The following message taken from news.newusers.questions may help to
explain the difference between electronic mail and newsgroups.
Jim Vaglia





From: [log in to unmask] (Jon Bell)
Subject: "TIP" WHY NEWSGROUPS ARE NOT E-MAIL

Many newcomers to the net use "mail" as a universal term for any message
that you send to other people via computer, but in reality mail and news
are two fundamentally different systems which occasionally intersect in
confusing ways.

Mail is private communication.  You determine exactly who is supposed to
receive your message, whether it be one person or a specific group of
Computers which are on the Internet exchange mail using software which
follows a protocol (set of rules) called SMTP.  When you send an e-mail
message, the final result is one copy of the message in each specified
recipient's private mailbox.

News is public communication.  You have no control over who will receive
your message, except by your choice of newsgroup.  Computers which are on
the Internet exchange news using software which follows a protocol called
NNTP.  When you post a news article, the final result is tens or hundreds
of thousands of copies of your article, one on each news server that
carries the newsgroup, scattered all over the globe.

On many systems, people read/send mail and read/post news using two
different software packages.  If you send someone e-mail, you use an
e-mail program, and the reply (if any) appears in your mailbox; you have
to use the e-mail program to read it.  If you post a news article, you use
a newsreader program, and any followups (public responses) appear in the
newsgroup(s) in which you posted originally; you have to use your
newsreader program to read them.

However, the boundaries between mail and news can be somewhat fuzzy, at
least at first glance, for two reasons:

First, most newsreader programs allow you to send e-mail in response to
a news article, directly to the author, instead of posting a public
response.  Some allow you to do both simultaneously, that is, post a
public response and e-mail a copy to the original author.

The terminology for doing this varies from one newsreader program to
another.  Netscape 3 uses "Re: News" for a public response (only), "Re:
Mail" for an e-mail response (only), and "Re: Both" for a public response
with e-mail copy.

Second, some software packages (most [in]famously Netscape and Pine)
combine both news and mail functions.  This can be confusing because
newsgroup messages and e-mail messages look very similar to each other.
You may need to be very careful when replying to a message to make sure
that it goes where you want it to go.

Note: for beginner's information on newsgroups, check out
http://cs1.presby.edu/~jtbell/usenet/

--
Jon Bell <[log in to unmask]>                        Presbyterian College
Dept. of Physics and Computer Science        Clinton, South Carolina USA
-- end of forwarded message --