ARCHIVED: How can I test-post a Usenet news article?

Note: You should never post a test article to a regular newsgroup. It's an expensive waste of Usenet resources. Even if you send a test message to the newusers groups, with a polite subject line like "test, please ignore", you're guaranteed to receive lots of angry replies.

There are several test newsgroups you can use for test-posting Usenet articles. Check for local test newsgroups first; if you have access to one, UITS strongly recommends that you use it rather than a global test group.

To test a world-distribution newsgroup, use misc.test or alt.test. However, use these newsgroups only when you are testing distribution, and not just for casually testing a newsreader.

Various sites will auto-respond to any message posted to misc.test, which is one way of knowing whether your message got through or not. But if that's not what you're testing, the auto-responses can be annoying, and you should put the word "ignore" in your subject line to suppress them. You can also try restricting distribution on your test post by changing the "Distribution:" header on your post to local.