As an exercise, click on the "DejaNews" below. At the prompt, search on the key words;
DejaNews will return a number of "hits"; that is, news postings that contain all of those words. Each hit wil show the date, title of the posting, the news group and the author. If you use "printer port manual" or "steppng motor" as a search pattern, you should see a posting which I wrote.
Simply click on the title of the posting, and it will appear.
After reading that posting, you can click on the subject and an index of the "thread" will appear. Assume, I post something. Persons 1 and 2 respond to me. Person 3 responds to Person 1 and Person 4 to Person 3. All of this is a thread, and by going through the thread, you get a good idea of what is going being discussed.
In addition, DejaNews permits you to click on an author. As with life, there are those who write to help and inform, and there are those offer up snide remarks, known as "flames". Assume, you find an author who really seems to know his or her cookies. Click on their name, and a complete list of every news posting they have written over the past year will appear. This is very valuable in finding experts in the field.
In addition, throughout the postings, DejaNews provides links to every http address which is quoted in a posting. For example, my signature block contains my http address. Thus, if someone reads one of my postings, or someone else reposts my postings, my http address appears. Anyone reading the post the reader need only click on my address and they are connected to my home page.