(published February 1, 1997 at HMS Beagle)

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blatherer: Someone who can't seem to get to the point in their posts.

cross-post: To send a message to more than one group. Fine if the message is appropriate to all groups concerned, but indiscriminate crossposting will turn your message to velveeta and will likely garner a flame.

ECP: Acronym for excessive cross-posting. See velveeta.

flame: A highly critical/sarcastic/nasty response to something somebody has posted. See troll.

flamer: A person who has a reputation for being overly argumentative and who tends to flame people for no good reason. Best dealt with by creating a killfile.

flamewar: A situation when a newsgroup's traffic is dominated by people engaged in flaming each other. Can be entertaining at first. See flame.

killfile: A file that tells your news reader to look for specific names or words and then to automatically filter out posts containing them. A good way to avoid trolls and flamers. See Usenet: From Flame Wars to Killfiles for more info on setting them up.

lurker: Somebody who reads newsgroups but never posts.

netiquette: Net etiquette -- the rules of good behavior when posting on Usenet. See Netiquette and "Dear Emily Postnews" for specifics.

.sig: A section at the end of a person's message that usually contains their name, e-mail address, phone number, pithy quote, etc. Good Net etiquette dictates that .sigs not occupy more than six lines of space or so.

spam: Hated junk-mail of the Internet. A spam is a message sent out to dozens or even hundreds of newsgroups, usually from scam artists ("Make $10,000 in a Week!") or commercial vendors with no sense of netiquette. Compare velveeta.

spewer: A person who posts lots and lots of messages which are of little or no interest to the others reading the group graced by the spewer's presence.

thread: A single line of discussion within a newsgroup.

troll:

1. A post that is intentionally inflammatory and which is typically an attempt to start a flamewar.
2. One who posts trolls.

velveeta: A message that is widely and inappropriately cross-posted to many newsgroups. Compare spam.

wizard: Anyone who knows a particular Internet or newsgroup-related topic inside and out.