'''Usenet''' is a very loosely-organized distributed discussion system.
Usenet discussions are organized into [Usenet group%|%groups], also known as
[newsgroup%|%newsgroups].
A [Usenet moderated group] is a group in which one or more human or software
agents which must approve a posting before others see them. A [Usenet gateway
group] is a way to mirror a mailing list discussion into the Usenet medium.
At times, people ask where to read USENET newsgroups. There is no ''one''
place to read USENET. USENET, as mentioned above, is a broadcast medium. So
what one has to do is to find some place that either provides [NNTP] access to
some subset of newsgroups, or one finds a web site with such access which
provides [http] access to the data. Here on the [Wiki] one can find a [simple
news posting program] and you may very well locate a news reading program as
well.
[LV]: There were nntp readers and posting programs in Netscape
[http://netscape.com/] and probably other browsers. There is a relatively
crude news reader and poster in http://lynx.browser.org/. I myself prefer
http://trn.sf.net/.
For example, Google now providesd a level of access to USENET (both current and
historical postings) via http://groups.google.com/ but this stopped being updated on 22/02/2024.
[https://newsgrouper.org.uk%|%Newsgrouper] provides free web access to Usenet. It's implemented in Tcl, the code can be found at https://chiselapp.com/user/cmacleod/repository/newsgrouper/home .
** Resources **
[http://www.linux.it/~md/usenet/%|%Usenet Resources], by Marco d'Itri:
[http://www.faqs.org/faqs/net-legends-faq/%|%Net.Legends.FAQ]:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20130923232645/http://www.vic.com/~dbd/minifaqs%|%Net.Legends mini FAQs]:
** Etiquette **
Someone commented: ''It is a matter of good manners to either check first with
the original author or at least let them know afterwards. Some people prefer
anonimity ...'' RS: Posting to [Usenet] is like "going public" - Google doesn't
ask you either whether you want your posting archived...
Ah, but Google allows one to add a header that says "Do not archive this
posting".
The bottom line is that while there is no requirement to check with the author,
it is good manners. And one seldom goes wrong with observing good manners.
[RS]: OK, point taken.
** Servers **
[http://www.eternal-september.org/%|%eternal-september.org]: free access to text-only usenet news
[http://news.individual.net/%|%news.individual.net]: 10 EUR per year
[http://www.cis.dfn.de/%|%cis.dfn.de]:
[http://vivil.free.fr/nntpeng.htm%|%LINKS AND F.A.Q ABOUT OPEN NNTP SERVERS]:
[https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/alt.free.newsservers%|%alt.free.newsservers]:
[http://readfreenews.net/%|%readreenews.net]: 404
[http://news.aioe.org/%|%news.aioe.org]: free access without registration
[https://usenet.blueworldhosting.com/%|%news.blueworldhosting.com]: Free, no account needed to read, has history including comp.lang.tcl from 2003 onwards.
** History **
DejaNews was a WWW site that provided web access to usenet newsgroups; it used
to have comp.lang.tcl as the URL http://www.deja.com/group/comp.lang.tcl - but
Google came along, bought the database, and now has that information up at:
http://groups.google.com/. One has access to a large number of years - maybe
all years! - of comp.lang.tcl* archives by using the advanced searching
function of google. It appears to [LV] that, during November 2001, the lag
time between posting and articles appearing on google, is about 6-8 hours.
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