Why Should UUs Get On-Line?

The Internet (with a capital "I",) is the world's largest network of computers. It electronically connects hundreds of millions of people around the world. The Internet gives the UUA a new method of disseminating information to churches, ministers, church members, and members of related organizations while helping to foster an exchange of information among UUs. People who have a computer and can connect to the Internet can use a number of services including e-mail, mailing lists, the World Wide Web, Usenet newsgroups, America Online chat rooms, and Internet Relay Chat. What are these services?

E-mail

The most basic service is electronic mail (e-mail). You can send messages via your computer over the Internet to other people around the world who also have accounts on systems connected to the Internet. E-mail messages are delivered quickly, usually in minutes or hours. E-mail usually contains text, but may contain encoded images, programs, or other types of computer files.

To send e-mail, you need to know the e-mail address of the recipient. Internet addresses look like this:

username@computername

For example, info@uua.org is the address of the person in charge of answering questions on-line for the UUA -- uua.org is the UUA's Internet host computer, and info is the account name of the person who reads and responds to information requests. Someone who uses an America Online (AOL) account has an address like jsmith@aol.com. For the e-mail addresses of the UUA staff, district staff, and affiliated organizations, see the UUA Contact Us page at http://www.uua.org/staff/. Most UUA staffers have e-mail addresses that consist of the person's first initial, last name, and "@uua.org" strung together. (For example, if Elvis Presley worked at the UUA, his address would be epresley@uua.org.)

Many UU congregations have e-mail addresses and find them useful for conducting church business, collecting articles for church newsletters, and communicating with other congregations, ministers, and the UUA.

On-Line Mailing Lists

E-mail mailing lists are used to distribute messages to people interested in a specific topic. For example, a mailing list called UU-Parenting was started a few years ago for people to discuss being a UU parent, and bringing up UU kids. It has become a very active list with twenty messages a day and over 200 subscribers. The UUA-L mailing list lets the UUA distribute announcements of interest to UUs -- only the UUA can post messages to this list. It has almost 2,000 subscribers!

For each mailing list, a computer on the Internet stores a list of e-mail addresses of people interested in the topic. Anyone can easily send messages to everyone else on the list by sending a single message to this "list server" computer. Mailing lists can also be used to distribute announcements -- such "moderated" lists are controlled by an editor who controls which messages are distributed. Lists may be restricted in membership (closed), or unrestricted in membership (open). Anyone with an Internet e-mail address can be on an open mailing list.

There is no charge for subscribing to most mailing lists. A person becomes a subscriber by sending one e-mail message to a list server program. From then on, that subscriber receives all of the e-mail messages that anyone sends to that list. In turn, she or he can participate in discussions by sending messages to the mailing list address, which will redistribute the messages to all of the subscribers.

The UUA sponsors almost 200 mailing lists, for discussions about district affairs, how to edit a church newsletter, planning for the upcoming Genral Assembly -- you name it. See the UUA Mailing Lists page at http://www.uua.org/lists for information about UU-related mailing lists.

Many UU congregations have their own mailings for use by their members and friends. The UUA doesn't host congregational mailing lists (there would be too many), but congregations can use such free list hosting services as eGroups (at http://www.egroups.com), Topica (at http://www.topica.com), and ListBot (at http://www.listbot.com). You can have a public list for all church members, and private lists for the church board or other committees.

The World Wide Web

The World Wide Web (or WWW, or the Web) lets anyone publish pages of information over the Internet. By using a Web "browser" program you can receive a page of information from the Web. This page of text will have some words or phrases specially marked (for example, underlined). These are hypertext links that can be selected to find further information that refer to those words or phrases. The links may take you to another page on that site or just as easily to another site somewhere else in the world.

When you select a link, usually by clicking on it with your mouse, a new Web page appears with information about the item you selected. You can move from page to page, following the links, until you find the information you want. The two most popular browsers (Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator) can display graphics, sounds, and video clips as well as text. For example, a Web page could contain a map of the United States, and clicking on the map could display a Web page listing UU churches in that area.

Web pages have addresses, called URLs (Uniform Resource Locators). A Web page URL looks like this: http://www.uua.org/index.html. The first part (http://) just means that this is a Web page: HTTP is the way that Web browsers talk to Web pages. The next part (www.uua.org) is the name of the computer that the Web page is stored on; in this URL, the page is stored on the UUA's computer. The last part of the address (/index.html) specifies exactly what file you want to see. When this part is omitted, you see the main page that is stored on the computer; on the UUA's computer, the main page is the UUA home page.

You can find information of interest by starting at a Web directory like Yahoo (at http://www.yahoo.com), and following links until you find what you want, or you can use a Web page that searches for topics by keyword (try Google, at http://google.com).

The UUA has a huge Web site about UUism, its history, UU churches, UUA services, and other UU-related topics at http://www.uua.org. There are over 10,000 pages, including a directory of UU congregations and the entire Congregational Handbook.

Most UU congregations have Web sites, to allow people to find them and to provide information to their members and friends. Many congregations put part or all of their newsletters on the Web site, so that information can easily and cheaply updated with no postage costs. The UUA doesn't host congregational Web pages, but is does provide information (at http://www.uua.org/CONG/congsites.html) about how to create one.

Newsgroups and Other On-Line Chats

There are several ways to engage in on-line discussions, including Usenet newsgroups, on-line services' discussion groups, and IRC.

Usenet newsgroups

Usenet newsgroups are like mailing lists, in that they allow people to discuss topics of interest. However, to read the messages in a newsgroup, you use newsgroup-reading software instead of e-mail software. It is more convenient to read newsgroup articles separately from your own personal e-mail, especially when there are many messages a day. You can read the articles in a Usenet newsgroup using a newsreading program. Netscape includes a newreader, and Outlook Express (a popular e-mail program) can also read newsgroups. If you want to contribute to the conversation, you can post your own articles, usually as a follow-up to others' articles.

Usenet has over 10,000 newsgroups on topics ranging from cats to vegetarian recipes to planning weddings to computer software (lots of those) to current events to support groups. Some are worldwide and are read and participated in by hundreds of thousands of people around the world. Some are local and have a smaller readership.

Newsgroups are organized and named in a hierarchy. Newsgroup names consist of words connected by periods. For example, the UU discussion group is called soc.religion.unitarian-univ -- "soc" for "society" or "social" issues, "religion" for discussions about religion, and "unitarian-univ" for Unitarian-Universalism (it is limited to 14 letters, unfortunately). Click here to read the soc.religion.unitarian-univ newsgroup, if your computer is equipped to handle newsgroups. Otherwise, you can read its messages on the Web at http://www.iecc.com/sruu/.

Not all Internet providers and on-line services carry all newsgroups -- some are considered too frivolous (alt.barney.die.die.die) or too rude (alt.sex) to provide. Check with your prospective Internet provider to find out whether they carry all or only some newsgroups.

America Online

America Online (AOL) isn't the Internet, but it gives you access to the Internet. AOL has its own discussion areas and information pages that only AOL users can see and participate in, and it also provides access to the World Wide Web, Internet e-mail, and Usenet newsgroups. AOL calls its discussion areas chat rooms

Internet Relay Chat

Another service, called Internet Relay Chat (or IRC), happens "while you wait." It is like CB radio, except you "talk" by typing lines of text. In an on-line chat, a group of people type messages on their screens, and the messages immediately appear on the screens of all the other people participating in the chat.

For more information on UU and UU-related newsgroups, America Online chats, IRC, and other discussions, check here for details of upcoming chats. Or click here for instructions for participating in IRC.

For more information about UUs online, go to the UUA's UUs Online page at http://www.uua.org/CONG/websters.html.

Return to UUism On-Line.