UW CSE Electronic Discussion Forums

University of Washington Department of Computer Science & Engineering

Electronic Discussion Forums

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Newsgroups

By far the most well known way in which to implement electronic forums is through newsgroups. Modern newsreaders permit threaded discussions, easy perusal of available topics, and convenient tools for the user's participation. They are particularly nice in that once they are set up, little additional work is required by you. Most of the users we are likely to encounter in the CSE department are likely to be familiar with their use.

Creating a newsgroup hosted by C&C

If you anticipate that the readers of your newsgroup are likely not to be members of the CSE department, it make the most sense to ask C&C to host your newsgroup. Any faculty or staff member may request that a newsgroup be created simply by sending mail to the appropriate person. This is fully explained on C&C's newsgroup creation web page. This place explains the difference between local and global newsgroups and includes information that you can give to your students explaining how to participate in the forums.

Creating a newsgroup hosted by CSE

If you anticipate that your newsgroup will only be read by persons having CSE accounts, it might be best to have the newsgroup hosted here in our department. To have a newsgroup created, simply send mail to Voradesh Yenbut with a breif explanation of the purpose of your newsgroup and a proposed name. You will be contacted when this is done.

Tips for newsgroup administration

In general, someone else will practically all of the work involved in administering a newsgroup. Here is some miscellaneous information that might be useful.

Newsgroups that relate to specific courses are "cleaned out" automatically between quarters, so you will not need to do anything special in this regard.
You will occassionally wish to have specific messages removed from the server. This might occur if one student posts abusive or threatening messages to the newsgroup. If this happens, simply send mail explaining the situation to whomever is hosting your newsgroup. For newsgroups hosted by C&C, send mail to C&C support, or to Voradesh Yenbut for newsgroups hosted here at CSE. Note that if your newsgroup is reflected to other servers, some time may be required for the message to be removed from all servers.

Help for your users

Once your newsgroup is created, you may want to provide some of your participants information on the use of newsgroups and newsreader software. Here are some pointers to information you can provide:

Users who are familiar with the use of pine will find the UWired technical doc on joining a newsgroup using pine to be helpful.
Many people are moving toward the use of Outlook Express as a newsreader. CSE142 provides their students with instructions for reading the news with pine or Outlook Express.

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