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Millions of people are subscribing to Newsgroups each day. Today, there are thousands and thousands of different newsgroups that stem from a variety of subjects. Whatever your interests are, there is probably a newsgroup for you. In the report below, I will talk about my one month experience with two basketball newsgroups. Little did I know that being a member of a newsgroups would be so fun and addicting. Before you know it, your newsgroup will have you spending hours on the computer. I hope that my experience will help you understand newsgroups to the point that you wish to subscribe to one.
The subject that I was interested in was basketball. At the moment, college and pro basketball seasons are in prime time. The National Collegiate Athletic Association basketball tournament and the National Basketball Association playoffs are just around the corner. Being that those big events are coming around, I wanted to hear the latest gossip. So, I decided to subscribe to the college and pro basketball newsgroups. Using Netscape News, I subscribed to rec.sport.basketball.college and rec.sport.basketball.pro. Since these were my first two real newsgroups, I didn't know what to expect. Once in the newsgroups, the first thing that I noticed was the grouping of messages. They were grouped by certain categories. I learned that these categories are called threads. The threads are organized by the subject of the message. I was on my way to participating in the two newsgroups.
Both of my basketball newsgroups had over a hundred messages. When you start reading them, you lose track of which messages you read and which ones you didn't. There were many times where I would read the same message over and over again. The reason I did this was because of the subject names. For example, one of the subjects in my pro basketball newsgroups was "Knicks beat the Bulls." Many people replied to that subject and it showed "Re:Knicks beat the Bulls." The Re stands for reply. If I didn't read the name of the person writing the reply, I would probably read many messages twice. As I participated more, I found a way to avoid reading the same message. On Netscape News, there are two markers. One that looks like a red flag, and one that looks like a green diamond. The markers have their own column in the middle of the sender and subject columns. In these columns, you could click on the flag column or the diamond column. Clicking the diamond column unbolds the name and subject. By doing this, you could see which messages were already read. All of the unbolded messages would be the ones you read and the bolded messages would be the messages to read. As for the red flag, this is used to mark messages that are worth looking back at. For me, I use it to mark a message that I might want to respond to. In both of my newsgroups, there aren't any messages that I feel are worth saving. Most of the messages are either gossip or opinions. These gossip and opinions aren't worth saving for a later date. However, each and every message prove to be very interesting for a basketball fan like me.
As I observed the newsgroups, there were many concepts that I learned. The first term I learned was posting. This is when you write a message and send it for the whole group to see it. The reason you post a message is to converse with other newsgroup members. Posting and replying are two ways in which members communicate with one another. People's posting differed from one person to the next. One person would have a brief question or comment, while another person will have a long question or comment. I didn't notice any brevity rules or one topic message rules. But, if a message had more than one topic in the message, only one of the topics will usually be replied to. When a member replies to a post, the message looks different from the post itself. The reply usually starts with the name and message of the post you are replying to. For example, the reply would say "Scott Chang wrote:", and under the time and name would be the original message. After the original message, a reply to that message is written. Usually, you would know if it is the original message by these marks, <<. The amount of the original message the person wants to put in his reply is up to the person replying. In my two newsgroups, people would either post questions or have comments about a player or team. Basketball has many different teams and players which a person can comment on. Every member of the newsgroup has their own favorite player or team. A lot of members like to boast about their team while degrading another team. Below is an example of what one of the messages look like in my two newsgroups.
Flaming happens when someone posts an unpopular comment or opinion. For my two newsgroups, writing derogatory comments about a good team or player usually brings about flaming. People get flamed all the time in my two newsgroups. I noticed that a lot of the people who post negative comments have a secret identity. In Netscape News, you can change your identity by clicking the Mail and Preference section in the Options menu. Through this, you can type in whatever name you want to show on the Newsgroup. Also, you can type in a fake e-mail address so that no one can e-mail you. I changed my identity often. In my two newsgroups, I noticed that the Chicago Bulls was a team that a lot of members loved. So, I decided to post a message that would draw negativity towards me. I wrote as my subject, "Scottie Pippen sucks!" Scottie Pippen is a popular player that plays for the Chicago Bulls. Like I predicted, people were flaming me. Since I didn't put my real e-mail address, I didn't get any flaming messages in my mailbox. All of the flaming messages I received was posted in the newsgroup. Many of them criticized me for writing such degrading and false statements. Another person posted statistics to prove me wrong. In fact, my message was so unpopular that one person wrote to the group that the "Scottie Pippen sucks!" thread should come to an end. The message I am talking about is the one above.
This flaming message is mild compared to some. Some messages I've seen included racist or sexist comments. These type of comments will usually receive some hot flaming. Another message that people flame is spamming messages.
Spamming is done by many people to disturb newsgroups. This is when members post the same material to different newsgroups. Many times, these messages has no relation to all the newsgroups. Many people use spamming to advertise. By spamming, these advertisements go to more people at a faster rate. This is irritating because if you are in a specific newsgroup and you don't have time for nonsense. Also, many scams and chain letters are formed through spamming. It just takes up precious time and slows down computers and servers. If you see these spamming messages, just ignore them or delete them.
There were many emotions that accompanied me when I participated in the newsgroups. Posting the first message was a bit scary because I didn't know what to expect. I was also scared that I would post something that no one would reply to. There are a lot of people that are scared to do this because it might hurt their self-esteem. For instance, if no one wrote to you or criticized your post, this might hurt your feelings. I know I thought of all of these things. But in the end, I figured that it shouldn't be that bad. After all, they don't know who you are. For me, changing my identity made it easier for me to post messages. The reason I did this is because these two newsgroups are mostly opinionated messages. I knew that what I would write would probably be flamed. So far, all of the messages I wrote got flamed. The only thing that didn't get flamed were my questions. By changing my identity, it didn't take me long to post and reply to messages.
The messages that interested me most were comments about teams and players I really like and really hate. For example, I would reply to all of the Chicago Bull fans in a negative manner. On the otherhand, I would respond to all the Los Angeles Laker fans with favoritism and comraderie. From the subjects, I could more or less tell what the message would contain. Whenever the Bulls or Lakers are in the subject, I definitely read it. As for the college newsgroup, I read everything about the Western Athletic Conference. This is because Hawaii is in this division. Go Bows! I would post or reply to most of the subjects that interested me. My posts are usually short and to the point. I usually write a statement and back it up with a few sentences. I have posted at least ten messages that were controversial to many people in the newsgroup. The replies I received were both positive and negative. Like I mentioned, people have their own opinions on different teams and players. Some will agree with you, some will disagree. I feel good when people agree with me and I feel bitter when they disagree with me. These newsgroups make accepting criticism a little bit easier. Arguing on the net is easier than arguing in person. Seeing a angry person is completely different from seeing an angry letter. But, I feel that getting criticism through the net will help you handle face to face situations better.
Searching the Internet for articles are really easy to do. Just do a net search in any of the search engines in Netscape. You'll find articles on Usenet Newsgroups by putting in the terms you learned from newsgroups. For example, flaming and spamming. There are articles on both of those terms. In the article about spamming, they talk about the people who spam and the negative things they do to newsgroups. Also, they tell you how to avoid some scams going around. These articles help you to learn more about newsgroups and shows you ways to avoid any trouble.
Another good subject to net search is cyberpsychology. There are many articles that are written by professors from different colleges. Here is some of the articles you can find in Netscape server infoseek. You can access many different articles from different servers. The Netscape net search helps me a great deal. Research for yourself, the possibilities are endless.
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