Subject:  Campus to retire Usenet news service Dec. 14, 2009

Information and Educational Technology will retire the campus Usenet news service on Monday, Dec. 14, 2009. Its popularity and usefulness have plunged with the rise of Web-based discussion groups, mailing lists, blogs, and pervasive email access. In recent years, the campus Usenet news server has hosted only a few class discussion groups. The campus has therefore decided to retire the Usenet news service. Please see below for available alternatives.

BACKGROUND
Usenet News (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet) started in 1980, ten years before the World Wide Web. The Usenet News service at UC Davis dates at least to the early 1990s. At one time, many science and engineering classes used it as a bulletin board for discussions.

ACTION
If you work with faculty or staff who still moderate a Usenet news service, please help them transition to either a classroom mailing list or to a SmartSite mailing list, as appropriate.

ALTERNATIVES
Two to consider are:

1) SmartSite, the online coursework and collaboration system at UC Davis, http://smartsite.ucdavis.edu. Tools that might help include:
--Email Archive, which provides a unified class email address and message archiving (much like listproc).
--Forums, a threaded discussion that uses forums and topics.

Academic Technology Services, part of IET, offers free, regularly scheduled training for SmartSite and other educational technologies. It also offers drop-in clinics, plus one-on-one and group trainings, by request. Contact trainers@smartsite.ucdavis.edu or smartsite-help@ucdavis.edu.

2) Class mailing lists, http://email.ucdavis.edu/eml/class-faq.php. These class lists are created to help instructors reach their students via email. They are not part of SmartSite.

Read more at http://xbase.ucdavis.edu/1996 (login and Kerberos password required).

QUESTIONS
If you have any questions, contact IT Express at (530) 754-4357 (HELP).