Mailing Lists and the Usenet Newsgroups are a way for many people who share the same interest to share a common forum to facilitate discussion. There is no limit to the diversity of topics available for discussion- if you have a particular interest, it is likely the case that tens, hundreds, or a thousand others out in cyberspace share the same passion. Topics can range from Toronto Raptors basketball, Buddhist philosophy, or current Hollywood gossip. Unlike e-mail, which is used mostly for one-on-one interactions, Lists and Newsgroups can be as small as a group of friends, and as large as entire communities. Of course, as is with anything on the internet, these groups are not confined by geographical barriers. "Debbie84" can be your next door neighbor or someone living on the other side of the globe! Anyone with access to the net can voice their thoughts, opinions, and experiences.
I signed-up for three Usenet groups at Google Groups: HongKongCooking; Nutrition Information and Facts; and rec.food.cooking. Since my final project will be on Asian cuisine, I felt these would be very helpful in giving me cooking tips, recipes, and answering any interesting questions I had on the topic. In fact, I actually made a hot and sour soup recipe suggested on the rec.food.cooking newsgroup. The recipe and sample message can be found here
Yahoo! Groups was a great place to find many food and cooking related Mailing Lists for me to sign-up for. Of the many to choose from I ultimately decided on chinesecookingclub and newsushi- again, sites that I thought would prove to be useful as part of my project on Asian foods. chinesecookingclub was a very "help-oriented" (no pun intended!) site and I was able to aid in helping a confused subscriber to use her rice-cooker for the first time.
It is very important to practice good Netiquette over the internet. The most important lesson I got from this tutorial is that it is essential that surfers treat their on-line identities as part of their real-life identities. All interactions should be conducted as if you were talking to another person directly in front of you. It is very important to treat on-line surfers with a great amount of respect and courtesy. Today, one is no longer able to hide behind an on-line screenname and hope that actions have no repercussions. The internet is part of the real world and information about virtually anyone can be found in a click of a button- including e-mail addresses, IP addresses, phone numbers, and even street addresses!
As a consequence, internet security is a big deal (and big business) today. This fact is illustrated by the fact that there are so many security and safety programs available for purchase and download. Surfers are constantly bombarded with pop-up advertisements warning that their computer may be infected with the latest virus, or that his is vulnerable to outside intruders. There are things that people can do to protect themselves. For example, it is important to do things like change passwords and scan for viruses on a regular basis. (For example: today I changed my WebMail account password from "bubblebubble" to "boggleboggle". Just kidding!) Also important is being sure not to share information with unknown users or perform personal transactions at public computers. These preventative measures are especially important should one choose to do things like banking or making purchases on-line.
This was my first experience with Newsgroups and Mailing Lists and I must say that it was a positive one. I was amazed initially by the sheer volume and number of different topics that people were interested in. As a result, it was no challenge to find one that would prove useful as part of my final project. However, I did observe that many groups and lists had only one or two members in them and activity was correspondingly very low. Very big groups, I found, were very useful to explore interesting topics, but lacked the "community" feel of a smaller group. Therefore, I preferred groups of about 50-75 users. These allowed for efficient communication while still allowing users to get a chance to really develop a familiarity with other members.
Last updated: April 7, 2005