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Usenet Glossary

Find definitions below for some of the more common words you'll see while using Google's Usenet service.

browser n A program which renders HTML code as a nicely composed web page. Netscape and Internet Explorer are examples of browsers for the World Wide Web. They sit on your computer (the "client side") and work in tandem with the computers publishing the HTML pages on the web (the "server side").

cross-post vi Cross-posting allows you to post a message simultaneously to several forums , as opposed to posting it repeatedly (once to each forum), causing people to see it multiple times (considered to be bad form). Cross-posting should include a "Follow-up To" line that directs responses to a single follow-up forum. Doing so prevents follow-up messages from being directed to the wrong forums when only one part of the original message is being responded to.

discussion n Also known as a thread, a discussion is a chain of messages on a single topic. To 'follow a thread' is to read a series of messages with a common subject.

discussion forums n Discussion forums are the primary method for group communication on the Internet and include Usenet newsgroups, mailing lists and corporate discussion groups.

emoticon n A symbolic figure "drawn" with letters and punctuation marks and used to indicate an emotional state. Typically, they're best viewed sideways. For example, :-) is used to represent a smiling face. A winking bald guy with a big nose and goatee might be rendered as: ( ;?0.> Just in case you ever need it.

FAQ n [Frequently Asked (or Answered) Question] A compendium of accumulated lore, posted to high-volume forums in an attempt to forestall the perpetual re-asking of the same questions. If you're new to a group, read this before you post and spare yourself the wrath of old-timers.

flame

1. vi To post a message intended to insult and provoke.
2. vi To speak incessantly and/or rabidly on some relatively uninteresting subject or with a patently ridiculous attitude.
3. vt Either of senses 1 or 2, directed with hostility at a particular person or people.
4. n An instance of flaming. When a discussion degenerates into uninformative ad hominem bickering, cooler heads might inform the participants that "This flame war is a waste of electrons", though this unfortunately is frequently interpreted as inflammatory itself.

forum n Any discussion group accessible through a dial-in bulletin board service, a mailing list, or a newsgroup. Contrast with real-time chat via instant messengering, telephones or personal e-mail.

handle n An electronic pseudonym; a 'nom de guerre' chosen by a user to conceal his or her true identity. Network and bulletin board handles offer the same anonymity and opportunity for misdirection enjoyed by fans of Citizen's Band radio, from which the term was adopted. Use of grandiose handles is characteristic of crackers, weenies and other lower forms of network life; true hackers travel on their own reputations rather than invented legendry.

HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) n HTML is the coding language that is the basis for most of the pages displayed on the Worldwide Web. Browsers read this language and render the page with graphics and neatly displayed type. Hypertext refers to the fact that the code allows you to include links from one page to others on the Web. If you'd like to view the HTML source code for a given page while surfing the web, you can select "View Source" in most browsers. A new window will open showing you the code that the browser is reading to display the current page.

mailing list

1. n An e-mail address that is an alias for many other e-mail addresses. Some mailing lists simply redirect mail sent to them to the list of recipients. Others are filtered by humans or programs of varying degrees of sophistication. Lists filtered by humans are said to be `moderated'. It is often shortened in context to "list."
2. n The people who receive your e-mail when you send it to such an address.

netiquette [from "network etiquette"] n The conventions of politeness recognized in discussion forums, such as avoidance of cross-posting to inappropriate forums and refraining from commercial pluggery outside the business forums.

newbie [orig. from British public-school and military slang variant 'new boy'] n A Usenet neophyte. Criteria for being considered a newbie vary wildly; a person can be called a newbie in one forum while remaining a respected regular in another. The label `newbie' is sometimes applied as a serious insult to a person who has been around discussion forums for a long time but who carefully hides all evidence of having a clue.

newsgroup n One of Usenet 's huge collection of topic groups or forums . Newsgroups can be `unmoderated' (anyone can post) or `moderated' (submissions are automatically directed to a moderator, who edits or filters and then posts the results). Some newsgroups have parallel mailing lists for Internet people with no Usenet access, with messages to the forum automatically propagated to the list and vice versa. Some moderated forums are distributed as `digests', with groups of messages periodically collected into a single large message with an index.

newsreader n A browser program which enables a user to read messages posted to forums.

nuke v The practice of removing one's personal posts from a group or number of groups. Click here for more information on how to remove articles from Google's archive. Also, Google supports the 'X-No-archive: yes' header. Google will not archive any posted articles that contain this text in the header. If you think you may later regret what you're about to say, we advise you to take advantage of this option.

post v To broadcast a message to an entire forum (distinguished from e-mail in that it is not sent from one person directly to another).

robot n (Or "crawler", "spider"). A program that automatically explores the Worldwide Web by retrieving a document and then retrieving some or all the documents to which it links, and then repeating the process on each new page it finds.

spam n Although this term is used in general to mean any message that nobody wants, it applies specifically to commercial messages posted across a large number of newsgroups. The label 'spam' applies especially when the post contains nothing of specific interest to the newsgroup participants.

An increasing number of people also receive spam via e-mail. This electronic form of direct mail advertising is more insidious than the traditional (snail mail) form because there is virtually no cost to the advertiser. For some people, being buried under hundreds of spam messages each day has become all-too-real and problematic.

thread n Common abbreviation of `topic thread', a more or less continuous chain of messages on a single topic. To `follow a thread' is to read a series of forum messages sharing a common subject or (more correctly) which are connected by reference headers.

URL [Uniform Resource Locator] n An Internet address that a browser recognizes as the computer location for a particular web page or other file.

Usenet [from "Users' Network"] n A distributed bulletin board system supported mainly by UNIX machines. Originally implemented in 1979--1980 by Steve Bellovin, Jim Ellis, Tom Truscott, and Steve Daniel at Duke University, it has swiftly grown to become international in scope and is now probably the largest decentralized information utility in existence. To learn more about Usenet, please read our Basics of Usenet primer.