Introduction
This is an application for accessing UseNet News (also known as
NetNews, News, or Discussion Groups). Usenet News is a publicly
accessible Internet collection of electronic discussion groups
(called newsgroups), each devoted to a specific topic. There
are tens of thousands of newsgroups, arranged in a hierarchy
with each level of the hierarchy separated by a dot (".")
character. Some of the major hierarchies are "alt" for
discussion of alternative topics, "comp" for computer topics,
and "sci" for science topics. From the major hierarchies,
individual newsgroups or lower hierarchies are formed.
People can read and post articles (also called postings or
messages) to relevant newsgroups. The people who contribute
worthwhile postings to newsgroups make the system an invaluable
resource. Unfortunately, many postings are not of worthwhile
content, and the "signal to noise" in un-moderated groups can
be very low.
Navigating Newsgroups
When you first access the Discussions application, you will be
presented with a listing of the top level UseNet hierarchy,
from which you can navigate the list of discussion groups. For
example, if you click on the "plus sign" link to the left of
the group titled "soc" it will expand into a list of the forums
and further hierarchies within the "society" hierarchy. The
name of each newsgroup (such as soc.answers, soc.athiesm, etc.)
is listed as a link. You can click on the newsgroup names to
view a list of their posted messages and/or subgroups.
After viewing messages, you can return to this top-level
listing of newsgroups by clicking on the Browse menu icon at
the top of the page.
Viewing Articles and Threads
You can view articles in two views: a simple listing of
postings sorted in some manner, or by threads.
Many newsgroup postings are replies to previous postings. A
string of successive replies to the same posting forms what is
called a thread. It is often useful to view messages via such a
threaded view, so that you can read (or skip) all the messages
of each subject in sequence. This is especially useful if you
want to reply to a posting, as threading lets you easily check
if someone else has already posted the same reply.
Notes Actions