, often followed by a monster .signature (see section 4.7)
      
There are a number of other Usenet denizens you'll soon come to 
recognize.  Among them: 
     
     Net.weenies.  These are the kind of people who enjoy LOWER 
CASEDinsulting others, the kind of people who post nasty messages in a 
sewing newsgroup just for the hell of it. 
     Net.geeks.  People to whom the Net is Life, who worry about what 
happens when they graduate and they lose their free, 24-hour access. 
     Net.gods.  The old-timers; the true titans of the Net and the 
keepers of its collective history. They were around when the Net 
consisted of a couple of computers tied together with baling wire.
     Lurkers.  Actually, you can't tell these people are there, but 
they are.  They're the folks who read a newsgroup but never post or 
respond. 
     Wizards.  People who know a particular Net-related topic inside 
and out.  Unix wizards can perform amazing tricks with that operating 
system, for example. 
     Net.saints.  Always willing to help a newcomer, eager to share 
their knowledge with those not born with an innate ability to navigate 
the Net, they are not as rare as you might think.  Post a question 
about something and you'll often be surprised how many responses you 
get.
     
The last group brings us back to the Net's oral tradition.  With few 
written guides, people had traditionally learned their way around the Net 
by asking somebody, whether at the terminal next to them or on the Net 
itself.  That tradition continues: if you have a question, ask. 

Today, one of the places you can look for help is in the 
news.newusers.questions newsgroup, which, as its name suggests, is a 
place to learn more about Usenet.  But be careful what you post.  Some of 
the Usenet wizards there get cranky sometimes when they have to answer 
the same question over and over again. Oh, they'll eventually answer your 
question, but not before they tell you should have asked your host system 
administrator first or looked at the postings in news.announce.newusers. 
 

4.2  KILLFILES: THE CURE FOR WHAT AILS YOU 

 
As you keep reading Usenet, you are going to run across topics or people 
that really drive you nuts -- or that you just get tired of seeing. 

Killfiles are just the thing for you. When you start your newsreader, it 
checks to see if you have any lists of words, phrases or names you don't 
want to see.  If you do, then it blanks out any messages containing those 
words. 

Such as cascades. 

As you saw earlier, when you post a reply to a message and include parts 
of that message, the original lines show up with a > in front of them.  
Well, what if you reply to a reply?  Then you get a >> in front of the 
line.  And if you reply to that reply? You get >>>.  Keep this up, and 
soon you get a triangle of >'s building up in your message. 

There are people who like building up these triangles, or cascades.  
They'll "respond" to your message by deleting everything you've said, 
leaving only the "In message 123435, you said:" part and the last line of 
your message, to which they add a nonsensical retort.  On and on they go 
until the triangle has reached the right end of the page. Then they try 
to expand the triangle by deleting one > with each new line. Whoever gets 
to finish this mega-triangle wins.        

There is even a newsgroup just for such folks: alt.cascade.  
Unfortunately, cascaders would generally rather cascade in other 
newsgroups. Because it takes a lot of messages to build up a completed 
cascade, the targeted newsgroup soon fills up with these messages. Of 
course, if you complain, you'll be bombarded with messages about the 
First Amendment and artistic expression -- or worse, with another 
cascade. The only thing you can do is ignore them, by setting up a 
killfile. 

There are also certain newsgroups where killfiles will come in handy 
because of the way the newsgroups are organized.  For example, readers of 
rec.arts.tv.soaps always use an acronym in their subject: line for the 
show they're writing about (AMC, for example, for "All My Children").  
This way, people who only want to read about "One Life to Live" can blank 
out all the messages about "The Young and the Restless" and all the 
others (to keep people from accidentally screening out messages that 
might contain the letters "gh" in them, "General Hospital" viewers always 
use "gh:" in their subject lines). 

Both nn and rn let you create killfiles, but in different ways. 

To create a killfile in nn, go into the newsgroup with the offending 
messages and type a capital K.  You'll see this at the bottom of your 
screen: 
 
     AUTO (k)ill or (s)elect (CR => Kill subject 30 days) 
                                                                               
If you hit return, nn will ask you which article's subject you're 
tired of. Chose one and the article and any follow-ups will disappear, 
and you won't see them again for 30 days. 
     
If you type a lower-case k instead, you'll get this: 
 
     AUTO KILL on (s)ubject or (n)ame  (s) 
                                                                               
If you hit your S key or just enter,  you'll see this: 
                                                                               
     KILL Subject: (=/) 
 
Type in the name of the offending word or phrase and hit enter.  You'll 
then be prompted: 
                                                                               
     KILL in (g)roup 'eff.test' or in (a)ll groups  (g) 
                                                                               
except that the name of the group you see will be the one you're actually 
in at the moment.  Because cascaders and other annoying people often 
cross-post their messages to a wide range of newsgroups, you might 
consider hitting a instead of g.  Next comes: 
 
     Lifetime of entry in days (p)ermanent  (30) 
 
The P key will screen out the offending articles forever, while hitting 
enter will do it for 30 days.  You can also type in a number of days for 
the blocking. 

Creating killfiles in rn works differently -- its default killfile 
generator only works for messages in specific groups, rather than 
globally for your entire newsgroup list.  To create a global killfile, 
you'll have to write one yourself. 

To create a killfile in rn, go into the newsgroup where the offending 
messages are and type in its number so you get it on your screen. Type a 
capital K.  From now on, any message with that subject line will 
disappear before you read the group. You should probably choose a reply, 
rather than the original message, so that you will get all of the 
followups (the original message won't have a "Re: " in its subject line). 
The next time you call up that newsgroup, rn will tell you it's killing 
messages. When it's done, hit the space bar to go back into reading mode. 

To create a "global" kill file that will automatically wipe out articles 
in all groups you read, start rn and type control-K.  This will start 
your whatever text editor you have as your default on your host system 
and create a file (called KILL, in your News subdirectory).         

On the first line, you'll type in the word, phrase or name you don't want 
to see, followed by commands that tell rn whether to search an entire 
message for the word or name and then what to do when it finds it. 

Each line must be in this form 
 
     /pattern/modifier:j 
 
"Pattern" is the word or phrase you want rn to look for.  It's case-
insensitive: both "test" and "Test" will be knocked out.  The modifier 
tells rn whether to limit its search to message headers (which can be