Posting to Usenet

Messages

You can post a new message to a newsgroup by replying to an existing message, or creating a new message from scratch.

To reply to a message, click Reply in the toolbar while viewing the message you wish to respond to.

To create a new message, click New Message in the toolbar while viewing the newsgroup that you wish to post to.

Cross-posting

It is possible to post the same message to multiple newsgroups at one time. This is known as cross-posting. It is best not to cross-post unless you know absolutely that your message is relevant to each newsgroup you intend to cross-post to.

To cross-post a message, type the names of all the newsgroups you wish to post to in the Newsgroups field of the message composition window, using a comma between each newsgroup name:

File attachments

To attach a single image or other small file to a message you are posting, you can drag it directly into the message composition window.

File uploads

For larger files, or collections of files, it is preferable to use file uploading. To upload files:

  1. Click the Upload button in the toolbar while viewing the newsgroup you wish to post to:
  2. Add one or more files to the list either by dragging them in from the Finder, or by clicking the + button and selecting them from the file browser
  3. Type a brief description of what you are uploading in the Description field
  4. Click Upload

It is considered bad Usenet etiquette to post a file to a message-oriented newsgroup. You should generally not post files to any newsgroup that does not have "binaries" in its name. Almost all file groups are in the "alt" hierarchy. If in doubt, ask the newsgroup before uploading.

Advanced file uploading options

When uploading files, the following advanced options are available by clicking Show Advanced Options:

Newsgroups: Allows you to cross-post your upload to more than one newsgroup. Click the + or - buttons to add or remove additional newsgroups. Please read the warning about cross-posting above!

Personality: If you have more than one posting personality, you can select which you'd prefer to use for this upload.

Segment files larger than: For very large files, it is recommended that the upload be split into small segments, as some servers have difficulty processing huge files, and your post may not propagate throughout the entire Usenet network otherwise.

Generate PAR 2.0 parity files: PAR sets allow the people who will be downloading your file to reconstruct any file parts that may have gone missing during the propagation from your Usenet server to theirs.

PAR Redundancy: PAR sets work by creating redundant copies of the data in your uploaded files. A redundancy of 10% means that as much as 10% of your post can go missing or become corrupt during propagation, and the original file can still be recovered by the downloader, provided they are able to download the complete PAR set. However, a higher redundancy percentage increases the size of the PAR set.

PAR Set Name: The PAR set can be given a unique name from the upload itself, if desired.