What is this all about?
Internet Newsgroups (also known as Usenet) is a world-wide distributed
discussion system. It consists of a set of "newsgroups" with names that
are classified hierarchically by subject. "Articles" or "messages" are "posted"
to these newsgroups by people on computers with the appropriate software
-- these articles are then broadcast to other interconnected computer systems
via a wide variety of networks. Some newsgroups are "moderated"; in these
newsgroups, the articles are first sent to a moderator for approval before
appearing in the newsgroup. Usenet is available on a wide variety of computer
systems and networks. (Definition is taken from Usenet
Info Center).
Actually, the global Usenet carries tens of thousands of discussion groups,
each of them distributes 20-30 postings every day on average. They cover
all fields of human activities, sciences, social and cultural issues, and
even those newsgroups which are simply intended for idle-talking. To receive
them to our local server we would have to dedicate a fast Internet connection
for this puspose with a bandwith of at aleast 128 Kb/s. That is why we decided
to start from a smaller thing - to create a set of discussion groups local
to Armenia, with a hope that one day (inevitably!) the global Usenet would
swallow us up too... ;)
Local newsgroups. The name of every discussion group consists of
several words separated with dots (.), f.ex. "comp.lang.pascal.mac",
"comp.os.unix", "sci.physics.plasma", etc. The name
itself reflects the place of a given group in the hierarchy of groups: the
first example is described as "computers -> langauges -> pascal
-> Macintosh". The local Armenian newsgroups always start with "am."
to avoid future conflicts with the global Usenet. Examples: "am.www.webmasters",
"am.www.new-sites", "am.noyan-tapan.eng", etc. We'll
keep these names as descriptive as possible, however, more detailed information
on each group, such like full description, human language(s), rules specific
to this group, etc, are published in the "Browse"
section of this site.
Software. Almost all widely-used email agents (e.g. Netscape Messenger,
MS Outlook [Express], pine, etc.) provide built-in news readers. In brief,
you specify a newsgroups server closer to you, then receive a list of discussion
groups, mark some of them as "subscribed" for further reading,
and... fasten your seatbelts, you are into the world of Internet newsgroups!
How to set up a mail agent to read newsgroups?
In most cases clicking here will
bring your favorite mail agent (for example, Netscape Messenger, or Outlook),
which will ask you whether you wish to download the list of newsgroups from
the server. If you know exactly that there exists a server other than news.freenet.am,
which is closer to you, then you should ask your ISP to provide detailed
instructions on setting up a news reader. If you are an ArmFN user, then
refer to Armenian Freenet's Frequently
Asked Questions page.
Note, that Netscape Messenger assumes that you have a host named
"news" in your local domain. For example, if you are an ArmFN
user, and you have specified "freenet.am" as a local domain in
your TCP/IP settings (Control Panel -> Network -> Protocols ->
TCP/IP -> Properties -> DNS -> Domain), then your default news
server is "news", and you do not need to specify other servers.
If your mail agent is UNIX pine, go to pine's configuration page
and enter the newsgroups server name in the "nntp-server" field.
Further steps of subscribing, reading and posting are intuitive, if you
are familiar with pine.
How to read and post news?
Reading and posting messages (conditionally called "news") is
as easy as sending and receiving mail. The newsgroups system, however, provides
more flexible way to select items of interest among hundreds and thousands
of topics and articles.
Reading. First of all, you receive a list of topics (newsgroups)
available on the server first time you connect to it. Your news reader program
(e.g. Netscape Messenger, Outlook, pine, etc.) suggests that you "subscribe"
to some groups of interest. "Subscription" to a particular newsgroup
means you will be notified as soon as new articles arrive to this group.
You can tune your news reader so that it will automatically notify you about
openings of new newsgroups. MS Outlook [Express] also provides an option
to receive full newgroup descriptions (in the news servers' advanced properties).
As new articles arrive, your news reader first downloads their headers,
i.e. the "Subject:" line, "From:" and some other attributes.
It also organizes articles by discussion threads: if an article was sent
using the "Reply" function, that message will apear under the
corresponding original message.
Clicking on a message header will download the actual message for reading.
News readers provide some other useful functions to help you sort messages
by sender, date or discussion thread, to show to you only responses to your
postings; you can also "ignore" an entire discussion thread which
is of no interest for you, and take advantage of many other possibilities
as well.
Posting. Posting articles to Usenet is similar to sending mail,
except that you put one or more names of newsgroups opposite to the "Newsgroups:"
field. Of course, the message can go to simple e-mail recipients simultaneously,
if you specify them in "To:", "Cc:" or "Bcc:"
fields.
We provide a special newsgoup for testing purposes - am.test.
Try sending messages to this newsgroup first, or reply to others' test messages,
to familiarize yourself with the newsgroups system in general.
Before you post a serious article or response to a real group, you should
check (1) whether this group is open or moderated (see below), (2) whether
your article conforms to the general rules & etiquette,
as well as the rules specific to the given group.
Moderated newsgroup is a special group which allows posting from
only one person, the moderator. Some moderated groups may allow postings from
everyone but only after the
moderator's approval.
How to find the closest newsgroups server?
Accessing from within Armenia. At the moment of creation of the
local (Armenian) newsgroups network, there was only one server - news.freenet.am.
This means that you can connect to this server from almost everywhere in
Armenia, through either one of commercial Internet service providers, or
Armenian Freenet. When other ISP's establish their own newsgroups servers,
you will be able to connect to the one which is physically closer to you
- your ISP will give you necessary information. Note that newsgroups servers
exchange everything they have, so it does not matter which one you choose,
except that the factor of access speed.
The list of servers currently carrying am.* groups are listed in the "Browse"
section of this site.
Accessing from outside Armenia. Since local Armenian newsgroups
are not distributed through global Usenet (yet), you will have to connect
to one of newsgroups servers located in Armenia (see previous section).
HOPEFULLY this will change in the future. An alternate way to read the am.*
groups is this site (section "Browse").
AND FINALLY...
Regardless of whether you are just a reader or a potential "writer",
please, proceed to the next section describing "Rules
& Etiquette".
