misnomers and corrections
The hardcore usenet user knows that usenet has been around since before the world wide web. And yet users are still clueless about usenet.
Daily in discussions on usenet we see threads (a series of posts) that refer to usenet as a list or a forum.
Usenet is not a forum, technically speaking anyways. Yes a forum is for speaking your mind and giving opinions, but in internet speak a forum is defined as web software for discussions. Companies like Jelsoft (makers of vbulletin) offer forum software.
Usenet is not a list either. Yes a user “subscribes” to a group just like users subscribe to a mailing list. But a mailing list uses a totally different protocol (SMTP/POP3) while usenet uses NNTP. Additionally usenet does not use a mail client to fetch articles, it uses an NNTP client.
For those users who haven’t come out of the dark ages, outlook express has BOTH an email client and an NNTP client built in (one can hardly consider OE a “real” NNTP client however).
I’m not sure why it bothers me to hear users use the incorrect terminology on usenet, but it does. Gone are the old days when everyone knew what a killfilter was, and barely anyone uses PLONK anymore. Perhaps I just miss the old days, or perhaps as usenet grows it’s collective IQ goes down.
I just wish we could educate more users how to use usenet properly, then we could work on the terminology.
