Archive-name: clarinet/basics

At first glance, your reactions to ClariNet may well be that there are a 
lot of newsgroups, a lot of stories in these groups, and that stories seem 
to repeat annoyingly.  How does one deal with this? 

With over a megabyte a day of information, nobody can read all of ClariNet. 
It is divided into many newsgroups so that you can select just the news 
you want.  It is further categorized so that you can use tools such as kill 
files and Newsclip to greatly refine your reading.  

	"Urgent groups" 

In general, you'll always want to read the groups that present the very 
biggest news -- clari.news.flash and clari.news.bulletin.  You'll probably 
want to read clari.news.urgent as well.  

Then you'll want to read the groups for "top" news in the categories of 
interest to you.  clari.news.top covers top USA related news, while the 
very popular clari.news.top.world covers top international stories.  
General sports fans enjoy clari.sports.top and business readers subscribe 
to clari.biz.top.  

As a substitute, you can also read clari.news.briefs.  This offers a 
regularly updated short summary of the current top news.  If you see a 
story you are interested in, you can temporarily subscribe to the 
appropriate topic group for the story to get the full details.  

You may decide not to read any groups for major news at all.  Many still 
prefer to get this sort of news from television or newspapers.  ClariNet 
can still serve you by presenting you with the more obscure stories on 
topics of interest to you that never reach those media.  

If you are interested in top stories only in certain categories, you will 
need a newsreader with filtering capabilities, such as provided by our 
Newsclip package.   Then you can arrange to read stories in a group only if 
they have a priority above the level you are interested in.  

	"Specific Topics" 

Beyond the groups for top news, you will want to pick a small to medium 
number of groups that cover your specific interests.  Naturally, the group 
clari.tw.computers is very popular.  Many people used to scan their 
newspapers for computer related stories before ClariNet came along.  Now 
you can find those stories all in one place.  The TechWire (clari.tw.*) 
groups are all very popular in the computer community -- no surprise there. 

There are groups for specific interests and special interest groups.  For 
example, there are groups like clari.news.group.jews and 
clari.news.group.women where issues related to these groups like Israel and 
abortion (respectively!) are covered.  

There are many groups for general news categories.  Several in the 
clari.news.gov category focus on aspects of U.S. government at all levels.  

Read the specific group descriptions to decide which groups are of interest 
to you.  Or better still, subscribe to several groups to start, and 
unsubscribe to those that don't match your interests or reading patterns.  

Soon you will settle down to reading the top news groups and the few of 
particular interest to yourself.  You may also have a filter program scan 
groups of lesser interest for stories that contain keywords you are 
tracking.  NewsClip can do this for you.  

(NewsClip is the news filtering language supplied free to all ClariNet 
subscribers.  It has its own manual.) 

Many groups contain regular features as well, and you may wish to read 
those groups just for those features.  Some groups, like 
clari.feature.dave_barry, contain nothing but a single feature.  Many 
people read these, because they contain only a tiny number of regular high 
quality articles -- the ideal newsgroup.  

Make sure you read clari.net.announce for announcements about changes in 
the ClariNet group structure and policies.  If you're interest in ClariNet 
itself, read and participate in the unmoderated clari.net.talk group.  

	"Volume" 

A few groups, like clari.news.gov.international and even the important 
clari.news.top contain a *lot* of stories -- more than a typical reader 
will want to read in detail.  With these, and many others, you will have to 
get used to "subject scanning."  Most USENET readers read the USENET groups 
this way today.  

When you enter the group, look at (or ask for -- depending on your 
newsreader) the menu of the headlines.  Pick just the stories you wish, and 
read them.  With ClariNet groups, the headlines are written by professional 
journalists, so they provide far more meaningful information that USENET 
subject lines.  This makes this sort of reading scheme very workable.  

With a reader designed to do this, such as nn or trn, you can scan over a 
large number of ClariNet groups in just a few minutes -- even seconds.  Far 
faster than you could scan a smaller number of stories in a printed 
newspaper.  

	"Updates" 

As noted, the other major difference you will notice is the number of 
stories that seem to repeat.  Normally these are not repeats, but updates, 
and the reasons for this are detailed in the next section.  

	"Onward" 

ClariNet news is so similar to USENET news that you can probably read it 
with no special introduction.  Many subscribers do.  The information in 
this introduction should be enough for you to make good use of the service.