Newsgroups

Abstract

Discussions take place on the Internet using mailing lists, newsgroups, and chat rooms. Chat rooms provide direct “live” conversation via the computer keyboard. As the name implies, they are informal and you are free to come and go as you please, speaking to anyone who might be in the “room” at the moment. Mailing lists and newsgroups provide a more structured and formal method of information interchange, but there is a significant difference between the two methods. A mailing list discussion comes directly to your individual electronic mailbox. However, the messages that form discussions in newsgroups are only sent to the newsgroup administrator, who then sends them to Internet news-group system sites (not individual subscribers). You then read the messages in the newsgroup at a particular system site just as you would walk down the hall to read the messages posted on a bulletin board. In fact, the origin of newsgroups was as a bulletin board service where messages could be posted for all to see. In summary, instead of the messages coming directly to you via a mailing list, you go to a place where the messages are posted in a newsgroup and read them there.