USENET is a worldwide network of computers that is used to discuss information divided into topics or newsgroups. There are thousands of newsgroups on a full range of topics, such as cooking (rec.food.cooking), humor (rec.humor.funny), and many more. You may access USENET newsgroups from a variety of News readers, such as:
- Forte Agent
- News Xpress
To view the full set of available newsgroups categories, choose Show All Newsgroups from the Options menu in your news reader. Click on a category folder to display its newsgroups. If you click on a newsgroup, its message headings appear in the right hand pane. When you select a message heading, its contents appear in the bottom pane.
After showing all newsgroups you can subscribe to particular newsgroups by clicking on their Subscribe icons. You can change the Options menu setting so that you view only subscribed newsgroups or only subscribed newsgroups with unread messages.
Newsgroups are organized into hierarchies. Here is a sampling of some of these:
| alt | Alternative. The creation of these groups is not moderated. | |
| biz | Commercially oriented (business) | |
| comp | Computers: many groups, all subjects | |
| gnu | The GNU project of the Free Software Foundation | |
| info | Informational groups (moderated) | |
| k12 | Kindergarten through 12th grade education | |
| misc | Miscellaneous groups (small ads, etc.) | |
| news | About the news system itself | |
| rec | Recreation groups | |
| sci | Science groups | |
| soc | Society groups | |
| talk | Talk - gossip and discussion about current affairs |
Newsgroup names contain the hierarchy the are in. So the newsgroup for announcements for new users is called news.announce.newusers. This naming convention will become very apparent once you start poking around in your newsreader.
Moderated vs. Unmoderated
In unmoderated newsgroups, the local news server software normally makes messages posted to the newsgroup available for reading soon after they are posted, and the messages then spread to other news servers over the next few days.
In a moderated newsgroup, the local news server software will automatically e-mail the message to a moderation address, where a moderator acts as a gatekeeper, posting to the newsgroup only those messages which the moderator allows to be posted.
Before you post a message to a newsgroup, please refer to such guides as Harvard Computer Society's Quick Guide to Newsgroup Etiquette.
Here are some good newsgroup resources:
- Wikipedia
- Jobs and Resume Newsgroups