For many Internet users, Usenet is the Internet. What is Usenet? Usenet is a place on the Internet where you can discuss just about any kind of topic with millions of people around the world. Usenet is probably the largest information exchange areas available.
Usenet is best described as some kind of notice board which everyone can read and anyone can respond to. If, for example, a person advertised their car at work on the company notice board a reader could choose to respond in private (by calling the person selling the car) or by pinning another notice onto the board asking the seller to contact them.
Usenet is a collection of electronic noticeboards (called newsgroups) convering a range of different subjects. At the moment there are over 20,000 newsgroups throughout the world. Topics range from medicine, law to jokes, sex etc.
Usenet is simply a users network (hence the reason for the name). Usenet is more commonly referred to as news.
You read these notices/messages with a newsreader. This software program will collate the newsgroups and messages within them. Many of the top quality news readers form threads of news which means that if you reply to a message your reply will be attached (in a tree formation) to the original message. If someone then responded to your message this would be attached to your message (which is still attached to the original). This means you can build a discussion relating to a topic and users can read the threads and, therefore, respond to the discussion correctly.
All newsreaders show you information about the news message. Who it was from, when it was sent, the topic etc. They also allow you to respond to the individual directly or follow up, which means the message is posted to the newsgroup for everyone to read. Most people respond to messages this way.
There are over 20,000 different newsgroups worldwide. However, many users may not be able to access all of them. Why not?
The first reason is due to the size of the space needed to store all 20,000 newsgroups containing the messages. Some messages may amount to a few lines, many can be many lines and some even have attached files.
Due to the size of all these newsgroups many ISP's only carry the most popular groups - which means that you may be only able to access, say, 14,000 groups.
The second reason for not carrying groups (and this is a good reason why you may find an ISP has removed a particular group) is due to many of the newsgroups containing hardcore sex-related images which are illegal. Therefore many of these groups are withdrawn by most ISP's (especially in Germany where they have had a huge crackdown on sex-related newsgroups recently).
You are able to subscribe and unsubscribe to as many newsgroups as you wish. However, first of all you need to find the newsgroups you want to subscribe to! You need to load your newsreader and launch the group manager which will allow you to list all the newsgroups available from your ISP.
Newsgroups are divided into different hirarchies. Each hirarchy has its own name and covers a specific area:
| Name | Content |
|---|---|
| alt | Alternative newsgroups covering a wide range of topics |
| biz | Business-related newsgroups |
| comp | Computer-related news. Many Amiga groups are contained here. ie. comp.sys.amiga.* |
| rec | Recreational or hobby-related newsgroups |
| misc | This contains everything else that doesn't fit into other categories |
| news | Groups containing news about Usenet itself |
| sci | Science-oriented newsgroups |
| soc | Discussions of social issues |
| talk | Groups often containing controversial issues |
Within these hirarchies are often sub-categories, separated by periods ("."). If we take a look at the main Amiga groups you will notice that they are within a "sys" (system) sub-category linking from the "comp" main group.
| comp.sys.amiga.advocacy | This is one of the most popular Amiga newsgroups that consists of people expressing the virtues of their machine against others. This newsgroup is often read by non-Amiga owners |
| comp.sys.amiga.announce | A moderated groupd which contains announcements about news software and hardware for Amiga. Strangely this has always been a very quiet groupd |
| comp.sys.amiga.applications | Discussion about Amiga programs |
| comp.sys.amiga.audio | Discussions about sound samples, MIDI, creating music on the Amiga |
| comp.sys.amiga.cd32 | Discussions about the CD32 |
| comp.sys.amiga.datacomm | A high-traffic site which mainly discusses modems, comms etc |
| comp.sys.amiga.emulations | Discussing emulating other computers with the Amiga |
| comp.sys.amiga.games | Playing games on the Amiga |
| comp.sys.amiga.graphics | Creating and manipulating graphics on the Amiga |
| comp.sys.amiga.hardware | Discussion about your Amiga and hardware you can attach to it. A good group if you need some advice |
| comp.sys.amiga.introduction | If you are a new Amiga user, start here |
| comp.sys.amiga.marketplace | This group allows you to buy and sell your software or hardware on the Internet. Beware that there are some dubious people offering software/hardware which could be faulty or not as it is described |
| comp.sys.amiga.misc | Strangely this is a high-traffic site where most people just discuss anything Amiga related. Probably the best Amiga newsgroup to read |
| comp.sys.amiga.multimedia | Multimedia and the Amiga - CanDo, Scala etc |
| comp.sys.amiga.networking | This is generally regarded as the newsgroup for Amiga users wanting about the Internet and their Amiga |
| comp.sys.amiga.programmer | If you are programming on the Amiga, join this group |
| comp.sys.amiga.reviews | Another moderated newsgroup which contains the occassional review from Amiga Internet users |
| comp.sys.amiga.uucp | This stands for Unix-to-Unix-Copy-Program and is for old ways of sending email. Not a very popular group |
One of the problems with high-traffic newsgroups (groups which contain many messages) is that the group soon becomes too large.
Because of this, news messages are often given expiry tags which mean than after a certain number of days (or weeks) a site will delete the message. Generally the expiry dates are controlled by the news administrator.
A low-traffic newsgroup, therefore, will contain messages that may be kept for weeks whereas a high-traffic newsgroup may contain messages which last for a few days.
Some newsgroups are moderated which means they are monitored to make sure that only high quality postings are excepted. The Amiga reviews newsgroup is moderated, for example, to stop people slating a product for no particular reason.
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