Reading Newsgroups

Newsgroups provide a sort of electronic bulletin board that you can use to send and receive messages to your classmates and participate in on-line discussions about class materials. If you already know how to use the net news, just point your newsreader to uwash.class.cse142.bboard. If not, this page will explain how to read the news using two different programs.  Further instructions on newsgroups are found at UW's C&C website.

Pine

1. Start pine just as if you were going to read your e-mail.
2. From the main menu, hit 'L' to see a list of your folders.
3. Hit the down arrow once to select "News" and hit enter.
4. Hit "a" to add a newsgroup. When asked to enter the newsgroup name, enter uwash.class.cse142.bboard and then hit enter. You should now see that this newsgroup has been added to the list of newsgroups to which you are subscribed.

To read the newsgroup, follow these steps:

1. Start pine just as if you were going to read your e-mail.
2. From the main menu, hit 'L' to see a list of your folders.
3. Hit the down arrow once to select "News" and hit enter. Use the arrow keys to highlight uwash.class.cse142.bboard and then hit enter. This will take you to a list of messages that have been posted to the newsgroup. This message looks similar to your inbox.
4. You can read and reply to messages, or even post new messages, in the same way you send and receive mail. Note that when you read a message and hit 'R' to reply, you will be given the choice of following-up (which means your reply goes to the newsgroup) or replying via e-mail (which means only the author of the original posting gets your reply). Please don't be afraid to reply via private e-mail if your response is not of general interest to the rest of the class. It will help keep down the volume of messages on the newsgroup, and the rest of the class will appreciate it.

Outlook Express

Warning: These instruction will only work for students who have and use a UW internet account.  Students using other internet service providers will need to contact their providers directly for information on setting up a news reader.

Assuming you already read your mail with Outlook Express, you only need to tell OE where to find the newsgroups.

1. Go to the Tools menu and click on accounts
2. Click on add -> news
3. If you have a UW account, fill in the NNTP (news) server as news.u.washington.edu.
4. Be sure to check the box that says my server requires me to log on.

Reading UW Newsgroups From a Third-Party ISP

Increasingly, people are using their own ISPs instead of dialing in to the UW modem pool.  Since the newsgroups that are used in our courses are hosted by the UW, they are probably unavailable through your ISP's news server.  In that case, you can probably still read these newsgroups using whatever newsreader you usually use, provided that you have a UWNetID.

The details of setting up your newsreader to read UW hosted newsgroups vary, but here are the basic parameters you'll need to do it:

When you access the news server, you will be required to supply your UWNetID and password.