Usenet Slang

Anybody familiar with Internet slang will understand a great deal of USENET slang. For example, abbreviations and acronyms are oftentimes used to make it easier to type common expressions. LOL, for instance, is used as ubiquitously on the USENET system as it is on the Internet. Likewise, abbreviations such as IRL, which means "in real life", ROTFL and all the other familiar Internet abbreviations and acronyms apply on USENET just as they do everywhere else.

There are very few unique USENET slang terms and they are mostly restricted to the descriptions of groups given in their hierarchal names. For example, the suffix misc after any group name simply means that it is a miscellaneous group that contains all of the topics that don't quite fit into the more specific topics related to its overall subject. The letter d is oftentimes added as the last part of a USENET group's hierarchal name as a way of indicating that that group exists for the purpose of discussion. This would differentiate it, for example, from a newsgroup that existed specifically for factual information about the same subject.

There are a couple of slang terms that aren't really specific to the USENET or to the Internet but which are terms that have carried over from everyday life. For example, if you're in a discussion group about movies, giving away the ending of the movie in a post would be referred to as posting a spoiler. Whenever you make such a post, you should notify the group in the subject line that it does contain a spoiler for the movie being discussed. To not do so is to breach netiquette, a slang term that describes the rules of etiquette as they apply to interaction on the World Wide Web, on the USENET or over any other digital medium.

There will be instances on the USENET when someone will try to drag you in to an argument or were you will become involved in one simply because you're passionate about the topic being discussed. When the argument truly degrades, people will begin posting in all caps. The slang term for a post written in all-caps is a flame. When you get into an argument in this way, it's called a flame war. In some cases, these flame wars are carried on mostly in jest and they provide a fun way for people to trade witty remarks at one another. In other cases they get very serious, sometimes threatening, and will result in you and the person you're involved in a flame war with being banned from the newsgroup. If you have a problem with someone on a newsgroup, ask a moderator and don't get into a flame war.

By: Gilberte Monroe

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Marion Marshall specializes in writing and advising people on Usenet technologies. By visiting his website usenetreviewz.com you can learn about supernews usenet review and usenet servers