Follow-up / Reply

An article that is posted in response to an original article subject.

Handle

The chosen username or alias of a Usenet participant. A user's handle is not necessarily derived from their real name, email address, or other obvious detail. Frequently, a handle is a personally chosen nickname. In this sense, it is exactly the same as a 'handle' in CB radio culture. Military callsigns are a similar concept.

Incomplete

An incomplete is a Usenet article that has missing or corrupted data, or it can be any missing articles in a large multipart post. Incomplete articles can happen because of a problem while downloading such as an incomplete connection or crash, or may be the result of an error during the process of propagation (the transferring of Usenet articles between servers). Retention, or the amount of time an article is kept on a provider's server, may also be to blame if an article or pieces of a multipart post have crossed your Usenet provider's retention threshold. A user can identify missing pieces of multipart posts with software programs that compile all parts of the file and any Par2 files (files uploaded by the poster, fixing known data gaps) and finds any completion problems.

Killfile

A killfile is a file that a Usenet user can supply to instruct their news client to ignore articles specified users or which discuss topics that they don't find interesting. Killfiles 'ignore' articles by not displaying those that match the header information specified in the killfile. Some news clients come equipped with killfiles as a standard feature, which saves you from having to manually ignore articles.

Kook

An unstable, ""crazy"" Usenet participant. A kook is not necessarily a troll, but can simply be a user that posts unintelligible or nonsensical comments, wild conspiracy theories, and other items of an eccentric nature.

Lurk

To read a newsgroup without posting much or at all. Users who lurk are known as lurkers. Breaking the silence and posting content is called delurking. Users normally lurk to learn the norms of a newsgroup and the identities of its participants. Because Usenet is built around community participation, lurking is not encouraged