Social Psychology of USENET Newsgroups:

My name is Glen Acierto, a student in the University of Hawaii's Psychology 409b class taught by Professor Leon James. This report deals with the social psychology of newsgroups.

This semester has been my first experience with using computers in a very long time, so everything about computers now was practically new to me. I have kept a strong interest in computers and tried to keep myself updated as to the latest developments, but I have not actually touched a computer keyboard in a long time. Upon doing so at the beginning of this semester, I was overwhelmed with how far computers have come. I was lost and confused, but with lots of help from my fellow classmates, I now consider myself pretty much "on-line" when it comes to computer literacy.

I first heard about newsgroups through a friend of mine(who happened to still be in high school). We were both interested in the (new to Hawaii) sport of paintball and we wanted to know more about how to get started. He told me about how he could get that kind of information on the internet and before I knew it, he gave me a printout from a newsgroup that detailed one place in Hawaii that sold paintball equipment. To make a long story short, I am now an avid paintball player!!!

When I finally got to use newsgroups through this PSY 409b class, it really sparked my interest. Now I could go off on my own, explore, and find out all kinds of information for myself. The amount of information out there is AMAZING. Newsgroups were a perfect way to keep abreast of the latest developments in equipment, events, and tips from the more "seasoned" paintball players and mountain-bikers. It is one of the many "on-line" tools that I plan to utilize in the years to come.

I am still overwhelmed by the vast amount of information that is available on newsgroups. When I was required to utilize them, on my own and for the very first time this semester, I still felt somewhat intimidated by how quickly the latest information on a specific topic could be spread out, both nationally and internationally. For example, in both newsgroups, alt.sport.paintball and rec.bicycles.off-road I found invitations for both national and international events. It was amazing to think of - all this information at my fingertips and I'm sitting here at a computer keyboard in Hawaii!!!

After viewing newsgroups from both Pine and Netscape, I decided on using Netscape because of its much larger selection of newsgroups and the much easier to read format. Even though I admit that it did get kind of tedious "scrolling" the mouse back and forth, I eventually got used to it and now it doesn't bother me as much anymore.

Just like with many things in working with a computer, once you get used to it and you understand what was going on, what used to be a headache for me is now second nature.

I've always had a special interest in "outdoor athletics." By this term, I mean athletics that actually involve "the great outdoors." Things like being out in the woods, having serious adrenaline rushes, and pushing my body to it's physical limits. It's a great way to stay in shape, be one with nature, and to just plain relax and forget about my daily stress. Naturally, I was drawn to the Sports and Fitness section in Netscape's Destinations. Upon scrolling down to the paintball and bicycle off-road section, I was brought up to the most current messages in the newsgroups.

It was pretty confusing at first, looking at messages filled with all kinds of technical jargon. For example, words like Raptors, MtB, Bell EVO, ICON Z,and Judy XC 96 would not make sense to the unexperienced and is somewhat intimidating. After sometime spent skimming through the messages, I found that a lot of this "technical jargon," were simply hyped-up names for the newest in paintball and mountain biking equipment.

I found a variety of useful information ranging from advice on how to remove stickers from a bicycle frame to what companies and products to avoid, to legal advice on mail-ordering items. A bad point to all this was that there was about the same amount of useful tips as there were useless ones and subjects that did not interest me.

In the beginning, I used to read every single message for fear that I may miss something important. I found that this was time-consuming and not really necessary. With experience, I got to learn many of the little "tricks" that would make browsing through a newsgroup a lot easier and faster. I began to learn the abbreviations and technical jargon contained in the headings and I eventually learned to just browse through and I could tell if the posting would interest me or not. For example: MtB stood for mountain bike, FS stood for for sale, and cocker stood for a certain model of paintball gun. If I found a particular message that interested me enough to save for future reference or reply at a later time, I would just save it unto my "a" drive diskette. If didn't want to sift through all the messages that I had already read, I would just go the "Options" option and click the "Show only Unread Messages" command. This simplified things a lot and I didn't have to go through the trouble of reading things I had already read or didn't find interesting.

All the while, I have learned many new concepts like lurking, posting, and replying and threads among many. "Lurking" is basically defined as just "sampling" a newsgroup. It does not involve posting or replying to messages and its main purpose is to get a feel for the types of newsgroups are out there. Being a beginner (and for fear of offending anyone or posting a "stupid" question), I lurked a lot around the alt.sport.paintball and rec.bicycles.off-roadnewsgroups. I found that virtually any question that I had wanted answered (and questions that I had never thought of before) was already asked and replyed to (although some were answered after a period of several days).

Not really having a specific question in mind, I decided to post a message as somewhat of an experiment. Even though I already knew enough about a certain type of paintball gun that I owned, I posted a message that was not too vague (so it wouldn't turn people off by appearing to be a "newbie" question) and not too detailed. The reason for this was because, in viewing some of the messages posted, I noticed that some of the really vague questions were left unanswered and after a while I just didn't bother checking them myself. The detailed questions tended to be asked by professionals in the business and guys who just want to sound smart, both of which I claim to be neither (you can differentiate the difference between the two when you read the replies to the original message- the amount of positive replies as compared to negative replies). I asked: "I'm thinking about purchasing a Vector paintball gun because of its range and accuracy but I heard that it tends to malfunction a lot due to its many mechanical parts. Can anyone out there give me advice?" I asked to be replied to by e-mail and within a few days I got a reply that gave me a wealth of information, many of which I didn't already know. I personally thanked "Sniper" by e-mail. It's nice to know how people you have never met are so willing to lend out a helping hand.

Threads were pretty much easy to follow by just looking at the top left portion of the screen. Threads were easy to identify by the diagramming of the messages. This was helpful in that it showed a sequence of replies that signaled an ongoing conversation. If you clicked onto a certain message in the middle of a thread, chances are that you would not understand what the conversation was about. I noticed that some threads were so long that the original question or comment was not even posted anymore. Some of the replies were helpful in that many did quote some or all of the original posting. In others, I just didn't understand what they were talking about so I just ignored them.

Interestingly enough, I did not really encounter any incidents of the "spamming" or "flaming" that I had heard so much about. I did see general messages that didn't really pertain to either paintball or mountain-biking and these were evident through their headings. These types of messages were more like advertisements and I quickly ignored them.

I also saw no incidents about flaming. Although there were at times, heated discussions about which paintball gun or bike performed better, the worst that I have seen was on the paintball newsgroup in which a paintball player was ripped-off by a well-known paintball supplier and was refused a refund. The person posted a message calling for all paintballers out there to stop doing business with this company. I thought that newsgroups used in this sense do a lot of good. By warning others, it would save a lot of people a lot of grief and would penalize companies out there who do bad business. The problem that I see with this is that a person's complaint has to be given the benefit of a doubt. Who knows, he may be lying for the most part, just to draw business away from a rival company.

Often, many of the netiquette rules that I've heard about are not relly adhered to on the newsgroups. Many are minor, but some rules that are not adhered to, can make skimming through the messages a tedious chore.

Many of the postings in alt.sport.paintball consist of line after line of the original "poster's" message. This made scrolling through these messages very tedious and boring and at times I just skipped these messages or ignored them altogether by reading their headings. The format that I have seen the most often is quoting the original poster's message in the beginning part of the message. Some problems with this is that some of the posters wrote long messages and drawn out questions, adding to this were people replying and quoting much, if not all, of the original message. I deduced that this was because many paintball players do tend to be in the younger age groups. It's easy to tell by the types of questions, how it is worded, and the numerous spelling errors. My hope is that as they grow older, they will begin to follow more of the netiquette rules.

Here is an example of how the netiquette rule of brevity is not followed:
viper@nol.net wrote:
> > Vikram Rao wrote:
> > >well me and my friend were bored yesterday so we decided to build the
> >suppressor instructions i got off a paintball ftp site.....his gun was a
> >spyder a compact...............
> >everyone at the field was like "damn that thing works" or "it is as
> >quiet as a cocker"
> >hope you enjoy
> >justin
> > Here's an even better method:
> Use a ported barrel, a shampoo bottle (I use Salon Selectives for the
> shape and size. Not to mention it leaves my hair clean and manageable-
> haha), and the lid from a can of spray paint. Hone out the neck of the
> shampoo bottle to the outside diameter of the tip of the barrel. Cut
> the bottom off of the bottle. Cut the RAISED part out of the cap so
> that it will fit the larger REAR end of the barrel. Slide the cap over
> the barrel and pull it towards the rear of the barrel, open end
> forward. Wrap your foam or whatever your using (experiment!) around
> the barrel. Wrap that with four layers of paper toweling (This helps
> deaden the PING that is heard when the sound rebounds off of the
> inside, and it does). Then slide the bottle (open end first) over your
> barrel and into (or over, depending on the cap) the paint can cap.Tape
> up the part where the cap and bottle are joined. You now have a nice > looking INTEGRATED barrel AND silencer. You can sand the outside and
> paint the unit if you don't want to run around with a big, pink
> barrel. But you have to sand it first or the paint wont stick.
> Enjoy! >
word of advise to all you suppressor makers, becareful of what you are doning, and who knows about it. Check it out with you local authorities, for if your paintball marker suppressor can be adapted to a real firearm, the BATF will nail your head to the wall!!! Try a minimum of 5 years in jail and a huge fine to boot.
And this was just the beginning part of the message!!!

I've had better luck in the rec.bicycles.off-road newsgroup. This newsgroup followed netiquette rules almost all the time and was much easier to read. The thing that I admired most was how they tended to follow the brevity rule. Almost all the questions and answers were short and quick. This made for easier reading and helped to keep my interest. Also, I could skim through the newest messages a lot faster- if the first two sentences did not hold my interest, I just skipped the message. Here is an example:

David Ryan (David_Ryan@adware.com) wrote:
:* Mike Vandeman wrote (mixed with someone's responses and my reactions):
:* > It is obvious that bikers cause more damage. They weigh more
:* > (biker + bike),
:* -----------------------------------------------------------------
:* Than hiker + 60 lb. BACKPACK???!!! What do you care about trail
:* damage? You don't want trails (except animals make them too).
:* -----------------------------------------------------------------
:*
Well, I go about 140lb and my bike weighs just over 25lb. So, I'm guess that all hikers must be under 165lb by Mike V's "logic"? I guess hiking is the best way to lose those excess pounds:) --
Eric Bryant Electrical Engineering undergraduate
ewbryant@mtu.edu Michigan Technological University

By using this format of short questions and answers, alternating paragraph questions and anwers were not necessary. At times, some replies were long, but by being broken down into short section, this made it so much easier to read.

By viewing the styles of the different newsgroups, the differences are evident. People who utilize newsgroups vary widely. Some choose to follow netiquette rules, while others do not. One thing did seem evident though- whether they chose to follow the rules or not, there is a lot of people out there with a lot of valuable information. I feel that while a number of newsgroups users are fairly new to it or are just young in age, the observing of netiquette rules will eventually be refined through continued usage and practice.

My first few weeks being part of a newsgroup was spent mostly lurking. I found that in reading other people's messages, many of my own questions were answered. This in turn lead me to learn more than I originally bargained for. This was not a problem and I welcomed the chance to learn new, and many times trivial things. I did find that many of the subjects being discussed did not pertain to me and sometimes they were just plain boring.

I eventually tired of just reading other people's postings and decided to post something on my own. I was quite nervous at first. I feared not having anyone answer me or having some sort of negative reply. I took these fears into account when I worded my question. I didn't want to sound like I knew too little or too much about my subject. This way, I would avoid being ignored and I feel people were more apt to respond to someone who had some knowledge but was not a know-it-all.

This approach worked just fine and I was responded to in just a matter of days. I was excited at the thought of having someone, probably from another state or even another country had responded specifically to me. It reminded me of how everyone in this world is part of a global community and that this computer terminal that sat right in front of me was a tool to get in touch with the information that I needed. It is a powerful feeling to be able utilize a tool in that way.

Now , I have gained enough confidence that I have posted about eight times. Some of them weren't really serious postings but just quick one-line comments to things that I felt I needed to comment on. I followed all the nettiquette rules that I know about and even though there are others out there who don't, I keep in mind that there are those who still need practice in this area. I should know , I've been there.

Living in an era where "time is of the essence," receiving the specific information that you need in the shortest amount of time is of the utmost importance. In this era where we are constantly being bombarded with multitudes of information at a very high rate of speed, we cannot always find the time to casually browse and search the on-line universe. Information now, becomes outdated within a matter of days, if not hours.

Utilizing newsgroups as a tool provides a person with the means to seek out the latest up-to-date information that he or she needs. It is a combination of several different mediums for information. It can serve as a forum for those seeking or for those who wish to impart information. From different points of view and when utilized in different ways, newsgroups can be viewed as a "Help Wanted" section, or an advertising section or even a joke/humor section (judging on some of the past comment that I have seen in some of the newsgroup postings). By posting up announcements of upcoming events, services available, personal equipment problems, or just plain advice, newsgroups serve as an effective way to gain information about different subjects whether it be for the novice, intermediate, or expert in a given field.

Newsgroups give the average person a chance to access that information within a somewhat user-friendly environment. It may be quite intimidating at first, but by doing a lot of lurking and observing in the beginning, a lot can be learned. It just may take a while to gain the confidence needed but after that, I realized that there wasn't much to be afraid of in the first place.

Living in an era where "time is of the essence," receiving the specific information that you need in the shortest amount of time is of the utmost importance. In this era where we are constantly being bombarded with multitudes of information at a very high rate of speed, we cannot always find the time to casually browse and search the on-line universe. Information now, becomes outdated within a matter of days, if not hours.

I had a difficult time in searching the Internet for articles that discussed social or psychological forces in newsgroups, so I took a shortcut. I looked at the work of the previous generations of the University of Hawaii's Psychology 409b classes taught by Professor Leon James to look at the sources that the previous generations had used. This was much simpler and it goes to show that the U.H. psychology department's generational curriculum does indeed have benefits for each succeeding generation of "on-line explorers."

In one student's homepage, I found an address for an introductory netiquette guide. This website gave a basic introduction to different terms relating to newsgroups in an easy to read format. It outlined the basic rules of netiquette and what to do before you decide to post to a newsgroup. It offers valuable information that will save the beginner from making common mistakes and save them from the embarrasment of being open to liabilities or being "flamed."

Another interesting website is Dr. Suler's website. In this website, Dr. Suler gives an insight into many aspects of cyberpsychology. Although this website does not discuss social or psychological forces relating directly to newsgroups, it offers a wide variety of topics that would interest the psychology/cyberspace student. There are various articles that discuss the relationship between cyberspace and: individuals, person-to-person relationships, and groups. I would highly recommend visiting this site to get an idea of the diversity involved when social and psychological forces combine with the internet.