What Are Usenet Newsgroups?
Usenet Newsgroups are online public bulletin boards on the Internet. They are a form of public e-mail that enable users to subscribe to messages and post messages to all users who subscribe to a particular group.
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History
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Usenet was originally a computer network implemented in 1980 at the University of North Carolina and Duke University, designed to facilitate mass-messaging, sharing of files, and broadcasting of announcements over a recently-developed news software system. Usenet Newsgroups are similar to e-mail--in that users can "send" messages to a group--but also similar to bulletin boards--in that any user can read those messages by simply "subscribing" to that group.
Architecture
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Usenet Newsgroups are organized along a client-server architecture: content is posted to public repositories of posts ("newsgroups") that are distributed across public Usenet servers across the Internet; and, any user can access this content by using client software ("news readers") to download posts made to a particular newsgroup. Each newsgroup has a specific address preceded by the "news" protocol (e.g., "news:sci.math") in the same way that web addresses have the "http" protocol (e.g., "http://www.google.com").
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Organization
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Usenet Newsgroups are mostly organized into a hierarchy of nine groups--the so-called "Big Eight" general topical newsgroups which are consensually governed by volunteer administrators and moderators, and Alternative newsgroups that are specialized and niche-driven. The Big Eight consist of: comp.* (computer discussions), humanities.* (fine arts, literature, and philosophy), misc.* (miscellaneous topics), news.* (Usenet-specific discussions), rec.* (recreation and entertainment), sci.* (science and technology), soc.* (social discussions), and talk.* (controversial topics and debate). Alternative newsgroups are numerous and diverse, and can range from unmoderated file-exchange centers (such as alt.binaries) to official bulletins used by companies or countries to propagate moderated postings.
Types of Newsgroups
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Usenet Newsgroups can either be moderated or unmoderated. Moderated newsgroups have messages pre-screened by moderators of the newsgroup for approval; each moderated newsgroup has a public charter outlining permissible content. Unmoderated newsgroups allow messages to be directly posted to the network and propagated for all users to read. The majority of Usenet Newsgroups are unmoderated.
Using Usenet Newsgroups
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Users can access Usenet Newsgroups by using any popular "news reader" client, such as Microsoft Outlook Express, or, more popularly, by visiting one of the public Usenet Newsgroup gateways on the Web, such as Google Groups. Navigate the directory of newsgroups by selecting the hierarchy (one of the Big Eight, the Alt alternative hierarchy, or niche country or company specific hierarchies) and then navigating into sub-groups to find a specific newsgroup. Messages are then posted into threads, groups of messages sharing the same subject and conversation.
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