Version 25 of Usenet

Updated 2013-10-01 04:46:54 by pooryorick

The Usenet is a very loosely-organized distributed discussion system. Usenet discussions are organized into groups, also known as 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 [L1 ] 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 provides a level of access to USENET (both current and historical postings) via http://groups.google.com/ .

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

news.individual.net
10 EUR per year
cis.dfn.de
LINKS AND F.A.Q ABOUT OPEN NNTP SERVERS
alt.free.newsservers
readreenews.net