I'm not a big Usenet user, but it's one of the oldest and best-known mainstays of the Internet. You've probably seen message boards or forums, as AOL calls them, where you find a topic that interests you, you read the messages that others have already posted, and you post your opinion or factoid to contribute to the discussion. You check back in an hour or a week, see what others have said in return, and add something else. And it goes on and on. Yes, some message groups are nothing but organized chaos, or an excuse for some knucklehead (or a gaggle of knuckleheads) to pontificate about something of which they know nothing, or a continual series of flamefests between thin-skinned idiots. There are also plenty of highly informative and/or entertaining message groups out there, on every topic imaginable. Looking for info on a cure for muscular dystrophy? a place to argue college hoops? a group of numismatists? new ideas for your exploration of weird sex? a place to share war stories with others who work in your field? a motherboard for that obscure Lithuanian PC from 1986? You name it, there's a message group about it out there somewhere. By the way, Usenet has been swallowed whole by Google, which promises to reorganize and update the content. You can find it at groups.google.com/. If you go through Google, I don't believe you need any of the newsreaders detailed below.

How do you get involved with Usenet? First, you need a newsgroup reader. Netscape provides one in its Communicator suite, called Collabra; MSIE also has one in Outlook Express. Other stand-alone newsgroup utilities are out there; check my shareware listings here for some free or cheap ones.

PCWorld has an excellent article for beginning Usenetters at www.pcworld.com/heres_how/article/0,1400,14236,00.html. Where do you think I'm getting this info from? (This article was written before Google took over the Usenet archives.)

Most news readers set up about the same. I'll walk you through setting up Outlook Express, the Internet Explorer free utility; others work almost the same way. First, you get online and fire up the reader, usually through Start, Programs. Then you feed it the name of your ISP's news server, the network of computers that stores the news content of various groups. Usually the name is news.yourISP.com/ or nntp.yourISP.com/, where yourISP.com/ is the name of your provider. For example, Mindspring's news server address is nntp.mindspring.com/. If these don't work, you'll need to call your ISP's technical support line and ask, or visit the tech support area of your ISP's Web site. You also need to find out if you need a user name and password every time you connect, a process called "authentication." At this point you're asked to provide some personal info for your profile. Since this may make its way into the messages you post, I suggest you be fairly reticent. Certainly don't put your real name, phone number, or any direct contact info in your profile, unless you want some direct contact from Out There. You'll also need an e-mail address; I'd suggest opening a special freemail account just for your newsgroup use, just in case of weirdos (not that likely) or spam (very likely). You'll then be asked to type in the name of your ISP's news server, and check whether or not you need to log in every time you go onto Usenet. Finish up by clicking the Finish and Close boxes. Now you're ready to dive in.

The first time you go on, your reader will download the list of available newsgroups. This will take a while, as there are over 30,000 newsgroups out there. Whee! Now you're faced with a plethora of alphabet soup, with group titles like "alt.sys.pc-clone.acer" or "soc.history.war.world-war-ii." What's what? Here's how to sort through the madness. Look at the first part of the group title. A title beginning with "comp" is about computers: i.e. "comp.os.ms-windows.apps.word-proc," which is a group devoted to discussing the functions of Windows-based word processors. "Soc" means groups about society, like the example above (a discussion group about World War II, if you haven't already figured that part out). Other "recognized" groups are "rec," for recreation; "gov," for government, and "sci," for science. The groups that begin with "alt" are "alternative" groups, and boy, are some of them alternative. The voting procedures for getting a new "sci" or "soc" group is elaborate and difficult, but almost anyone can start an "alt" group. How do you find what you want to discuss? Try letting your reader do a keyword search, for example, "model airplanes." Don't restrict yourself to the first group that pops up; check several out to see which one, or ones, suit you. Browse the topics and the actual postings. Read through some before you decide which, if any, to join (joining is as easy as highlighting the group name and clicking Subscribe). New users might prefer to try "moderated" groups first; these make an effort to keep loudmouths and spammers out, and make some attempt at staying on topic. Maybe your first visit should be to alt.test, where you can practice making newsgroup posts without actually posting anything. You don't want to make your first impression that of a blithering oaf.

Some of the most popular group abbreviations are as follows:

• alt - just about any topics you can imagine, most of them aggressively unmonitored

• aol - articles of interest to AOL users

• biz - business-related news and discussions

• comp - all things computer

• misc - topics that don't seem to fit under other headings

• news - network news and discussions about the Internet itself

• rec - sports, hobbies, etc.

• sci - science and technology discussions, often very techie

• soc- social and political issues

• talk - just what it says

Like any other group activity, Usenet has its own protocols and courtesies. A number of Web sites are there to help the newbie to get started on their exploration of Usenet without offending the natives. news.newusers.questions at www.geocities.com/ResearchTriangle/Lab/6882/ is an excellent place to find out how Usenet works and what you should and shouldn't do as an initial user. Dear Emily Postnews, at www.templetons.com/brad/emily.html, is a significantly more sardonic take on the same topic. If your sarcasm meter doesn't work, this section of the site won't work for you, either. Google now provides a "Basics of Usenet" page at groups.google.com/googlegroups/basics.html that's quite useful and informative.

The most common of common Usenet courtesies and caveats:

• Typing in ALL CAPS. It's considered shouting, and will get you labeled as rude and boorish. Maybe you like being rude and boorish, but still, lay off the caps.

• Lay off the spam! If you're a marketing professional who thinks that this newsgroup is the perfect place to market your pet Gila monsters, think again. Most newsgroup users react violently to spam. Save yourself the grief.

• Post to the proper newsgroup. A site about Hondas doesn't want a message about Toyotas, much less a message about hot-air balloons, posted, unless it's relevant to the current discussion.

• Use the FAQs. Most newsgroups have a set of FAQs posted. Read these before posting anything.

• Use some sort of signature. Put your home page's URL in there if you have one. Avoid signing your real name!

• Rethink your flame. Did you post something that blasted some other poster right out of the water? Maybe you want to take it back. Most news readers will let you do that, for a while.

• Don't focus on one person in the newsgroup. Everyone reads everything, so talk to everyone. And don't ask for e-mailed replies; that irritates veteran users and makes you look like the prissy girl in 6th grade who constantly whispered to her friends while making sure everyone else knew that they weren't privileged enough to hear her conversation.

Yes, Usenet has its share of loonies and kooks prowling its virtual byways; if you spend long enough posting to a newsgroup, chances are you'll attract one's attention eventually. Here's how to deal with them: first, never give out your e-mail address. Use a freemail account for Usenet use only. If some freak starts to obsess on you and fill your e-mail box with garbage, cancel the account. Worse, spammers comb the newsgroups, looking for likely e-mail accounts to flood with crap. You can fool the automated spambots by changing your e-mail address, as simply as adding DELETEME to your address: "Fred@DELETEMEbedrock.com." Or list your e-mail with a deliberate error that you correct inside your posting: "In my e-mail address fred.biteme@bedrock.com, change biteme to flintstone." If you're plagued by an idiot, or a plethora of idiots, use the Block functions to block anything they post. Ignore uninteresting topics by using the Ignore Conversation function.

One of the most useful newsgroups out there is from Microsoft. While it isn't officially sponsored by Microsoft, and is manned by savvy volunteers and not MS employees, it's still a gold mine of useful information. Find out more about it by reading the article at www.zdnet.com/zdhelp/stories/main/0,5594,2716274,00.html. The volunteers who host the newsgroups are known as "Microsoft MVPs," computer professionals who are officially recognized by Microsoft for their high level of product expertise and outstanding contributions to Microsoft's online community. You can access the MS Newsgroups either through your Web browser by going to support.microsoft.com/directory/ and choosing Newsgroups from the menu on the left, or the more traditional NNTP method by going to msnews.microsoft.com with your newsreading program.

MSN users, you don't have access to Usenet through MSN any longer. In February 2000, the MSN folks discontinued Usenet from its Internet access service, replacing it with its own, proprietory Web Communities services -- chat, discussion groups, message boards, e-mail, and Web pages. You should still be able to access Usenet through a third-party news reader or browser, but if not, contact MSN and find out what you can do to regain access.

In fact, several ISPs have severed their connections with Usenet. How to connect? The simplest way is to use services such as Google Groups (formerly Deja.com), NewsRanger, and RemarQ.com, but the messages you post stay on the servers, not on your machine. Also, you have little control over blocking or grabbing specific messages. You'll need to find and download a free news server such as Forte Free Agent, or at worst, buy one. The place to start your hunt is the newsgroup usenet.startshere.net. They list almost 6000 news servers, and of these, almost 600 are open to the public. Or conduct a search using the search string "free news server." Also, check Usenet's own alt.free.newsservers.group. If you don't mind spending money, you should investigate large commercial news services such as Supernews.com/ or Giganews.com. Or you can just jump on the "blog" bandwagon; scope out this phenomenon at my own Blogs page.

One oft-overlooked feature of Usenet is the thousands and thousands of files available for the download. Forget Gnutella and Napster, Usenet has plenty of freebies (including plenty of pirated and pornographic files, so be wary). The trick is to download them and convert them from text-data files into workable programs, graphics, etc. Use your newsreader program to locate and download the files, and either use a program like WinZip or, for files ending in .RAR, R00, R01, and so forth, use WinRar 2.71, a $30 compression program available from www.winrar.com. AOL users will fare better with ENetBot Mail, a $20 program from www.enetbot.com. For a comprehensive guide to downloading and using files from Usenet, go to www.pcworld.com/hereshow/article.asp?aid=32212. Caveat: Usenet is no more immune to security flaws and viral attacks than anywhere else on the Internet, so be cautious.

Usenet isn't the only set of message boards on the Internet. Forums such as Delphi Forums and WorldCrossing, to name just two, proliferate. Go to www.forumone.com/index/ for a list of online communities.

There's a new binary compression protocol being used on some Usenet sites called "Yenc." This protocol isn't yet supported by most newsreaders, so expect some problems with the new format. Check out www.exit109.com/~jeremy/news/yenc.html for some background on the new format, and keep your eyes peeled for new versions of the newsreaders that will support Yenc. You can download the Yenc Encoder (currently in beta) at www.yenc32.com/.