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Usenet is older than the World Wide Web and quite possibly bigger. It’s hard to measure relative size in this case, because the Web consists of pages with text and pictures, but Usenet consists of posted messages. Usenet is more closely related to e-mail, which is why many e-mail programs (such as Outlook Express) read public Usenet messages as well as private e-mail messages.

Usenet is the original bulletin board system of the Internet. You’re probably familiar with some type of online message board. If you use AOL, you’ve most likely seen or used AOL’s private message board system. If a favorite Web site includes a discussion forum, you’ve probably read or posted messages in that format. Both examples are bulletin boards, but neither is Usenet. The crucial difference lies in back-end technicalities that are unimportant here. However, it is important to understand the three major differences between Usenet and specially built systems such as AOL and a Web site forum:

Usenet is public: Anybody with Internet access, on any computer, can view and participate in Usenet. Google makes it easy to stay connected with Usenet even if your ISP puts up a barrier, you don’t have Usenet software, or you’re traveling and are away from your home computer.
Usenet is threaded: Threading is a layout style that clarifies conversational flow. On a threaded message board, you can see at a glance who is responding to whom. AOL’s message boards are famously primitive in the threading department, discouraging depth of conversation. Many Web-based forums are likewise flat and unthreaded.
Usenet is unregulated: This is a whopper. Nobody owns Usenet and nobody even tries to regulate it. Message board behavior is uncontrolled. Usenet is not a place for children. I am not being critical; the simple fact is that Usenet reflects the scope of human nature, in conversational format, much as society does in offline formats. People are mean, kind, ill-tempered, good-humored, stupid, smart, inarticulate, eloquent — and you see it all on Usenet. Language is spicy. Hundreds of groups are dedicated to pornography. Fortunately, the Usenet realm is organized and avoiding undesirable newsgroups is easy.

The Usenet system contains more than 30,000 newsgroups. The Google Groups archive holds about 800 million messages and is expanding daily, even hourly. Size isn’t everything, though, and the issue is really what value Usenet has, or could have, in your life. I find newsgroups irresistible in four major ways:

Community: The online realm has long been prized for its capability to connect like-minded people without regard to geography, time zone, or any other factor that keeps people from meeting face-to-face. A newsgroup is created for practically every area of human discourse, from philosophy to specific television shows. Finding a home in one of these groups, and getting to know people from the inside out — without the distracting clues upon which we usually base our likes, dislikes, and judgments — is a unique experience. It is this quality of interaction that first drew me to online services many years ago, and it is still, despite the advances of the Web, the best thing about the Internet. Every morning I check my e-mail and my newsgroups, before setting foot on the Web. The alt. portion of Usenet is where most of the social groups reside.
Expertise: When I have a technical question, especially about computers, Usenet is the first place I turn. Thousands of people hang out in the .comp groups (and others) for no purpose other than to help answer questions and share knowledge about computers. Some of those helpful souls are amateurs; others are professionals. A recent persistent glitch in my home network was solved by an expert at Microsoft, who posts dozens of newsgroup messages every day, outside his job, assisting people like me.
Recreation: Newsgroups are just plain fun — the rants, the humor, the childishness, the astuteness, the complex threads. I browse through Google Groups sometimes, searching on various keywords that come to mind, just to get out of my well-worn newsgroup ruts and see what people are saying in other parts of the vast Usenet landscape.
Learning: Besides getting technical questions answered, I regularly read certain newsgroups (especially in the .sci cluster) to eavesdrop on professional chatter. I have an amateur’s interest in physics and cosmology — quarks and black holes and other unseemly phenomena — and it’s fascinating to listen in on conversations among people who really know what they’re talking about. Being a Usenet lurker in any knowledge field adds a dimension to learning that you can’t find in books and magazines.

A Usenet glossary

Know what you’re talking about when the conversation turns to newsgroups. More importantly, know what I’m talking about in this chapter. Following are some essential terms regarding Usenet and newsgroups, in particular:

Alias: see Screen name.

Article: Traditionally, a newsgroup message is called an article. This terminology is a holdover from the days when newsgroups were about news and academic discourse. Now, messages are usually called messages or posts. This book doesn’t refer to newsgroup articles, but the Help pages at Google Groups do.

Binaries: Media files posted to Usenet. Discussion newsgroups usually discourage posting binaries such as pictures, music files, and video files. Even HTML posting is frowned on — plain text is the preferred format. But thousands of newsgroups are devoted to binary postings, from music to movies to software to pornography. These groups are usually identified by the word binaries somewhere in their Usenet address.

Cross-post: A message sent to more than one newsgroup simultaneously. Although typically a low-level type of spam, cross-posting is sometimes used legitimately to ask a question or make a comment across related groups. Capricious or spammy cross-posts are loathed, partly because failing to notice the cross-post is easy, resulting in a developed thread running in several groups at once. Generally, cross-posting is bad form. If you do it, acknowledge the cross-post in the message.

Expired messages: Usenet messages stay on their servers, available for viewing, for a certain time. Then they expire, which is sometimes called scrolling off or just scrolling. The amount of time varies from server to server and even from group to group on one server depending on the group’s traffic. When messages expire, Google Groups swings into action by archiving the content that would otherwise be lost.

FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions. Many newsgroups maintain a FAQ file, which is a long message spelling out the customs and basic facts of the group. It’s acceptable to post a message asking where the FAQ file is located. Google Groups can also locate FAQs for individual groups — just search for FAQ within a group. Ignore the FAQ at your peril.

Flame: A message posted with the intent to hurt. Flames are personal attacks, launched sometimes in response to spam or other behavior contrary to community interests or just because somebody is in a bad mood. Flaming is an art form and can be funny or frightening depending on the practitioner.

Lurking: Reading without posting. In any message board community, lurkers greatly outnumber active participants. There’s nothing illicit about lurking; newsgroups are for recreational reading as well as conversation. Anyone can delurk at any time to post a message, and then slip back into lurker mode or stay out to talk.

Message: Similar to an e-mail message and often composed in an e-mail program, a Usenet message is posted to a newsgroup, where it can be read by anyone in the group.

Newsgroup server: Usenet newsgroups are distributed through a network of autonomous, networked computers called servers. That’s how the entire Internet works, in fact, and newsgroup servers are a specialized type of Internet computer. Each newsgroup server administrator decides which newsgroups to carry as well as the duration of messages in the groups.

Newsgroups: Topical online communities operating in message board format. Newsgroups don’t necessarily have anything to do with news; many groups are purely social. Technology companies such as Microsoft often use newsgroups to provide customer service.

Newsreader: A stand-alone program interface to Usenet, often paired with e-mail functions. Outlook Express, primarily an e-mail program, is the best-known newsreader. Some specialized programs deliver only newsgroups, not e-mail messages. Google Groups provides a Web interface to Usenet and needs no program besides your browser.

Post and posting: Posting a message (often called a post) places it on the public message board. Usenet software, operating behind the scenes, positions the post in correct thread order as long as you don’t change the thread title.

Quote-back: Portions of a previous message repeated in a new message, to sustain continuity in a conversation. Google Groups provides quote-backs automatically, indicated by the > symbol before each line of the quote.

Screen name: The online identity of a Usenet participant, the screen name is also called an alias. You find a great deal of anonymity in newsgroups — and also lots of real names out in the open. In Google Groups, you set your screen name when establishing a Groups account.

Spam: One message, usually promotional in nature, posted (or e-mailed) to many destinations simultaneously. Less formally, any repetitive and self-serving behavior is regarded as spam. Spamming is considered a diabolical sin in Usenet and is met with flames.

Subscribe: Bookmarking a newsgroup in a newsreader is called subscribing. Unlike a newspaper subscription, there is no charge and nothing is delivered to your screen. Subscribing is an easy way to keep handy the newsgroups you follow. There is no subscription feature at Google Groups, but you can use your browser’s bookmark function to tag your favorite groups.

Thread: A series of messages strung together into a single newsgroup conversation. Sometimes called a string. A thread might consist of two messages or hundreds. Initiating a new conversation on a newsgroup message board is called starting a thread.

Threaded: Online conversations whose message headers are graphically displayed to clarify the evolution of the discussion. Threaded message boards make it easy to see who is responding to whom.

Troll: Newsgroup disrupters, trolls post deliberately offensive or off-topic messages in an apparent desire to get noticed at any cost. Some practitioners have taken the art of trolling to a high level of imagination and are regarded with some admiration and even occasional affection. By and large, though, trolls are reviled by Usenet inhabitants.

Usenet: A network of Internet-based bulletin boards called newsgroups, used primarily as discussion forums and secondarily as repositories of media files.

Accessing newsgroups on and off the Web

Some people use Google Groups as their only interface to Usenet for reading and posting messages. They have no choice in some situations, such as when a user doesn’t own a computer and accesses the Internet on a public computer. When there is a choice, though, my recommendation is to perform most of your active Usenet participation using a stand-alone newsgroup reader. This program might not be the same as your e-mail program. (They’re not the same for AOL users.) Outlook Express, probably the most popular e-mail program, offers full newsgroup functionality. In addition, many dedicated newsreaders are available as freeware and shareware downloads. The Netscape browser/e-mail/newsgroup program is free and quite advanced. X-News is another good (and free) one.

It might seem strange to advise against using Google Groups for the daily Usenet lifestyle. Let’s be clear about its strengths and weaknesses. Google Groups is best at archiving and presenting a searchable database of Usenet history. It functions also as an interface for posting and daily reading, but its interactive features fall way behind those of a stand-alone program. Also, importantly, your ISP’s newsgroup server is likely to be more up-to-the-minute than Google’s server, and that factor definitely affects the Usenet experience.

So, my advice is to use Google Groups for searching and when traveling or forced away from your own computer. Otherwise, use a desktop program for subscribing to, reading, and posting to the current day’s Usenet.

Google provides an excellent introduction to Usenet, one of the most venerable portions of the Internet. The searchable archive throws open the doors to Usenet history. You might not choose Google as your primary interface when posting, subscribing, and reading every day. Stand-alone programs are quicker and sleeker, and they have better tracking features than any Web interface can. But every longtime veteran Usenet pilot I know occasionally uses Google Groups for searching or when traveling.

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