Talking on the net isn’t limited to just two people at a time. There are real-time discussion groups, places to hang out, and places to carry on long-term discussions.
You can use the various conferencing services to carry on real-time conversations with large numbers of people. Most of these services are text-only, although a number of MUDs and MOOs are now supporting Web access, which means that they can include pictures and hypertext. See the section on the web for more information about that .
There are two basic types of on-line, real-time gathering grounds: the conference call, and virtual worlds.
Internet Relay Chat is pretty much one big text-only convention center. You’ve got lots of people in various chat rooms talking about vast numbers of topics. At any given time, there can be hundreds of different chat rooms, and you can create your own chat room if you like.
Each room is like a conference call with two to a hundred people.
You’ll need special software to get onto the IRC. Look on Download.Com for anything with “IRC” in the title.
IRCs use “slash” commands. Everything that you type that doesn’t start with a slash is something you say . Everyone else can “hear” you say it. If you type something with a slash in front of it, the IRC server assumes you’re trying to tell it something. One of the more common slash commands is /help. You’ll also use /list to list the available channels, and /join to join a channel. You have to “join” a channel before you can take part in the discussion on that channel.
What do people talk about on IRC? On the “france” channel, they’re currently talking about “Nuclear complaints”. Lets take a look:
Welcome to the Internet Relay Network Jerry
/join france
[ You have joined channel france ]
Gamma2: Bravo2: Hier a 23h30 boom moins de 20kt
FG982: titanik : je me bats avec depuis 2 mois pour faire un bot...
Bravo2: gamma2 delire!!!!
fredg: axelle: HAHAHAHAHHAHAA (STressee) j’ai achete des bottes avec des protections (coquee) ;-)
FG982: jup : je pars pas, c’est fredg qui part !
Gamma2: Bravo2: Non, tout va bien
Jupiter: ah bon.,.
eddies: I know, and thats also wrong. But times change and france (and china) are the only countries who are still testing
fredg: axelle: merci de ta confiance :P
Jupiter: j avais pas suivi.. desole..
fredg: axelle: :-)
Bravo2: gamma: tu est ou maintenant?
axelle: stressee : prevoyante :) c bien :))
rhosm: bonjour
jERR: Vive les essais nuclaires!!!!!!!!!
LILI: hi everyone
axelle: fredg : ben je suis les conseils de stressee
fredg: axelle: an je suis tres mauvais danceur mais tres doux de maniere generale .. emem qd j’ecrase els pieds :-)
BeETLeJui: fredg passe le bonjour a stressee :-))))
Gamma2: Eddies: What’s the problem then? You know there are many more dangerous items in the white sea?
On IRC, each line is something that someone said. At the beginning of the line is the nickname of the person who said it, followed by a colon. Sometimes, a statement will be directed to a specific person, and that person’s name will follow the speaker’s name. In the last statement, above, Gamma2 is speaking to Eddies . Everyone can see what Gamma2 said, however. It’s just a way of keeping track if there is more than one conversation going on in the channel.
MUD is an acronym, and it stands for whatever the speaker wants it to stand for. They started out as role-playing games: Multi-User Dungeons. As they gained respectability, people started looking for more respectable names: Multi-User Domains, Multi-User Dwellings, Multi-User Damn-near-anything-except-Dungeon. They’re still the same old MUD, however. MUDs provide a level of interaction quite a bit greater than IRC. Not only are there other people you can talk to, but you can look at them, and you can walk from one room to another. Objects besides people can exist in MUDs, and you can pick them up, use them, and make your own. MUDs are a primitive--usually text only--form of virtual world.
It’s quite easy to use a MUD. You have to have special “Mud” software (such as “Telnet”) and you have to know of a MUD where you want to go. If, for example, you want to go to the MUD (actually, a MOO) at lambda.moo.mud.org, you can type telnet lambda.moo.mud.org 8888. The ‘8888’ is the port that LambdaMOO operates on. Lots of MUDs work on strange ports. We’ll talk more about ports later. Just remember that, if a MUD location includes a “port”, you have to include the port when you telnet there.
What happens at MUDs? Let’s visit LambdaMOO, da mudder of all MOOs. A “MOO” is a form of MUD. It stands for “MUD, Object Oriented”, and means that it’s easier to do certain things with objects in a MOO. That’ll be for later, and if you’re interested in things MOO, you can read Come to Valhalla for a beginner’s guide. Here, however, is an uncensored direct example of what you can expect in a MUD: (Legend: I said; They said )
*** Connected ***
THE COAT CLOSET
The closet is a dark, cramped space. It appears to be very crowded in here; you keep bumping into what feels like coats, boots, and other people (apparently sleeping). One useful thing that you’ve discovered in your bumbling about is a metal doorknob set at waist level into what might be a door.
There is new news. Type ‘news to read all news or ‘news new’ to read just new news.
Type ‘@tutorial’ for an introduction to basic MOOing. If you have not already done so, please type ‘help manners’ and read the text carefully. It outlines the community standard of conduct, which each player is expected to follow while in LambdaMOO.
Daisy_Tattoo teleports out.
Guest is in love with The Bassmaster - cyberlove that is
Guest sighs miserably
Carleen is not in love with JBF or Phatman- in fact, she can’t stand them.
Guest [Caarleen]: Would seem there are some weirdos out here
Gareth has disconnected.
Guest [to Carleen]: MMMMh
Carleen [to Guest]: if you ever meet JBF or Phatman, do not speak to them
Gareth has connected.
Ebony_Guest has connected.
Ecru_Guest teleports out.
Sp00ky teleports in.
Open Door
You open the closet door and leave the darkness for the living room, closing the door behind you so as not to wake the sleeping people inside.
THE LIVING ROOM
It is very bright, open, and airy here, with large plate-glass windows looking southward over the pool to the gardens beyond.
On the north wall, there is a rough stonework fireplace. The east and west walls are almost completely covered with large, well-stocked bookcases. An exit in the northwest corner leads to the kitchen and, in a more northerly direction, to the entrance hall. The door into the coat closet is at the north end of the east wall, and at the south end is a sliding glass door leading out onto a wooden deck. There are two sets of couches, one clustered around the fireplace and one with a view out the windows.
You see README for New MOOers, Welcome Poster, a fireplace, Cockatoo, The Birthday Machine, lag meter, a map of LambdaHouse, SeaDog, Helpful Person Finder, and Zap-Zap_Gun here.
SarahBeth, Vida_Blue, Charlotte_Sometimes, Trax, the late Gilmore, ScrabbleMonster (daydreaming), Melon (distracted), Lavender_Guest, Louise Brooks (Ca Plane Pour Moi), Daisy_Tattoo, Stimpy, Cyan_Guest, and Sammael are here.
A previously unseen panel in the wall opens up, and Dr_Sperm tumbles out, looking a bit startled, but otherwise okay.
Look Birthday
Daisy_Tattoo holds up a BIG sign:
________________________________
| |
| what’s the # to the Hot Tub? |
|______________________________|
Lavender_Guest [to Vida_Blue]: hiya this evening ?
The Birthday Machine is a computerized datebook shaped like a big birthday cake. Its function is to announce the birthdays of MOO-folk so register your birthday today! Among the fake frosting you can see dials marked DAY, MONTH, and YEAR and a button marked HELP. You can also simply use `HELP BIRTHDAY MACHINE’ to get the help text. There is a little keyboard for typing in the names of MOO-folk whose birthday you wish to know.
CAsAnOva turns 17 years old today.
Steve-2 turns 24 years old today.
Tweff turns 18 years old today.
Beladonna turns 23 years old today.
Diablo turns 21 years old today.
jasmyne turns 25 years old today.
After you make a regular character, come back and register your birthday!
Charlotte_Sometimes has disconnected.
ScrabbleMonster idles actively.
Cockatoo squawks, ":wipes his eyes...."I am old I guess.""
Louise_Brooks [to Daisy_Tattoo]: #388
Charlotte_Sometimes has connected.
Sammael embraces saidin and channels open a gateway, he walks into it and it closes behind him....taking him to another place.
SarahBeth [dasiy_tattoo]: #388...and you don’t need to use that spammy sign..just ask okay?
Cockatoo squawks, “What’s happenning Grunt?”
@quit
*** Disconnected ***
What’s going on here? You’ve got people disconnecting, connecting, bemoaning their age, squawking, talking, and idling.
Here’s what happened: when you first connect to LambdaMOO, you start out in the “Coat Closet”. And some people are perfectly willing to do some strange things in coat closets, even in real life. From the Coat Closet, I opened the door and came out of the closet into the “Living Room”. There was something called a “Birthday Machine”, so I looked at it, and it told me the names of everyone on LambdaMOO who has a birthday today. All the while, other people are coming into and out of the Living Room and talking to each other. After I typed “look birthday”, and before the MOO showed me the Birthday Machine, I saw Daisy_Tattoo hold up a big sign and I saw Lavender_Guest welcome Vida_Blue.
The locations of MUDs changes regularly, as some MUDs close down and others start up. You can find a list at Yahoo, and by keeping your ear to the silicon.
Discussion groups are sort of like e-mail, but with lots of people taking part. One person sends off a message (posts a message) to the group. Over the next few days, the other members of the group read the message (the posting ), and some of them reply to it, adding their own comments.
The two major type of discussion groups are mailing lists and Usenet news. You can often find discussion groups as part of web pages, but these tend to be quite provincial.
The “Conversational Norms” apply as well to group discussion as they do to individual discussion. Group discussion carries with it an entire new set of norms and responsibilities.
There are twenty million people on the net, and growing every day. Even your most basic assumptions will be questioned by somebody and when you actually start talking about something controversial, the flames can easily pile up a mile high.
If you’re presenting something as a fact, tell your reader where you came by your information. If you’re presenting something as opinion, label it as such. If you can, and it is important, explain how you arrived at that opinion.
The cry for “cites” is far more likely to come up on a political discussion, so you should detail your message accordingly. But anything controversial will generate arguments, and you would not believe what some people find to be controversial. Remember: somebody, somewhere, disagrees vehemently with what you’re saying. And they’ve got the facts to back it up. Do you?
On a related note, be very, very careful of “attributions” in any discussion. Attributions are “who said what”. People can get worried--rightfully so--when something someone else said is attributed to them, or when something they said is attributed to someone else. Remember that attributions follow the “greater than” symbols, although as you venture onto Usenet you’ll find that some ‘noncomformists’ use other symbols in place of the “greater than” and some idiots don’t use any attribution symbol at all.
When tempers flare and arguments veer away from spirited discussion into insults, “ad hominems” become common. Attacking the messenger rather than the message is a technique some people use to avoid having to buttress their arguments with facts. However, it is also used when someone keeps posting the same drivel to the same newsgroup, long after everyone realizes they’re a fool.
But your mileage may vary. In general, an ad hominem, insulting the poster rather than their arguments, is a sign of a poor loser, someone who realizes that they’re wrong but who wants to get in the last word anyway. The idiots.
When one person asks for information, other people may realize that they want the information as well. The result is a barrage of messages to the discussion group saying nothing except “I want it too!” This is annoying for everyone, even the Me-Tooers. The correct way to do this is to respond to the person who originally asked the message, and ask if they can either forward the information to you when it arrives, or if they can summarize the responses to the discussion group.
And, if you ask a question, and get lots of useful responses, summarizing to the group is good netiquette and can earn you quite a few net.brownie points. You can “summarize” a group of postings by either writing a report on what everyone said, or by simply taking out the important parts of each person’s message, and prefacing it with “John (john@sherwood.gov) said:”.
There’s a difference between personal and group mail. Personal mail shouldn’t go to group discussions. If you’re sending mail that’s really meant for just one person, you should send it to that person. Besides the obvious fact that no one else wants to read it, you can’t be sure that the individual you’re sending to will read your message. A posting to Usenet might “expire” before your intended recipient gets a chance to read it, and messages to mailing lists might be ignored. Some people even have their computers automatically separate “mailing list” mail from “personal” mail, leaving “mailing list” mail for when they have the time. If you send your personal message to the mailing list, their software will tag it as “mailing list”, not “personal”. Depending on how little free time they have, they might end up just deleting all of their “mailing list” mail if it piles up too much.
Most high-traffic discussion groups have FAQ files or lists. A FAQ list is a list of Frequently Asked Questions, along with their answers. In any major discussion, there are certain questions that pop up repeatedly, and there really isn’t much point in talking about them again and again. The FAQ list summarizes the past discussions, and the conclusions, if any, which were arrived at. This keeps the discussion group moving on towards new items of interest rather than continually rehashing old themes.
You should always look diligently for the FAQ of any discussion group you’re a part of. If it’s a mailing list, you’ll probably be told where the FAQ is when you receive your “welcome to the list” message. In Usenet newsgroups, the FAQ is hidden somewhere in the many articles waiting for you.
You can also find many FAQs on the Usenet newsgroup, news.answers or at FAQ.Org.
If all you want to do is get together with a few friends and have an e-mail discussion, the best way to do it is with a “distribution list”, or a “group nickname”. Each person in the group creates, in their address book, a nickname for the group. This nickname includes the e-mail address of each person in the group. When you create the nickname, give Pine or Eudora all the e-mail addresses when asked for the address. Separate the addresses from each other by commas.
When people on the net get together to discuss things in an organized manner, they usually use some form of mailing list . In its simplest form, a mailing list is just that: a list, on a central computer, of everyone who is taking part in the discussion. Members send their messages to that central computer, and the central computer copies their messages and sends a copy to each person listed in the list of members.
Most mailing lists today include quite a few features above and beyond that. They’ll have special archives where files of interest to the members are kept. The discussion itself might be archived there as well. Some mailing lists provide privacy to members, so that other members can’t find out who is on the list and who is off. Some mailing lists aren’t for discussion at all, but are for announcements. Only the list “owner” can send messages to the central address. Members aren’t allowed to make announcements to the list.
There are mailing lists on virtually every topic you could want. And if there isn’t a mailing list on a topic that you want to talk about, you can create one of your own! On the Macintosh, Macjordomo makes it very easy to set up your own mailing list, if your Internet Service Provider will give you an extra ‘username’. They’ll usually do it for five bucks or so. Many provide a limited number of extra usernames for free.
The easiest way to find a mailing list by topic is to use www.liszt.com.
Once you find a mailing list, you still have to join. Joining a mailing list is called subscribing . You do this by sending an e-mail message to the mailing list’s control address. Mailing lists usually have two addresses: the discussion address and the control address. Mail sent to the discussion address is copied and sent to each member. Mail sent to the control address is responded to by the central computer. If you want to subscribe, unsubscribe, request an archive file, or do anything “controlling” your membership, you must send it to the control address. If you send it to the discussion address, all that’s going to happen is that people are going to discuss how inappropriate your action was.
If you’re lucky. If you’re not, you’ll get flamed from here to oblivion.
Sufficiently scared? Don’t worry, it’s just e-mail. Sticks and stones, and all that.
Now, where were we? Right, subscribing to a mailing list. We’ve found this great list, Amazons International , for the discussion of physically and psychologically strong women and the men and women who love them. In order to subscribe to Amazons International, we need to send a subscription request to the control address. We found out about Amazons International from Liszt, and it also told us what the control address is: amazons-request@math.uio.no . The description doesn’t tell us what we need to actually say, so we can assume it’s the standard. The standard “subscribe” request is: subscribe list_name Firstname Lastname . So, here’s what I would send to amazons-request@math.uio.no:
subscribe amazons Jerry Stratton
I used “amazons” for the name of the list. How did I know that? Because one of the many standards for “control” addresses is to add “-request” to the name of the list. Usually, you’ll be told the name of the list (and how to subscribe) in the description that you get from findlists.
Now, some day I might want to leave Amazons International . Joining requires subscribing, and leaving requires unsubscribing . Once again, this message has to go to the control address. And the message is:
unsubscribe amazons
You don’t have to tell it your name, because it already knows it from when you subscribed.
So you’re subscribed, now what? Now, it’s time to brush up on your netiquette, because getting flamed in private mail is nothing compared to getting flamed in full view of your electronic friends. Be kind to others, and take a deep breath when they’re not kind to you.
It’s going to be hard to get people angry at you if you don’t know how to take part in the discussion. When you have something to say to the members of a mailing list, you send the message via e-mail to the discussion address. If the discussion address is amazons@math.uio.no , that’s where you send the message. And it’ll get copied and sent to each and every person on the mailing list.
Sometimes you’ll get very strange mail when you try to send something out to a mailing list, telling you that your mail was “undeliverable”. If you want to worry about it, you’re going to have to play detective: most of these messages mean nothing. What happens is that one person who is listed as a member was unreachable. Their computer was dead, or they canceled their e-mail address without canceling their mailing list memberships. Your message went out fine to every other member. If you send your message out again, most members are going to get it twice and they’re going to let you know that it’s inappropriate to send messages twice.
If you are worried that your message didn’t make it to anyone , look at the junk in the error message. If it says that it “couldn’t reach a host”, and that “host” is the part of the mailing list address after the ‘@’, then perhaps the computer that the mailing list is on went down temporarily. Or, perhaps you misspelled the “host” part of the mailing list. Double-check your spelling and try again if you can see where you made the mistake.
If it says that it “couldn’t find a user”, and the user is the part of the mailing list address before the ‘@’, then either the list address was changed and no one told you (the jerks!), or you misspelled the address. Double-check your spelling and try again if you can see where you made the mistake.
Continually retrying when you can’t see where you made a mistake is a recipe for flames. The message probably went out fine to everybody except one person, and re-mailing it is continually resending it to everybody except that one person.
Mailing lists are controlled discussion on the net. There’s a central list of members, and some individual controls who is in and who is not in that list. In most cases, that control is handed to an impartial computer program, but the control is there.
Usenet has no such central control. Anyone can read and anyone can post to Usenet without asking for permission from a central “Usenet” moderator. There is no “list of users” for Usenet. There are some newsgroups that do have moderators, but they’re the exception, not the rule. And even in those cases, the moderator doesn’t control any form of membership list. The moderator approves messages one at a time, rather than controlling who joins and who doesn’t.
Usenet is a collection of newsgroups on a huge variety of topics. A “newsgroup” is just a place to go and discuss whatever topic the newsgroup was created for. These newsgroups are arranged hierarchically . There are seven basic sets of newsgroups: computers, miscellaneous, recreational, science, social/sociological, talk, and Usenet news itself.
Within each of these “top-level” hierarchies, there are further “branches” specifying discussions in ever more detail. So, within the “rec” (recreation) newsgroups, there is “rec.music” for discussion of music, and within that there is rec.music.gdead, for discussion of the Grateful Dead musical group. Within the “comp” (computers) discussion hierarchy, you’ll find “comp.sys” for discussion of computer systems, “comp.sys.mac” for discussion of the Macintosh computer, and comp.sys.mac.hardware for discussion solely of hardware-related issues on the Macintosh.
There are other hierarchies outside the “big seven”. One of the biggest is the alternate hierarchy. Within the “alt” groups, you’ll find even more free-wheeling discussions than you’ll find on the big seven.
It is much easier to find a useful newsgroup than it is to find a useful mailing list. Go to DejaNews and look around. Also, if you go into your Usenet news reader, you can usually ask it to search the list of newsgroup names. Interested in discussing Rush Limbaugh? Type limbaugh as the search keyword. Here’s a sample of what you might find:
|
alt.fan.rush-limbaugh |
Derogation of others for fun and profit. |
|
alt.fan.rush-limbaugh.tv-show |
Rush’s television programme. |
|
alt.flame.rush-limbaugh |
The opposition’s version of alt.fan.rush-limbaugh. |
|
alt.rush-limbaugh |
Fans of the conservative activist radio announcer. |
The descriptions of Usenet newsgroups are a bit shorter than the descriptions of mailing lists, so you may want to try a couple of times, with different keywords, if your first try doesn’t find a newsgroup based on the topic you want. There are thousands of newsgroups, and one of them is bound to have what you want.
My favorite Usenet newsreader is MT Newswatcher. You can find it at Download.Com. You can also use Netscape Communicator if you already have that.
Taking part in a newsgroup means “posting” an “article” to the newsgroup. It can also mean “lurking” on the newsgroup--just reading, not posting. If you’re using Netscape or MT NewsWatcher to read your newsgroups, you can just click on the appropriate article or button to read or post to a newsgroup.
Somebody’s got your blood boiling, and you want to flame them to Helen Bach. You’ve got two choices--three, really. You can, of course, just ignore them, and you probably should.
You can reply to the individual privately, or you can “follow-up” to the article so that everyone on the newsgroup can read your reply.
Replying privately sends the message off via normal e-mail. This means that only the individual you’re replying to gets the message. If your message is not of value to the group as a whole, you should send it off privately. “Following up” to the newsgroup sends the message to the entire Usenet newsgroup, so everyone can read it, and reply to it if they so desire.
Articles on the newsgroups disappear very quickly. If you want to archive an article for future reference, you’ll have to save it as a file on your hard drive.
So you had a bad day and you just sent out a Usenet message threatening the life of the President of the United States. What can you do about it?
If you’re fast, you can save your life, that’s what you can do. You can “cancel” messages so that they don’t go anywhere, after you’ve sent them. You can only cancel your own messages.
If your message hasn’t gone upstream yet, your message is immediately canceled. Most likely, you aren’t that lucky. If your message has gone upstream, your cancel also goes upstream, ferreting it out in the forests and tributaries of Usenet. If all goes well (and it won’t), your message will be deleted from every newsfeed that accepted it. People who have already read your message will not have their memory erased, of course, and if they’ve saved a copy and forwarded it to the Secret Service, the cancel doesn’t follow that far. But any new readers checking into Usenet won’t see the message after it’s been canceled.
Note that you can no longer count on this working well. Many news servers no longer accept general cancels, because they are too easily forged.
There are a few newsgroups that are very important. Two are important for anyone reading Usenet news.
|
news.announce.newusers |
This is a moderated newsgroup: you can read it, but you can’t post to it. This is the most important newsgroup for new users. It explains all the things everyone else thinks are simple, such as how to post messages, what your writing style should be, and how newsgroups are created. |
|
news.answers |
All the FAQs are available on news.answers, at least, all the ones where the FAQ’s author knows what they’re talking about. You can find everything from the “Coffee Lovers” FAQ to FAQs that I can’t even list here because even their names might land me in jail. |
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