What are Newsgroups? A newsgroup is a place where people can leave public messages concerning a given topic. Other people, around the world, can read these messages and reply to them. You can think of a newsgroup as your local post office or supermarket bulletin board where people can pin up messages for all to read. People post their messages much in the same fashion as they would write an email message, except that their post is readable by all interested.

The Usenet is the global distribution system for newsgroups. Because newsgroups are a free and non-proprietary discussion forum, millions of people from all over the world talk about anything and everything: from celebrity gossip to the Olympics, from astronomy to zymurgy (brewing beer). As a result, there is a vast amount of information available.

The Newsgroups are organized hierarchically. The original hierarchies (the “Big Eight”, as they have come be known) are:

comp.*

Computer science and related topics including software sources and information on hardware and software systems.

misc.*

Topics that don’t comfortably fit into any other category, or which would fit multiple categories.

news.*

Information about network news and USENET.

rec.*

Recreational pastimes and hobbies, and arts.

sci.*

Scientific research and applied computer science.

soc.*

Social issues which can range from politics to personal relationships.

talk.*

A forum for discussion and debate on controversial topics.

alt.*

A collection of groups anyone can launch and thus covers a wide range of topics.

Other hierarchies have since been added, including local hierarchies like:

can.*

Canada-specific Newsgroups.

ny.*

Local State of New York Newsgroups.

The sheer size of Usenet, coupled with the idea that you can write whatever you want, has led to the development of a set of guidelines. These guidelines are known as Netiquette.