Attachment

An attachment is a binary file inside a post. To attach is the action of placing a file there.

ATTN

Abbreviation for attention and means that you seek the attention of a group.

AUP

Acceptable Usage Policy or Acceptable User Policy, same as TOS.

Auto-cancel bot

A bot (see bot) that automatically cancels (kills/deletes) Usenet message that violate certain rules and that way stop their distribution.

Base64

A type of binary encoding that is used if you attach files with MIME. MIME itself is only a framework and binary data is encoded using Base64 in MIME.

BCC

Blind Carbon Copy, just like CC , but the fact that you sent it also by mail is hidden to other users, so the other Newsgroup members won't know that.

BI

An index used for measuring EMP and ECP (both together is often called spam). A value higher than 20 is seen as abusive behavior and in that case articles can be deleted without agreement of their author. Binary posting in non-binary Newsgroups are always treated as if their BI is higher than 20.

Big 8

The big, old, traditional, 8 top hierarchies that exist on the Usenet (see hierarchy). Meanwhile there are a lot more than just those 8 hierarchies.

Binary Groups

Newsgroup created for posting binary files and not for discussions. You should rather move discussions to another Newsgroup to not destroy the order of binary posts inside those groups. Only in those Newsgroups binary files are seen as acceptable, in other groups they are seen as netabuse.

Binary-Post

A Usenet message with a binary file attached. Usually those messages are only allowed in groups starting with "alt.binaries". (see also attachment)

Body

The part of your message that contains the text (see header).

Bot

An application that automatically performs a task on a client or a server, that would usually be done by a human being.

Cancel-Message

A control message that requests of a Usenet server to delete a certain article. Only the author of a message or the administrator of the service used for posting is allowed to request that. Some services ignore cancel-messages to avoid possible abuse, but that way they also avoid that certain kind of abuse are removed (e.g. most spam is canceled).

CC

Carbon Copy, meaning you send a copy of the post to one (or more) person(s) via e-mail. This is to make sure they will always get your answer, since a Usenet post may be lost without giving them a chance to read it on weak connections. Newsgroup members will see that the post was sent via e-mail, as well as to whom it was sent. (compare to BCC)

Control Message

A special Usenet message that is sent to make the Usenet server do something like: removing a post, removing a Newsgroup, creating a new Newsgroup and requesting server information. Those messages aren't displayed to normal users in the group they are posted to (they are for servers only and are only displayed in the control.* groups), but they propagate through Usenet like every other message.

Cross-Posting

Posting a message to more than one Newsgroup at once. The message will then be available in all Newsgroups to that you posted it. Cross-posting has advantages: The article is only stored once on the server (regardless to how many groups it is posted) and it is also only exchanged once between Usenet servers or between server and client. Thanks to spammers who used it for mass flooding (usually completely off-topic), it suffers by a bad reputation, but it's a great feature.

De-peer

To de-peer a Usenet server means to find its peers and to convince them to not exchange articles with that server any longer. That's usually done with rouge ISPs, that aren't willing to act on netabuse. In the worst case, it may result in an UDP.

ECP

"Extreme Cross Posting", posting one and the same message to extremely many Newsgroups at once. ECP is seen as netabuse.

EMP

"Extreme Multi Posting", posting the same message over and over again to a Newsgroup. EMP is seen as netabuse.

FAQ

"Frequently Asked Questions", a collection of questions that often get asked by newbies and the answers to them.

Feed

To feed articles means to pass them between Usenet servers (see also Peer). A feed is a way articles can use to travel between Usenet servers. See infeed and outfeed.

Flaming

A flame is a post where you make fun of other posters, rant about their stupidity or just shout at them for being big morons. Flaming is the action of doing that.

Flood

A flood means posting a big amount of messages to a Newsgroup in a short period of time. While flooding is sometimes seen as netabuse (i.e. when a person tries to make a Newsgroup unreadable with it), it is often very welcome in binary Newsgroups, where it usually means that a bigger number of pics is being posted. Too much floods in a too short time are not good as the new ones push the old ones off the server.

Followup-To

A header line that specifies to which Newsgroup (or set of Newsgroups) a reply to your post should be sent to. If you don't specify such a header line (that's usually the case), replies are sent to the same groups as your original post. If you set the followup-to line to "poster", replies are mailed to you instead of getting posted to Usenet.

FYI

"For your Information", a document providing you with information about a certain topic, usually followed by a number like FYI 3. FYI's documents are in fact RFC's (see RFC), just written for users of services and not programmers or providers that have to implement the standard.

Header

It's a part of your Usenet message. A message has a header and a body, usually you will only see the body. The header contains information like: Who sent a message, through which service it got posted, when it got posted, which path the message traveled to reach your server, how your client should reply to the message and so on. It's mainly though for Usenet servers and clients.

Hierarchy

Newsgroup names do not only describe a topic, you can see them as some kind of hierarchy system. E.g. comp.* groups are always about computer topics, comp.os.* are always about Operating System topics, comp.os.linux.* are about topics of the OS Linux and so on. The top hierarchy in this example would be 'comp'.

Infeed

An infeed is an Usenet server that your ISP uses to receive new articles posted on other servers. Usually an ISP has several infeeds. The more infeeds, the higher is the article completeness within a group. (see also feed)

ISP

"Internet Service Provider", a company/organization that provides you with some sort of Internet service, often used for providers that offer you access to the Internet (dial-up/cable/etc.), but also valid for providers that offer you a service that you can obtain over the Internet.

Killfile

A (virtual) file where you store rules for retrieving posts: which ones shall be downloaded, which ones shall be ignored, which ones shall be flagged/colored in a certain way and so on. You can use it to ignore posts of people you don't like or posts with a specific subject (they won't be downloaded or displayed), so you don't have to read them. Often used to deal with Trolls (see also Troll).

Killfilter

A single rule in a killfile.

Lurker

A person who only reads posts on a Newsgroup or downloads pics, but is not actively taking part in discussions. The action of a lurker is called lurking.

MIME

"Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions", actually created as e-mail extension it is sometimes also used on Usenet. MIME is just a framework and it specifies different kind of encodings for different types of content and how they are placed and mixed up together in a single mail document. Binary data is encoded with Base64, while text data can be 7-bit plain text, 8-bit plain text (not useful for Usenet) or Quoted-Printable.

MMF

"Make Money Fast", a scheme that tries to fool people into a snowball (pyramid) system, where only very little people will earn, but all have to pay. They promise that you get rich and that it is legal, but both is wrong!

Moderated Group

All articles posted to this group will first be sent to a moderator (either human or a bot), that will only let the message pass to the Newsgroup if it doesn't violate its charter. Some Newsgroups are moderated to avoid any form of abuse, therefor your freedom is limited by the charter.

Multipart Post

A binary Usenet message that was split into smaller messages before it got posted, since many Usenet servers have a size limit and small posts distribute better than bigger ones. Before you can decode this file, you must download all parts of it and then build them together again. Most news reader applications have a built-in support for that.

Netabuse

Making use of the Usenet in an abusive way. (e.g. ECP and EMP). Netcops try to fight netabuse by reporting it to the responsible ISPs, also auto-cancel-bots are used for that purpose. If ISPs don't cooperate, they might get depeered.

Netcop

A person who watches if posters violate their TOS/AUP and if that's the case, report those people to their ISP/UAP for TOS/AUP violation. They are no really cops and they do this voluntarily. They help ISPs to uphold their rules and find the "black sheep" of Usenet.

Netiquette

The netiquette is in fact an RFC (see RFC), that describe how to behave on Internet media like BBSes, mailing lists, IRC or Usenet. It only states some basic rules about what to do and what to avoid.

Newbie

A person who is on the Usenet/Newsgroup for the first time and doesn't have all information that s/he should have.

Newsgroup

Adirectory on a Usenet server, used for storing messages. Usually named according to the topic of messages you will find inside of it.

NG

Short term for Newsgroup.

Off-Topic

Posting something to a Newsgroup although according to the topic of your post it would belong into another Newsgroup. It's not always poor behavior to post off-topic, but you should mark your posts as off-topic ones (E.g. place [OT] into the subject line)

Oldbie

A person who returns to the Usenet/Newsgroup after a long time of absence.

On-Topic

Posting to a Newsgroup according to its topic.

OT

Abbreviation for off-topic.

Outfeed

An outfeed is an Usenet server that you ISP uses to send articles to other Usenet servers. Usually an ISP has several outfeeds. The more outfeeds, the better articles posted to that server will distribute. (see Feed)

Peer

To peer means to exchange articles with another Usenet server. A peer is the Usenet server used for peering. Your ISP will have several peers, used for exchanging Usenet articles. (see also Feed)

PGP

"Pretty Good Privacy", a great tool for signing and encrypting message in a very secure and nearly unbreakable way. It's the tool used most often for that purpose, existing for nearly all systems (Windows/Unix/Linux/Mac). On the Usenet it's sometimes used to avoid forgery by signing messages.

Pic

Short term for a picture.

PLONK

Replying with PLONK to a post of somebody means that you just put this person into your killfile (see killfile) and that you will ignore all future posts of this person. This is done as some form of punishment for people who behave unacceptable (see troll)

Post

A post is a message on the Usenet, to post is the action of storing a message on your local Usenet server.

Poster

The author of a message on the Usenet

Pseudo Remailer

Some kind of remailer which will not guarantee that you really stay anonymous. It will hide your identity, but the service itself may keep track about who you are to avoid abuse.

Quoted-Printable

A MIME encoding to 8-bit text. All the 7-bit alphanumeric characters are not encoded, the 8-bit characters are encoded through "=" followed by the advanced ASCII number of the character in hexadecimal. Additionally a character set (charset) is specified in the header, as different countries have different characters at the same position in the advanced ASCII table. It is used to securely transfer some languages over Usenet, otherwise some server may not be able to transport the article and some clients would not display the characters correctly.

Re:

If you see this in the subject, it means that this is the reply to another post that was posted before with the same subject line, just no Re: at the beginning.

Reg

A person who regularly take parts in discussions on a specific Newsgroup.

Remailer

A service which allows you to post on the Usenet completely anonymously, by not keeping any track about who you are or giving any information of you away inside the header of your post.

Repost

You post something again, because some people missed it or because it was posted long ago and already is gone on nearly every server. You should avoid reposts as they cause very short retention times on many Usenet servers!

REQ

Short term for request and means that you are requesting help of posters inside of a Newsgroup.

Resurrection Bot

A bot that resurrects messages on a Newsgroup that had been canceled without the permission of the author. In case such a bot finds an unauthorized cancellation, it will try to resurrect the message.

RFC

"Request for Comment", a document describing a certain Internet standard, usually followed by a number, like RFC 1026 for example.

Sig

It's the standard text being added at the end of each of your posts ("-- ", followed by your SIGnature), it can hold additional information about you, the address of your webpage, quotes of famous people and so on. A sig-file is the place where you store your sig.

Spam

Often used for unsolicited commercial Usenet advertising, was actually used for EMP (see EMP). Netcops and auto-cancel-bots try to fight spam.

Spamblock

Some "block" being added to your e-mail address to make it invalid, so you don't get spam mail after you posted to the Usenet, since many companies scan the Usenet for new e-mail addresses. E.g. My.Name@my.isp.com.invalid, where the user first had to remove ".invalid" to send you an e-mail. Be warned, it can have certain disadvantages to use a non-valid e-mail address!

Spew

Posting the same message over and over again (e.g. like spam, malicious Newsgroup flood or attack towards certain posters), but always make little changes to it to fool auto-cancel bots. Usually the only people that can stop Spew are Netcops.

Tag

A certain abbreviation at the beginning of your subject line that identifies your post, usually written in capital letters and in square brackets, like [OT] (for off-topic posts) or [FA] (for auction), [REPOST] (a repost), [REQ] (a request), [ATTN] (requesting attention) and so on.

Thread

A message and all the replies to it for a discussion thread. Whenever you post a message to Usenet that is not a reply to another message, you create a new thread.

TOS

"Terms of Service", rules that are created by a provider and that you HAVE to uphold if you want to keep on using their service. Otherwise you will be kicked out or even banned forever.

Troll

A person who permanently acts unsocially, attacks other posters inside a Newsgroup for fun and is hated by most serious posters. Sometimes even committing netabuse and make Newsgroups unusable, most of the time just playing bad ass.

UAP

Usenet Access Provider, a more specific type of ISP.

UDP

"Usenet Death Penalty". At a passive UDP, people only try to depeer a server until no peer is left anymore. If all peers are gone, the server is dead (articles posted there won't go anywhere). If that fails (as some peers refuse to stop peering), people may use an active UDP. At an active UDP, people will not only try to depeer a server, ISPs will refuse to forward messages that originates of that server (using server-side filters) and/or auto-cancel-bots might be used to automatically cancel all messages originating of that server. Once the ISP fixed the problem that caused the UDP, the UDP is lifted again.

Usenet

The virtual network that is used for exchanging messages between all the servers all around the world.

UUEncode

A standard for posting binary messages on the Usenet, it's the older standard and actually outdated. MIME is much newer and uses Base64 for encoding of binaries (which creates slightly smaller posts). But UUEncode may soon be replaced by yEnc what is much more effective and has a much smaller encoding overhead.

Xpost

Short term for cross-posting (see cross-posting)

yEnc

A new and much more effective way to encode binaries than UUEncode or Base64. UUEncode produces an overhead of 40% through encoding, Base64 still 37%. yEnc typically only 4%. That way the article with the same file uses up to 36% less space on the server and can also be downloaded 36% faster. Most newer clients support it and it will soon have replaced UUEncode completely. Please not that yEnc articles must have "yEnc" somewhere in the subject line (capitalization doesn't matter, [YENC] will works as well), that's demanded by the norm and some clients or server rely on it being present somewhere.