A usenet newsgroup is a repository usually within the Usenet Duke University graduate students Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979 and it was established in 1980. Users read and post messages to one or more categories, known as newsgroups. Usenet resembles a bulletin board system (BBS) in many respects, and is the precursor to the various Internet forums that are widely used today; and can system, for messages posted When a message is replied to in e-mail, Internet forums, or Usenet, the original can often be included, or "quoted", in a variety of different posting styles from many users in different locations. The term may be confusing to some, because it is usually a discussion group A discussion group is an online forum for individuals to discuss various topics amongst each other. People add their comments by posting a block of text to the group. Others can then comment and respond. In the early days of the Internet, USENET was the most popular type of discussion group, but now discussions mostly take place over the World. Newsgroups are technically distinct from, but functionally similar to, discussion forums An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. They differ from chat rooms in that messages are not shown in real-time, to see new messages the forum page must be reloaded. Also, depending on the access level of a user and/or the forum set-up, a posted message on the World Wide Web The World Wide Web, abbreviated as WWW and commonly known as the Web, is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. With a web browser, one can view web pages that may contain text, images, videos, and other multimedia and navigate between them by using hyperlinks. Using concepts from earlier hypertext systems, British. Newsreader A newsreader is an application program that reads articles on Usenet , either directly from the news server's disks or via the Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP) software is used to read newsgroups.

Despite the advent of file-sharing technologies such as BitTorrent, as well as the increased use of blogs, formal discussion forums, and social networking sites, coupled with a growing number of service providers blocking access to Usenet (see main article) newsgroups continue to be widely used.

Types of newsgroups

Typically, the newsgroup is focused on a particular topic of interest. Some newsgroups allow the posting of messages on a wide variety of themes, regarding anything a member chooses to discuss as on-topic In the context of mailing lists, discussion groups, discussion forums, bulletin boards, newsgroups, and wikis a contribution is off-topic if it is not within the bounds of the current discussion, and on-topic if it is, while others keep more strictly to their particular subject, frowning on off-topic In the context of mailing lists, discussion groups, discussion forums, bulletin boards, newsgroups, and wikis a contribution is off-topic if it is not within the bounds of the current discussion, and on-topic if it is postings. The news admin (the administrator of a news server A news server is a set of computer software used to handle Usenet articles. It may also refer to a computer itself which is primarily or solely used for handling Usenet. A reader server provides an interface to read and post articles, generally with the assistance of a news client. A transit server exchanges articles with other servers. Most) decides how long articles are kept on his server before being expired (deleted). Different servers will have different retention times for the same newsgroup; some may keep articles for as little as one or two weeks, others may hold them for many months. Some admins keep articles in local or technical newsgroups around longer than articles in other newsgroups.

Newsgroups generally come in either of two types, binary or text. There is no technical difference between the two, but the naming differentiation allows users and servers with limited facilities to minimize network bandwidth usage. Generally, Usenet conventions and rules are enacted with the primary intention of minimizing the overall amount of network traffic and resource usage.

Newsgroups are much like the public message boards on old bulletin board systems A Bulletin Board System, or BBS, is a computer system running software that allows users to connect and log in to the system using a terminal program. Once logged in, a user can perform functions such as uploading and downloading software and data, reading news and bulletins, and exchanging messages with other users, either through electronic mail. For those readers not familiar with this concept, envision an electronic version of the corkboard in the entrance of your local grocery store.

Newsgroups frequently become cliquish and are subject to sporadic flame wars Flaming is hostile and insulting interaction between Internet users. Flaming usually occurs in the social context of a discussion board, Internet Relay Chat (IRC), Usenet, by e-mail, game servers such as Xbox Live or Playstation Network, and on Video-sharing websites. It is usually the result of the discussion of heated real-world issues like and trolling In Internet slang, a troll is someone who posts inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum, chat room, or blog, with the primary intent of provoking other users into a desired emotional response or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion. In addition to the offending poster,, but they can also be a valuable source of information, support and friendship, bringing people who are interested in specific subjects together from around the world.

Back when the early community was the pioneering computer society, the common habit seen with many articles was a notice at the end disclosed if the author was free of, or had a conflict of interest, or had any financial motive, or axe to grind, in posting about any product or issue. This is seen much less now, and the reader must read skeptically, just like in society, besides all the privacy or phishing In the field of computer security, phishing is the criminally fraudulent process of attempting to acquire sensitive information such as usernames, passwords and credit card details by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication. Communications purporting to be from popular social web sites, auction sites, online payment issues.

There are currently well over 100,000 Usenet newsgroups, but only 20,000 or so of those are active.^{[citation needed]} Newsgroups vary in popularity, with some newsgroups only getting a few posts a month while others get several hundred (and in a few cases a couple of thousand) messages a day.

Weblogs A blog is a type of website or part of a website. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order. Blog can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog have replaced some of the uses of newsgroups (especially because, for a while, they were less prone to spamming Spam is the abuse of electronic messaging systems to send unsolicited bulk messages indiscriminately. While the most widely recognized form of spam is e-mail spam, the term is applied to similar abuses in other media: instant messaging spam, Usenet newsgroup spam, Web search engine spam, spam in blogs, wiki spam, online classified ads spam, mobile).

A website called Deja News The Deja News Research Service was an archive of messages posted to Usenet discussion groups, started in March 1995 by Steve Madere in Austin, Texas. Its powerful search engine capabilities won the service acclaim, generated controversy, and significantly changed the perceived nature of online discussion began archiving An archive is a collection of historical records, as well as the place they are located. Archives contain primary source documents that have accumulated over the course of an individual or organization's lifetime Usenet in the mid-1990s. DejaNews also provided a searchable web interface. Google Google Inc. is a multinational public cloud computing, Internet search, and advertising technologies corporation. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program. The company was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, often dubbed the " bought the archive from them and made efforts to buy other Usenet archives to attempt to create a complete archive of Usenet newsgroups and postings from its early beginnings. Like DejaNews, Google has a web search interface to the archive, but Google also allows newsgroup posting.

Non-Usenet newsgroups are possible and do occur, as private individuals or organizations set up their own NNTP servers. Examples include the newsgroups Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is a public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions. Established on April 4, 1975 to develop and sell BASIC interpreters for the Altair 8 runs to allow peer-to-peer support of their products and those at news://news.grc.com.

How newsgroups work

Newsgroup servers are hosted by various organizations and institutions. Most Internet service providers An Internet service provider , also sometimes referred to as an Internet access provider (IAP), is a company that offers its customers access to the Internet[citation needed]. The ISP connects to its customers using a data transmission technology appropriate for delivering Internet Protocol Paradigm, such as dial-up, DSL, cable modem, wireless or host their own news servers A news server is a set of computer software used to handle Usenet articles. It may also refer to a computer itself which is primarily or solely used for handling Usenet. A reader server provides an interface to read and post articles, generally with the assistance of a news client. A transit server exchanges articles with other servers. Most, or rent access to one, for their subscribers. There are also a number of companies who sell access to premium news servers.

Every host of a news server maintains agreements with other news servers to regularly synchronize. In this way news servers form a network. When a user posts to one news server, the message is stored locally. That server then shares the message with the servers that are connected to it if both carry the newsgroup, and from those servers to servers that they are connected to, and so on. For newsgroups that are not widely carried, sometimes a carrier group is used for crossposting Crossposting is the act of posting the same message to multiple forums, mailing lists, or newsgroups. This is distinct from multiposting, which involves posting multiple identical messages, each to a single forum, newsgroup, or topic area to aid distribution. This is typically only useful for groups that have been removed or newer alt.* groups. Crossposts between hierarchies, outside of the Big 8 and alt.* hierarchies, are failure prone.

Hierarchies

Newsgroups are often arranged into hierarchies, theoretically making it simpler to find related groups. The term top-level hierarchy refers to the hierarchy defined by the prefix before the first dot.

The most commonly known hierarchies is the usenet hierarchies. So for instance newsgroup rec.arts.sf.starwars.games would be in the rec.* top-level usenet hierarchy, where the asterisk (*) is defined as a wildcard character In telecommunications, a wildcard character is a character that may be substituted for any of a defined subset of all possible characters. There were seven original major hierarchies of usenet newsgroups, known as the "Big 7":

• comp.* — Discussion of computer-related topics
• news.* — Discussion of Usenet itself
• sci.* — Discussion of scientific subjects
• rec.* — Discussion of recreational activities (e.g. games and hobbies)
• soc.* — Socialising and discussion of social issues.
• talk.* — Discussion of contentious issues such as religion and politics.
• misc.* — Miscellaneous discussion—anything which doesn't fit in the other hierarchies.

These were all created in the Great Renaming The Great Renaming was a restructuring of Usenet newsgroups that took place in 1987. B News maintainer and UUNET founder Rick Adams is generally considered to be the initiator of the Renaming of 1986–1987, before which all of these newsgroups were in the net.* hierarchy. At that time there was a great controversy over what newsgroups should be allowed. Among those that the usenet cabal (who effectively ran the Big 7 at the time) did not allow were those concerning recipes The earliest known recipes date from approximately 1600 BC and come from an Akkadian tablet from southern Babylonia, drugs Recreational drug use is the use of a psychoactive substance with the intention of creating or enhancing recreational experience. Such use is controversial, however, often being considered to be also drug abuse, and it is often illegal. Also, it may overlap with other uses, such as medicinal , performance enhancement, and entheogenic (spiritual), and sex.

This situation resulted in the creation of an alt.* (short for "alternative") usenet hierarchy, under which these groups would be allowed. Over time, the laxness of rules on newsgroup creation in alt.* compared to the Big 7 meant that many new topics could, given time, gain enough popularity to get a Big 7 newsgroup. There was a rapid growth of alt.* as a result, and the trend continues to this day. Because of the anarchistic nature with which the groups sprang up, some jokingly referred to ALT standing for "Anarchists, Lunatics and Terrorists" (a backronym A backronym or bacronym is a phrase constructed after the fact to make an existing word or words match an acronym. Backronyms may be invented with serious or humorous intent, or may be a type of false or folk etymology).

In 1995, humanities.* was created for the discussion of the humanities (e.g. literature, philosophy), and the Big 7 became the Big 8.

The alt.* hierarchy The alt.* hierarchy is a major class of newsgroups in Usenet, containing all newsgroups whose name begins with "alt.", organized hierarchically. The alt.* hierarchy is not confined to newsgroups of any specific subject or type, although in practice more formally organized groups tend not to occur in alt. The alt.* hierarchy was created has discussion of all kinds of topics, and many hierarchies for discussion specific to a particular geographical area or in a language other than English.

Before a new Big 8 newsgroup can be created, an RFD (Request For Discussion) must be posted into the newsgroup news.announce.newgroups, which is then discussed in news.groups.proposals. Once the proposal has been formalized with a name, description, charter, the Big-8 Management Board will vote on whether to create the group. If the proposal is approved by the Big-8 Management Board, the group is created. Groups are removed in a similar manner.

Creating a new group in the alt.* hierarchy is not subject to the same rules; anybody can create a newsgroup, and anybody can remove them, but most news administrators will ignore these requests unless a local user requests the group by name.

Further hierarchies

There are a number of newsgroup hierarchies outside of the Big 8 (and alt.*) that can be found at many news servers. These include non-English language groups, groups managed by companies or organizations about their products, geographic/local hierarchies, and even non-internet network boards routed into NNTP. Examples include (alphabetically):

• aus.* — Australian news groups
• ba.* — Discussion in the San Francisco Bay area
• ca.* — Discussion in California
• can.* — Canadian news groups
• cn.* — Chinese news groups
• chi.* — Discussions about the Chicago area
• de.* — Discussions in German
• england.* — Discussions (mostly) local to England, see also uk.*
• fidonet.* — Discussions routed from FidoNet FidoNet is a worldwide computer network that is used for communication between bulletin board systems. It was most popular in the early 1990s, prior to the introduction of easy and affordable access to the Internet. The network continues to operate but has shrunk considerably, primarily due to the closing of many BBSes.[when?]
• fr.* — Discussions in French
• fj.* — "From Japan," discussions in Japanese
• gnu.* — Discussions about GNU software
• hawaii.* — Discussions (mostly) local to Hawaii
• hp.* — Hewlett-Packard internal news groups
• it.* — Discussions in Italian
• microsoft.* — Discussions about Microsoft products
• pl.* — Polish news groups
• tw.* — Taiwan news groups
• uk.* — Discussions on matters in the UK The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland[note 7] is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe. It is an island country, spanning an archipelago including Great Britain, the northeastern part of the island of Ireland, and many small islands. Northern Ireland is the only part of the UK with a land
• yale.* — Discussions (mostly) local to Yale

Additionally, there is the free.* hierarchy, which can be considered "more alt than alt.*". There are many local sub-hierarchies within this hierarchy, usually for specific countries or cultures (such as free.it.* for Italy).

Binary newsgroups

While newsgroups were not created with the intention of distributing binary files, they have proven to be quite effective for this. Because of the way they work, a file uploaded once will be spread and can then be downloaded by an unlimited number of users. More useful is that every user is drawing on the bandwidth of his or her own news server. This means that unlike P2P A peer-to-peer, commonly abbreviated to P2P, is any distributed network architecture composed of participants that make a portion of their resources directly available to other network participants, without the need for central coordination instances (such as servers or stable hosts). Peers are both suppliers and consumers of resources, in technology, the user's download speed is under his or her own control, as opposed to under the willingness of other people to share files. In fact, this is another benefit of newsgroups: it is usually not expected that users share. If every user makes uploads then the servers would be flooded; thus it is acceptable and often encouraged for users to just leech.

There were originally a number of obstacles to the transmission of binary files over Usenet. First, Usenet was designed with the transmission of text in mind. Consequently, for a long period of time, it was impossible to send binary data as it was. So, a workaround, Uuencode (and later on Base64 Base64 is a group of similar encoding schemes that represent binary data in an ASCII string format by translating it into a radix-64 representation. The Base64 term originates from a specific MIME content transfer encoding and yEnc yEnc is a binary-to-text encoding scheme for transferring binary files in messages on Usenet or via e-mail. It reduces the overhead over previous US-ASCII-based encoding methods by using an 8-bit Extended ASCII encoding method. yEnc's overhead is often as little as 1–2%, compared to 33%–40% overhead for 6-bit encoding methods like uuencode and), was developed which mapped the binary data from the files to be transmitted (e.g. sound or video files) to text characters which would survive transmission over Usenet. At the receiver's end, the data needed to be decoded by the user's news client A newsreader is an application program that reads articles on Usenet , either directly from the news server's disks or via the Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP). Additionally, there was a limit on the size of individual posts such that large files could not be sent as single posts. To get around this, Newsreaders were developed which were able to split long files into several posts. Intelligent newsreaders at the other end could then automatically group such split files into single files, allowing the user to easily retrieve the file. These advances have meant that Usenet is used to send and receive many terabytes A terabyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information. The prefix tera means 1012 in the International System of Units , and therefore 1 terabyte is 1000000000000bytes, or 1 trillion (short scale) bytes. The unit symbol for the terabyte is TB or Tbyte of files per day.

There are two main issues that pose problems for transmitting binary files over newsgroups. The first is completion rates and the other is retention rates. The business of premium news servers A news server is a set of computer software used to handle Usenet articles. It may also refer to a computer itself which is primarily or solely used for handling Usenet. A reader server provides an interface to read and post articles, generally with the assistance of a news client. A transit server exchanges articles with other servers. Most is generated primarily on their ability to offer superior completion and retention rates, as well as their ability to offer very fast connections to users. Completion rates are significant when users wish to download large files that are split into pieces; if any one piece is missing, it is impossible to successfully download and reassemble the desired file. To work around the problem, a redundancy scheme known as PAR is commonly used.

A number of websites exist for the purpose of keeping an index of the files posted to binary newsgroups.

Moderated newsgroups

A moderated newsgroup has one or more individuals who must approve articles before they are posted at large. A separate address is used for the submission of posts and the moderators then propagate posts which are approved for the readership. The first moderated newsgroups appeared in 1984 under mod.* according to RFC 2235, "Hobbes' Internet Timeline".

See also

• List of newsgroups As of October 2002[update], there are about 100,000 Usenet newsgroups, of which approximately a fifth are active.[citation needed] This number varies, depending on the news server carrying the newsgroups
• alt.* hierarchy The alt.* hierarchy is a major class of newsgroups in Usenet, containing all newsgroups whose name begins with "alt.", organized hierarchically. The alt.* hierarchy is not confined to newsgroups of any specific subject or type, although in practice more formally organized groups tend not to occur in alt. The alt.* hierarchy was created
• News client A newsreader is an application program that reads articles on Usenet , either directly from the news server's disks or via the Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP)
• NNTP The Network News Transfer Protocol is an Internet application protocol used for transporting Usenet news articles (netnews) between news servers and for reading and posting articles by end user client applications. Brian Kantor of the University of California, San Diego and Phil Lapsley of the University of California, Berkeley authored RFC 977,
• News aggregator In computing, a feed aggregator, also known as a feed reader, news reader, rss reader or simply aggregator, is client software or a Web application which aggregates syndicated web content such as news headlines, blogs, podcasts, and vlogs in a single location for easy viewing
• Backbone cabal
• Google Groups Google Groups is a service from Google Inc. that supports discussion groups, including many Usenet newsgroups, based on common interests. Membership in Google Groups is free of charge and many groups are anonymous. Users can find discussion groups related to their interests and participate in threaded conversations, either through a web interface

External links

• Usenet servers at the Open Directory Project The Open Directory Project , also known as Dmoz (from directory.mozilla.org, its original domain name), is a multilingual open content directory of World Wide Web links. It is owned by Netscape, but it is constructed and maintained by a community of volunteer editors
• Public News Servers at the Open Directory Project The Open Directory Project , also known as Dmoz (from directory.mozilla.org, its original domain name), is a multilingual open content directory of World Wide Web links. It is owned by Netscape, but it is constructed and maintained by a community of volunteer editors
• The Big-8 Management Board
• Alphabetical list of usenet hierarchies
• The news.newusers.questions home page - a newsgroup for questions and answers about Usenet and the Internet
• How to Usenet - Beginner's Usenet Newsgroup Guide
• Newsgroups Charter Directory - A charter list to educate and inform users about specific usenet groups and their purpose

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