When you explore newsgroups, you may see notices that the newsgroup is "moderated." A moderator is the person in charge of the newsgroup who takes care of day-to-day problems (such as spamming) and general maintenance. Unmoderated groups have no administrator weeding out unrelated messages and are occasionally hit by immature "spammers." If you are easily offended, you need to be alert in unmoderated newsgroups. Spam is unwanted and unsolicited messages, usually commercial in nature.

When you "join" a newsgroup, you'll probably want to remain in the background for a short time while you learn the rules of the road. This is known as "lurking" and is recommended for people who are inexperienced with newsgroups. Periodically, a newsgroup's Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) file for new participants will be posted; it's highly recommended that you read the FAQ for information on the function of the newsgroup, rules, restrictions, etc. Most genealogy newsgroup FAQs can be found online; see the list of genealogy newsgroup FAQs in the Related URLs section of this lesson.

If you're not sure what newsgroups are available to join, the Liszt newsgroup search engine can help. You can search the all of the newsgroups for a keyword or subject, and even search the archives of some mailing lists. You can find Liszt at http://www.liszt.com/news/