Chapter 3: Usenet (4 of 5) -- Responding to articles

     Now to put your two cents in.
     "Threads" are an integral part of Usenet.  When somebody posts a
message, often somebody else will respond.  Soon, a thread of
conversation begins.  Following these threads is relatively easy.  In nn,
related messages are grouped together.  In rn, when you're done with a
message, you can hit control-N to read the next related message, or
followup.  As you explore Usenet, it's probably a good idea to read
discussions for awhile before you jump in.  This way, you can get a feel
for the particular newsgroup -- each of which has its own rhythms.
     Eventually, though, you'll want to speak up.  There are two main
ways to do this.  You join an existing conversation, or you can start a
whole new thread.
     If you want to join a discussion, you have to decide if you want to
include portions of the message you are responding to in your message.
The reason to do this is so people can see what you're responding to,
just in case the original message has disappeared from their system
(remember that most Usenet messages have a short life span on the average
host system) or they can't find it.
     If you're using a Unix host system, joining an existing conversation
is similar in both nn and rn: hit your F key when done with a given
article in the thread.  In rn, type a small f if you don't want to
include portions of the message you're responding to; an upper-case F if
you do. In nn, type a capital F.  You'll then be asked if you want to
include portions of the original message.
     And here's where you hit another Unix wall.  When you hit your F
key, your host system calls up its basic Unix text editor.  If you're
lucky, that'll be Pico, a very easy system.  More likely, however, you'll
get dumped into  emacs  (or possibly vi), which you've already met in the
chapter on e-mail.
     The single most important emacs command is

               control-x control-c

     This means, depress your control key and hit x.  Then depress the
control key and hit c.  Memorize this.  In fact, it's so important, it
bears repeating:

               control-x control-c


     These keystrokes are how you get out of emacs.  If it works well,
you'll be asked if you want to send, edit, abort or list the message you
were working on.  If it doesn't work well (say you accidentally hit some
other weird key combination that means something special to emacs) and
nothing seems to happen, or you just get more weird-looking emacs
 prompts  on the bottom of your screen, try hitting control-g. This
should stop whatever emacs was trying to do (you should see the word
"quit" on the bottom of your screen), after which you can hit control-x
control-c. But if this still doesn't work, remember that you can always
disconnect and dial back in!
     If you have told your newsreader you do want to include portions of
the original message in yours, it will automatically put the entire thing
at the top of your message.  Use the arrow keys to move down to the lines
you want to delete and hit control-K, which will delete one line at a
time.
     You can then write your message.  Remember that you have to hit
enter before your cursor gets to the end of the line, because emacs does
not have word wrapping.
     When done, hit control-x control-c.  You'll be asked the question
about sending, editing, aborting, etc.  Chose one.  If you hit Y, your
host system will start the process to sending your message across the
Net.
    The nn and rn programs work differently when it comes to posting
entirely new messages.  In nn, type

     :post

and hit enter in any newsgroup.  You'll be asked which newsgroup to post
a message to.  Type in its name and hit enter.  Then you'll be asked for
"keywords."  These are words you'd use to attract somebody scanning a
newsgroup.  Say you're selling your car.  You might type the type of car
here.  Next comes a "summary" line, which is somewhat similar.  Finally,
you'll be asked for the message's "distribution." This is where you put
how widely you want your message disseminated. Think about this one for a
second.  If you are selling your car, it makes little sense to send a
message about it all over the world.  But if you want to talk about the
environment, it might make a lot of sense.  Each host system has its own
set of distribution classifications, but there's generally a local one
(just for users of that system), one for the city, state or region it's
in, another for the country (for example, usa), one for the continent
(for Americans and Canadians, na) and finally, one for the entire world
(usually: world).
     Which one to use?  Generally, a couple of seconds' thought will help
you decide.  If you're selling your car, use your city or regional
distribution -- people in Australia won't much care and may even get
annoyed.  If you want to discuss presidential politics, using a USA
distribution makes more sense.  If you want to talk about events in the
Middle East, sending your message to the entire world is perfectly
acceptable.
     Then you can type your message.  If you've composed your message
offline (generally a good idea if you and  emacs  don't get along), you
can  upload  it now.  You may see a lot of weird looking characters as it
uploads into emacs, but those will disappear when you hit control-X and
then control-C.  Alternately: "save" the message (for example, by hitting
m in rn), log out, compose your message offline, log back on and upload
your message into a file on your host system.  Then call up Usenet, find
the article you "saved." Start a reply, and you'll be asked if you want
to include a prepared message.  Type in the name of the file you just
created and hit enter.
     In rn, you have to wait until you get to the end of a newsgroup to
hit F, which will bring up a message-composing system. Alternately, at
your host system's  command line , you can type

                Pnews

and hit enter.  You'll be prompted somewhat similarly to the nn system,
except that you'll be given a list of possible distributions. If you
chose "world," you'll get this message:


This program posts news to thousands of machines throughout the entire
civilized world.  Your message will cost the net hundreds if not
thousands of dollars to send everywhere.  Please be sure you know what
you are doing.

Are you absolutely sure that you want to do this? [ny]

     Don't worry -- your message won't really cost the Net untold
amounts, although, again, it's a good idea to think for a second whether
your message really should go everywhere.
     If you want to respond to a given post through e-mail, instead of
publicly, hit R in nn or r or R in rn.  In rn, as with follow-up
articles, the upper-case key includes the original message in yours.
     Most newsgroups are unmoderated, which means that every message you
post will eventually wind up on every host system within the geographic
region you specified that carries that newsgroup.
     Some newsgroups, however, are moderated, as you saw earlier with
comp.risks.  In these groups, messages are shipped to a single location
where a moderator, acting much like a magazine editor, decides what
actually gets posted.  In some cases, groups are moderated like scholarly
journals.  In other cases, it's to try to cut down on the massive number
of messages that might otherwise be posted.
     You'll notice that many articles in Usenet end with a fancy
"signature" that often contains some witty saying, a clever drawing and,
almost incidentally, the poster's name and e-mail address.  You too can
have your own "signature" automatically appended to everything you post.
On your own computer, create a signature file.  Try to keep it to four
lines or less, lest you annoy others on the Net.  Then, while connected
to your host system, type

               cat>.signature

and hit enter (note the period before the s).   Upload  your signature
file into this using your communications software's ASCII upload
 protocol . When done, hit control-D, the Unix command for closing a
file.  Now, every time you post a message, this will be appended to it.
     There are a few caveats to posting.  Usenet is no different from a
Town Meeting or publication: you're not supposed to break the law,
whether that's posting copyrighted material or engaging in illegal
activities.  It is also not a place to try to sell products (except in
certain biz. and for-sale newsgroups).