Glossary
A
Article
An article in the sense of
newspapers: special articles are, for example,
followups; replies are not articles but
Email.
C
Canceling
To delete one of your articles from the newsserver: the newsreader
generates a special control message to tell the server to delete this
article.
Crossposting
The posting of an article in several newsgroups; this is very
often disliked, because it disturbs the topic-oriented association of
the newsgroups.
E
Expire
Articles can not be held for eternity
because of harddisk limits. Because of this there is usually a program
called expire on most computer
systems; this program deletes all articles which are older than a
configured number of days. &knode; includes this functionality on its
own.
F
FAQ
FAQ is the acronym for Frequently
Asked Questions
.
Followup
An article which is written as an answer
to another article.
G
GNKSA
GNKSA is a kind of seal-of-approval for
newsreaders; you can get more information at http://www.gnksa.org.
H
K
Killfile
This is a functionality of a newsreader to hide
articles of a determined sender or
with certain contents.
M
Message-ID
The Message-ID of an article is a clear
mark for the newsserver to identify the article. A
Message-ID should not be used twice in the
whole usenet for about 2 years; wrong or double
Message-IDs could cause problems when
forwarding them and could overwrite other articles.
N
Newbie
Somebody who is new somewhere, in relationship to usenet:
somebody who is new to the newsgroup, or new to usenet in
general.
Newsgroup
A kind-of bulletin board in the usenet about a special topic or
a group of topics. This is where you post your
articles.
Newsreader
A program for reading and writing news.
NNTP
Network News Transport Protocol; this is the protocol which
defines how the articles in the usenet are spread.
P
Port
A kind-of address for the application to listen for data on and
for connecting to another computer; the standard-port for the
connection between the newsreader and the newsserver is 119.
PGP-Signature
A digital signature; you can use it to determine whether the document
has been changed since it was signed or if it is the original text from
the author.
Posting
Either an article which is sent to usenet or the
act of sending itself; you are posting
an
article into a newsgroup.
Q
Quoting
This is the act of citing of an article to which you are answering:
you quote the original article to make clear
which passages of text your answer refers to.
R
Reply
A reply is an answer to the author of an
article by e-mail.
S
Scoring
This is the valuation of an article or a thread.
Signature
A signature is a personal sign of the
author which is attached at the end of the normal contents of the article;
it is like a visiting card — very often there are e-mail addresses, a
homepage URL or other personal data. The
signature should not be longer than 4 lines. Note that
the signature should not be mixed up with the
PGP-signature.
Supersede
This is the overwriting of an existing article: the newsreader
generates a special article with a control message in the header which
tells the newsserver to overwrite the existing article with this
one.