What is Usenet?
Put simply, Usenet is a world-wide distributed discussion system - Similar to forums but more reliable and on a much larger scale.
It consists of a set of newsgroups with names that are classified hierarchically by subject, for example 'alt.photography'. The posts in newsgroups are referred to as Articles or Messages. These are posted to newsgroups by people on computers with the appropriate software (some commercial, but many versions are freely available).
These articles are then broadcast to other interconnected computer systems via a wide variety of networks. Some newsgroups are moderated and in these newsgroups, the articles are first sent to a moderator for approval before appearing in the newsgroup.
Usenet is available on a wide variety of computer systems and networks, but the bulk of modern Usenet traffic is transported over either the Internet or UUCP.
| There is currently around xxx,xxx newsgroups of which xxx,xxx are a major set of worldwide newsgroups contained within nine hierarchies, eight of which are operated under consensual guidelines that govern their administration and naming. The main eight are: | |
| alt.* : | Alternate discussions are a lot more specific (there is xx,xxx thousand alt newsgroups) where you can find both text and binary newsgroups for anything specific such as an artist, celebiry, console, programming language etc |
| comp.* : | Computer-related discussions |
| humanities.* : | Humanities such as Fine arts, literature, and philosophy |
| misc.* : | Miscellaneous |
| news.* : | News Discussions and Announcements (in the world of Usenet, not current events) |
| rec.* : | Recreation and Entertainment |
| sci.* : | Science related discussions |
| soc.* : | Social discussions |
| talk.* : | Talk about various controversial subjects |
| The other main hierarchies are: | |
| alive.* : | |
| borland.* : | Borland software products discussion including Borlands Programming Suites |
| corel.* : | Corel software products discussion including Corel Draw and Corel Photo Paint etc |
| uk.* : | Discussions on anything included in the topics above, but relating to the United Kingdom |
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