Jack's David & Leigh Eddings Page


Eddings newsgroups

The main Eddings fan newsgroup is

alt.fan.eddings


There are also fantasy and sf related discussions at

art.literature


These are the newsgroups I've heard of. If you know any newsgroup that is worth to add to this list, please mail me.

Newsgroup/Usenet mini FAQ
I've never heard of newsgroups before, what are they used for?

Newsgroups are used for communication, as almost the whole Internet is. The newsgroup system is called Usenet. A newsgroup is a place where people post messages. Other people can read, reply and forward these messages. This makes it possible to have long deeply going discussions in difference from a chat where there's no great possibilty for people to write long questions and answers.
In this way, thousands of people can discuss their favorite topics. There are about 25,000 newsgroups with different topics.
The topic system is built up in a hierarchial way . There are base categories, examples are alt, art, comp and lang. Then the 2nd level categories come, examples: fan, internet, movies. At the top is the low-level category, examples are eddings, titanic and tolkien.

Here are some examples of newsgroup names and descriptions:
  • alt.fan.tolkien
  • alt.movies.titanic
  • rec.food.cooking
  • alt.fan.eddings

How to participate?

The easiest and fastest way is to use the news-reader that is implemented in Netscape Navigator. If you don't have Netscape or are not using your own computer then you can use Deja News. Deja News is a web based newsgroup reader. The only thing you need is a webbrowser and a registration at Deja News.
Before you start discussing be sure to read the FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions) of the newsgroup. In the FAQ you'll find useful and important information. These are questions that are very frequent. I.e. questions that the people who have been reading the newsgroups for a long time have answered about a hundred times. Check out the alt.fan.eddings FAQ if you want to see what an FAQ looks like.

I have a question about all this, who should I ask?

Don't ask the people at the newsgroup, try these newsgroups first:
  • news.newusers.questions
  • news.answers
Here you can read answers and post your questions.
Deja News has also quite a big help section.
Asking the people at the newsgroup with the topic that you're interested in should always be the last solution. The newsgroups are for discussing the topics of the newsgroups, not for discussing Usenet itself.





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Last updated January 8th 1999


Note: Books, covers, book titles etc. are copyrighted either by David & Leigh Eddings and/or by their publishers.

Copyright © Jakob Persson 1997-1999