What are newsgroups?
When people want to share some information or opinion with other people
on a given topic, they can send each other mail. When the number of
people participating in the discussion becomes large, the messages are
sent and stored on computers serving whole sites rather than to
individual users. Each topic has its own newsgroup and users at each
site can browse through any of them. The system that distributes the
articles of each newsgroup is called Usenet. It ensures that each sites
has received a copy of every article posted anywhere on the network.
The name of a newsgroup is indicative of its topic. The major sets of
newsgroups which are distributed globally start with the words comp (for
computer), soc (social), rec (recreation), or alt (alternative).
Many newsgroups maintain an archive called FAQ (Frequently Asked
Questions) which contain answers to common questions which have appeared
in articles in the past. Such archives can be found in various locations
(one such location).
The reader is warned against taking anything posted on Usenet all too
seriously. People posting articles present their opinions without
reservations, hidden behind a terminal. Their articles do not represent
any official position by either countries or employers posters are
URLs for newsgroups start with news: followed by the name of the
newsgroup. If you have not accessed a Usenet newsgroup before, you
might need to instruct your browser which host to use as its news server.
Most often the computer name needed is of the form news.xxx,
where xxx is your Internet provider's domain name.