Originally, a term referring to a network of computers all running the Unix operating system and each communicating with the others. Since the advent of the Internet it has come to mean the worldwide set of all newsgroups. A newsgroup is a set of computer sites which are able to send electronic messages to and receive electronic messages from all the other members in the group, just by reference to the group. A member of the group may be linked to the Internet, but does not have to be.
Usenet (USEr NETwork) is a global, distributed bulletin board system (BBS).
It is a distributed Internet discussion system that evolved from a general purpose UUCP network of the same name.
Introduction
Usenet is one of the oldest computer network communications systems still in widespread use. This system, developed at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University, was called USENET to emphasize its creators' hope that the USENIX organization would take an active role in its operation (Daniel et al, 1980).
The articles that users post to Usenet are organized into topical categories called newsgroups, which are themselves logically organized into hierarchies of subjects.
In most newsgroups, the majority of the articles are responses to some other article.
When a user posts an article, it is initially only available on that user's news server. Usenet was designed for a time when networks were much slower, and not always available. Many sites on the original Usenet network would connect only once or twice a day to batch-transfer messages in and out.
Today, almost all Usenet traffic is carried over the Internet. The current format and transmission of Usenet articles is very similar to that of Internet email messages. However, Usenet articles are posted for general consumption; any usenet user has access to all newsgroups, unlike email, which requires a list of known recipients.
Usenet has significant cultural importance in the networked world, having given rise to, or popularized, many widely recognized concepts and terms such as "FAQ" and "spam."
Today, Usenet has diminished in importance with respect to mailing lists, web forums and weblogs. The difference, though, is that Usenet requires no personal registration with the group
concerned (subscription is necessary only to keep track of which articles one has already read, and that information need not be stored on a remote server), that archives are always available,
and that reading the messages requires no mail or web client, but a news client (included in most modern e-mail clients).
ISPs, news servers, and newsfeeds
Many Internet service providers, and many other Internet sites, operate news servers for their users to access. Usually the ISP will get a kickback for referring the customer to the Usenet provider. Today, one uses separate newsreader client software—a program that resembles an email client (and is often integrated with one) but accesses Usenet servers instead.
Not all ISPs run news servers.
For those who have access to the Internet, but do not have access to a news server, Google Groups () allows reading and posting of text news groups via the World Wide Web. Users who lack access to an ISP news server can use Google Groups to access the alt.free.newsservers newsgroup, which has information about open news servers.
There are also Usenet providers that specialize in offering service to users whose ISPs do not carry news, or that carry a restricted feed. One list of such providers is available at UsenetProviders' list of Usenet providers (Germany) or Jeremy Nixon's list of (paid) Usenet providers.
See also news server operation for an overview of how news systems are implemented.
Newsreader clients
Newsgroups are typically accessed with special client software that connects to a news server. incorrectly implementing Usenet protocols, standards and conventions.
Moderated and unmoderated newsgroups
A minority of newsgroups are moderated. That means that messages submitted by readers are not distributed to USENET, but instead are emailed to the moderators of the newsgroup, for approval.
Unmoderated newsgroups form the majority of USENET newsgroups, and messages submitted by readers for unmoderated newsgroups are immediately propagated for everyone to see.
Technical details
Usenet is a set of protocols for generating, storing and retrieving news "articles" (which resemble Internet mail messages) and for exchanging them among a readership which is potentially widely distributed. Usenet was thus one of the first peer-to-peer applications, although in this case the "peers" are themselves servers that the users then access, rather than the users themselves being peers on the network.
RFC 850 was the first formal specification of the messages exchanged by Usenet servers.
One difference between Usenet and newer peer-to-peer applications is that one can request the automated removal of a posting from the whole network by creating a cancel message, although due to a lack of authentication and resultant abuse, this capability is frequently disabled.
On the Internet, Usenet is on TCP Port 119.
Organization
The major set of worldwide newsgroups is contained within nine hierarchies, eight of which are operated under consensual guidelines that govern their administration and naming. The current "Big Eight" are:
comp.*: computer-related discussions (comp.software, comp.sys.amiga) misc.*: Miscellaneous topics (misc.education, misc.forsale, misc.kids) news.*: Discussions and announcements about news (meaning Usenet, not current events) (news.groups, news.admin) rec.*: Recreation and entertainment (rec.music, rec.arts.movies) sci.*: Science related discussions (sci.psychology, sci.research) soc.*: Social discussions (soc.college.org, soc.culture.african) talk.*: Talk about various controversial topics (talk.religion, talk.politics, talk.origins) humanities.*: Fine arts, literature, and philosophy (humanities.classics, humanities.design.misc)(Note: the asterisks are used as wildmat patterns, examples follow in parentheses)
See also Great Renaming. Some users prefer to use the term "Usenet" to refer only to the Big Eight hierarchies, others include alt as well.
Binary content
Usenet was originally created to distribute text content encoded in the 7-bit ASCII character set. In the late 1980s Usenet articles were often limited to 60,000 characters, and larger hard limits exist today.
As the mesh of UUCP hosts rapidly expanded, it became desirable to distinguish the Usenet subset from the overall network. The name Usenet was retained, but it was established that it only applied to news.
In addition to UUCP, early Usenet traffic was also exchanged with Fidonet and other dial-up BBS networks. The Network News Transfer Protocol, or NNTP, was introduced in 1985 to distribute Usenet articles over TCP/IP as a more flexible alternative to informal Internet transfers of UUCP traffic. Since the Internet boom of the 1990s, almost all Usenet distribution is over NNTP, obsoleting the earlier dictum that "Usenet is not the Internet."
Early versions of Usenet used Duke's A News software.
Usenet was the initial Internet community and the place for many of the most important public developments in the commercial Internet.
Web-based archiving of Usenet posts began in 1995 at Deja News with a very large, searchable database.
AOL announced that it would discontinue its integrated Usenet service in early 2005, citing the growing popularity of weblogs, chat forums and on-line conferencing. The AOL community had a tremendous role in popularizing the Usenet some 11 years earlier, with all of its positive and negative aspects.
Over time, the amount of Usenet traffic has steadily increased. A small sampling of the change (measured in feed size per day) follows:
| Daily Volume | Date | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 4.5 GB | 1996-12 | Altopia.com |
| 9 GB | 1997-07 | Altopia.com |
| 12 GB | 1998-01 | Altopia.com |
| 26 GB | 1999-01 | Altopia.com |
| 82 GB | 2000-01 | Altopia.com |
| 181 GB | 2001-01 | Altopia.com |
| 257 GB | 2002-01 | Altopia.com |
| 492 GB | 2003-01 | Altopia.com |
| 969 GB | 2004-01 | Altopia.com |
| 1.30 TB | 2004-09-30 | Octanews.net |
| 1.27 TB | 2004-11-30 | Octanews.net |
| 1.38 TB | 2004-12-31 | Octanews.net |
| 1.34 TB | 2005-01-01 | Octanews.net |
| 1.30 TB | 2005-01-01 | Newsreader.com |
| 1.67 TB | 2005-01-31 | Octanews.net |
| 1.63 TB | 2005-02-01 | Newsreader.com |
| 1.81 TB | 2005-02-28 | Octanews.net |
| 1.87 TB | 2005-03-08 | Newsreader.com |
| 2.00 TB | 2005-03-11 | Various sources |
Internet jargon and history
Many terms now in common use on the Internet—so-called "jargon"—originated or were popularized on Usenet. Likewise, many conflicts which later spread to the rest of the Internet, such as the ongoing difficulties over spamming, began on Usenet.
Archives and Web interfaces
Google Groups / DejaNews
Google Groups hosts an archive of Usenet posts dating back to May 1981. A Usenet Timeline is provided in the Help section. Already during the DejaNews era the archive had become a popular constant in Usenet culture, and remains so today.
The rather cryptic syntax to view an article available on Google Groups by its Message-ID can be simplified to http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=without-angle-brackets@example.org
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=4zCix009Cv2acya@bionic35.bionic.zer.de
Web interfaces
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The neutrality of this section is disputed. Please see the discussion on the talk page. |
With the rising popularity of the World Wide Web, so have arisen many Web-to-Usenet gateways. These interfaces are seen as controversial by Usenet users.
Since February 2001 Google Groups has provided a web interface to Usenet newsgroups.
One of many concerns that have been expressed about the Google interface is that novices may have difficulty realising that they are participating in a Usenet newsgroup rather than in a web forum hosted by Google. Google Groups is not very outspoken about the fact and doesn't make it very clear in the web interface that some of the groups at Google Groups are Usenet groups, while others are local Google-only groups.
Other concerns are:
Web-to-Usenet gateways provide a service for e-mail spammers, since a spammer's web spider can now also extract e-mail addresses from Usenet postings without any additional effort. Before such gateways, an e-mail spammer would have to use a separate tool to gain access to a news feed (as Usenet spammers do). Web-to-Usenet gateways often hide the fact from users that they are actually on Usenet, and that it would be a good idea to follow Usenet customs and established rules. They further hide the fact that Usenet is still at its core a decentralized store-and-forward system and, therefore, articles do not magically appear "everywhere" once they have been posted.On the positive side:
Web-to-Usenet gateways lower the entry barrier to Usenet. Of course, this is sometimes seen as negative by Usenet users, since it enables less technically savvy people to enter Usenet. These people tend to be less familiar with the Usenet system and Usenet etiquette, and can cause annoyance for other users.Usenet terms
backbone cabal Breidbart Index FAQ flaming and flame war Flood aka flooders and flooding FWAK Godwin's Law It's always September kill file list of newsgroups MSTing scorefile Skitt's law sock puppet sporgery Trolling There is no Cabal Usenet Death Penalty Usenet cabal Wackyparsing X-No-Archive Your mileage may varyUsenet history
rec.sport.pro-wrestling alt.fan.warlord alt.tv.simpsons Cindy's Torment Eternal September Greg Deeter Great Renaming The Legion of Net.Heroes Meow Wars rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated rec.music.white-power newsgroup vote Scientology vs. the Internet Serdar ArgicUsenet administrators
There are no Usenet "administrators" per se; Nevertheless, there are a few famous administrators:
| Russ Allbery Chris Lewis David (Tale) Lawrence |
Usenet personalities
| Lee S. Netizens : On the History and Impact of Usenet and the Internet (Perspectives). The USENET Book: Finding, Using, and Surviving Newsgroups on the Internet. "GroupLens: applying collaborative filtering to Usenet news". "Experiences with GroupLens: Making Usenet useful again". Proceedings of the 1997 Usenix Winter Technical Conference. |
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