Usenet Newsgroups Terms Defined
We have selected some of the more important terms related to Usenet newsgroups and
provided the best real-world definition we could find for each related term for news servers or
newsgroups and usenet access providers.
| Term | Definition | ||
| Attachment | An attachment is a binary file inside a newsgroup post. To attach is the action of placing a file there. | ||
| ATTN | Usenet abbreviation for ‘attention’. It means that you seek the attention of one or several newsgroups. | ||
| AUP | Acceptable Usage Policy or Acceptable User Policy, same as TOS or Terms Of Service | ||
| Auto-cancel bot | A bot that automatically cancels (kills/deletes) messages on Usenet newsgroups that violate certain rules and that way stop their distribution. |
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| Base64 | Base64 is a base-64 MIME content transfer encoding that uses the characters A–Z, a–z, and 0–9 in that order for the first 62 digits. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base64 |
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| BCC | Blind carbon copy, abbreviated BCC, and sometimes referred to as Blind Courtesy Copy refers to the practice of sending a newsgroup message to multiple recipients in such a way that what they receive does not contain the complete list of recipients. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_carbon_copy |
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| BI | An index used for measuring spam in Usenet newsgroups. A value higher than 20 is seen as unacceptable behavior and those articles may be deleted without agreement of their author. Because non-binary newsgroups are for discussion only, Binary posting in non-binary Newsgroups are always treated as if their BI is higher than 20.nsfer encoding that uses the characters A–Z, a–z, and 0–9 in that order for the first 62 digits. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base64 |
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| BIG-8 | BIG-8 hierarchies are the 8 traditional top hierarchies of the Usenet. See the following page for more information: Usenet Newsgroups BIG-8 |
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| Binary Groups | Newsgroups created for posting binary files and not for discussions. | ||
| Binary-Post | BIG-8 hierarchies are the 8 traditional top hierarchies of the Usenet. See the following page for more information: Usenet Newsgroups BIG-8 |
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| Body | The ‘meat’ of your message. This part of your post would contain all the text or information you wish to post to the Usenet newsgroup. | ||
| bot | A bot is a software application that runs automated tasks over the Internet. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_bot | ||
| Cancel Message | A control message that requests for a Usenet newsgroup server to delete a certain article. Only the administrator of the service or the author of the message is allowed to request a cancel-message. |
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| CC | Sending a copy of your newsgroup post to a person(s) via email. | ||
| Completion Rate | How much of a Usenet newsgroup message is retained. | ||
| Cross-Posting | Posting a message to more than one newsgroup. Because the message is only posted once, it takes up less space on the server. This should only be practiced when the material is relevant and of interest to the readers of multiple newsgroups. |
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| CC | When two usenet news servers decide to discontinue the exchange of usenet articles. | ||
| Depeering | Sending a copy of your newsgroup post to a person(s) via email. | ||
| Extreme Cross Posting | Extreme Cross Posting (ECP) is the act of posting a single message to many (more than three) newsgroups at once. This is a violation of most Usenet provider’s TOS. |
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| Extreme Multi Posting | Extreme Multi Posting (EMP) is the act of posting the same message many times to one or more usenet newsgroups. This is a violation of most Usenet provider’s TOS. |
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| Feed | See Peer | ||
| Flaming |
Flaming is the hostile interaction between multiple Usenet users. | ||
| Flood | To flood is to post a massive amount of posts to a single usenet newsgroup in a short period of time. This is typically against the TOS of most Usenet access providers. It is important to note that when posts are so large they must be broken up into multiple posts (usually a binary post), it is not against the TOS as long as the posts are on topic and add value to the usenet newsgroup. |
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| Header | The header is the article information for your post. The header usually contains the author’s name, email address, when the article was posted, the path the post took to get to your usenet server, he reply-to address, and any other relevant information about the post. See the following link for more information about header lines: http://192.168.10.1:9002/ article_headers.php |
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| ISP | Internet Service Provider. This is the company you purchase your internet connection from. | ||
| Killfile | A set of filters setup to determine which user’s posts will be read/downloaded or ignored. | ||
| Lurker | A person who reads/browses usenet newsgroups but does not actively post. | ||
| Moderated Group | All articles posted to this group will first be sent to a moderator that will only let the message pass to the Newsgroup if it doesn’t violate the newsgroup charter. | ||
| Multipart Post | A post that is so large it must be split into multiple smaller messages. All parts of the message must be downloaded and reconstructed into one complete message in order to be read. | ||
| Netiquette | A set of ‘rules’ for using the Usenet set forth in IETF RFC 1855 | ||
| Newsgroup | A collection of messages or a directory on a Usenet server. The Newsgroup is usually named according to the topic of the discussions within. | ||
| NG | Abbreviation for Newsgroup | ||
| Newsgroup Retention | The amount of time that messages on Usenet newsgroups remain on news servers | ||
| News Servers (Newsservers) | News Servers are computers designated to store information on usenet newsgroups making usenet access possible. | ||
| Off-Topic | Posting something to a newsgroup that does not fit the accepted topic of the group or that belongs in another group altogether. | ||
| On-Topic | Posts to a uesnet newsgroup that are according to its topic. | ||
| Peer | Exchanging articles with other Usenet news servers. This is how Usenet servers spread articles from server to server. The more peers a Usenet server has, the greater chance the usenet newsgroups within will contain an article posted to that newsgroup. |
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| PLONK | When you reply to a message with the word PLONK, it means you have placed this person in your killfile and will be ignoring their future posts. | ||
| Post | A message on the Usenet. | ||
| Poster | The author of a message on the Usenet | ||
| Re: | If you see this in the subject it means that this is a reply to another post that was posted before with the same subject line. | ||
| Reg | A “regular” or a person who regularly takes part in discussions within a specific newsgroup. | ||
| Repost | You post something again, because some people missed it or because it was posted long ago and already is gone on nearly every server. You should avoid reposts as they cause very short retention times on many Usenet news servers! |
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| REQ | Abbreviation for request. Usually used when a poster desires help. | ||
| RFC | “Request for Comment”, a document describing a certain Internet standard, usually followed by a number, like RFC 1026 for example. | ||
| Sig | The “signature” that some posters place at the end of their posts. | ||
| Spam | Unsolicited commercial advertising. Spamming is against the TOS of almost every Usenet Access Provider. | ||
| Spew | Repeatedly posting the same message over and over again. Usually the poster makes minor changes to the post to prevent bots from canceling the messages. | ||
| SSL Encyptped Connections | Method for ensuring privacy while browsing Usenet newsgroups. | ||
| Thread | A message and the replies to it for a discussion thread. All messages that are not replies to other messages are new threads. | ||
| TOS | Terms of Service | ||
| Troll | An undesirable visitor to a usent newsgroup. This person is usually combative and abusive of many of the accepted Usenet practices. | ||
| UAP | Acronym for Usenet Access Provider. | ||
| Usenet | The virtual network that is used for exchanging messages between all the news servers all around the world. | ||
| Xpost | Cross Posting | ||