1. The Internet didn't really explode until about the beginning of 1996 -- almost five years after the Web had been invented. Though Usenet had been around for nearly 20 years prior to the Web, popular usage of the Internet has been weaned on Web and e-mail.
2. Most of the newsgroups are crap.
3. Most of the good ones have a poor "signal-to-noise ratio," or ratio of articles that are worth reading to articles that aren't. It can be frustrating to look for something good.
4. Most of us are not inclined to actually ask questions of strangers, even though that's what Usenet was created for, and what it was used for pretty much ever since two universities in North Carolina were the first places in the USA to use it, back in the 70s.

Anyway, here's what we need to know about Usenet. (Or, what I'm telling students about it, anyway.) If you are using Netscape as their Internet tool of choice: within Messenger, pull down the File menu and you'll see the option "Subscribe." That option allows you to choose Usenet groups to subscribe to. You have to make sure Messenger is accessing your news server. To do this, pull down the Edit menu, choose "Preferences," and look at "Newsgroup Servers."

If you're using AOL, go to keyword: Usenet.

When you look at newsgroups to subscribe to, you see many folders with main categories to choose from. Among these categories are the so-called "Big Eight," which are carried all over the world:

• comp -- computer topics
• humanities -- fine arts and literature
• rec -- recreational arts and sports
• misc -- stuff not found in the other seven, but may be useful
• news -- usually of interest to system administrators or beginners
• sci -- science or engineering (including -- ahem -- sci.engr)
• soc -- society and culture
• talk -- debate (and flame wars) over the great issues of our time

My colleagues at TCNJ are most likely to find interesting entries under misc or rec or soc. As far as I know, humanities still doesn't offer many groups, as it's still the newest of the Eight, but at least it's a quick search. Wherever you read the news, you'll see there are also families of regional, state (or provice), and local newsgroups.

When you subscribe to a newsgroup, then you are given the opportunity to read articles from that group by double-clicking the group name (which now shows up) on your left-hand side of the Messenger screen (if you're using Messenger). Almost all newsreaders do something similar -- they all make the articles' subject lines available.

I believe it is a bad idea for a new subscriber to jump in and post articles right away. New subscribers to any newsgroup should first do the following:

1. Check and see if the group has FAQs. (My Web site contains most of the FAQs for the sci.engr groups.)
2. Read articles from news.announce.newusers on "netiquette."
3. "Lurk" in the group for at least a few days, or a few hundred articles, to see what people are writing about and how they write.
4. If there is a regular in the group who seems to know something about the thing you want to know about, ask that regular (via e-mail) before you post.

It's a fact that almost nobody who reads newsgroups will go to the trouble of doing all four of these things before posting. It's also a fact that most people who post without at least doing (1) and either (2) or (3) end up looking like idiots. LOL

Newsgroups will often contain people who specialize in exactly the subject you're trying to learn about. That's why it's very important to make them feel like you're not wasting their time. So when you finally ask a question, your posted article should also include the following:

• a description of what you've already done (to prevent others from telling you to "go to the library!") to answer the question yourself
• an offer to summarize whatever answers you get to your question for the benefit of others in the newsgroup (because when you ask an appropriate and interesting question, it's possible that hundreds of other people all around the world are interested in the answer!)
• e-mail contact information (it's amazing, but each day many questions are asked by people who say "please mail me the answer, because I don't subscribe to the newsgroup" -- but sometimes people will answer you directly, via e-mail, so you have to examine both your mailbox and the newsgroup for the answers you're looking for.)

References

Ask Emily Postnews, http://www.templetons.com/brad/emily.html, to learn how to do things wrong with style! :-) Although some of Brad Templeton's examples are now dated, his applied wit is timeless.

Hobbes' Internet Timeline, http://www.isoc.org/zakon/Internet/History/HIT.html, describes some of the major technical and social events that have gotten us to where we are.

Brendan Kehoe's Zen and the Art of the Internet, http://www.cs.indiana.edu/docproject/zen/zen-1.0_toc.html, gives us technical and social background on e-mail, Usenet, netiquette in general, and many other subjects!