Notes on Working with Newsgroup Messages
You can treat newsgroup messages in much the same
way that you treat email messages. That is, you can view the message
text in the preview pane, open the message in its own window, save the
message, copy it to another folder, and so on. Here are a few notes on tasks that are specific to newsgroup messages:
Dealing with threads—
If you see a plus sign (+) beside a message header, it means that
replies exist for this header. To see the other messages in the thread,
click the plus sign or highlight the message and press plus sign (+) on
your numeric keypad.
Unscrambling ROT13 messages— Some messages are encoded using a scheme called ROT13.
This scheme encodes the message by shifting the letters of the alphabet
13 positions to the right, and wrapping around to the front of the
alphabet when it reaches the end. (The ROT part is short for rotate.)
If you come across a message encoded using ROT13, you can use Windows
Mail’s built-in decoder. To use it, select Message, Unscramble(ROT13).
Canceling one of your messages—
If you post a message and then have second thoughts, you can remove it
from the newsgroup by highlighting it and selecting Message, Cancel
Message. (This command is available only for messages you’ve sent.
People who have downloaded your message will still see it.)
Combining and decoding multiple attachments—
Some multimedia groups post large binary files that are split into
multiple posts. To extract the original binary file from these posts,
first select all the posts. Then select Message, Combine and Decode to
display the Order for Decoding dialog box. Use the Move Up and Move Down
buttons to order the posts (the subject lines usually tell you the
proper order), and then click OK.
Following Up a Message
Usenet
is at its best when it’s interactive: questions are asked and answered;
the swords of conflicting opinions are crossed; debaters cut and parry
to score points on contentious issues. The engine behind all this verbal
jousting is, of course, the follow-up message. To post a follow-up with
Windows Mail, follow these steps:
1. | Select the original message in the message list.
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2. | Select
Message, Reply to Group. (You can also press Ctrl+G or click the Reply
Group toolbar button.) Windows Mail opens a message composition window
and fills it with the text from the original article.
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3. | Cut out any unnecessary text from the original article.
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4. | Type your own text in the article body.
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5. | Select
File, Send Message. (Alternatives for faster service: Alt+S or click
the Send button.) Windows Mail displays a dialog box telling you that
your message has been sent to the news server and that it might not
appear immediately.
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6. | Click OK.
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Tip
Instead of posting a follow-up message, you
might prefer to reply directly to the author via email. To do this,
select the message and select Message, Reply to Author (or else press
Ctrl+R or click the Reply button). Take a look at the address to make
sure it has not been munged—altered
slightly so that if a spam bot picks it up, the address will be
unusable. If so, delete the extra characters that the user has inserted
in the address.
If you want to send a message to both the group and the author, select Message, Reply to All, or press Ctrl+Shift+R.
Posting a New Message
As I’ve said before, original messages are the
lifeblood of Usenet because they get the discussions off the ground and
give the rest of us something to read (as well as laugh at, sneer at,
and hurl verbal abuse at). If you’re feeling creative, you can take
advantage of this section, which shows you how to post a new message
from Windows Mail.
To get started, select the newsgroup to which you want to post, and then use any of the following techniques:
Whichever
method you choose, the New Message window appears.There are three main differences:
If you have multiple news server accounts, you see a News Server list from which you select the server you want to use.
The To field is replaced by a Newsgroups field.
For
Microsoft Communities newsgroups, you see a Post Type section with the
following three options: Comment, Question, and Suggestion. Select the
option that describes your post.
The Newsgroups field should show the name of the
current newsgroup. If you want to send your message to more than one
newsgroup, separate the newsgroup names with a comma (,).Alternatively,
click Newsgroups and then choose a newsgroup from the dialog box that
appears.
To post your message, select File, Send Message (or press Alt+S, or click the Send button in the toolbar).
