Types
of newsgroups
Typically, the newsgroup is focused on a particular topic of
interest. Some newsgroups allow the posting of messages on a wide variety of themes,
regarding anything a member chooses to discuss as on-topic, while others keep more strictly
to their particular subject, frowning on off-topic postings. The news admin (the
administrator of a news
server) decides how long articles are kept on his server before being expired
(deleted). Different servers will have different retention times for the same newsgroup;
some may keep articles for as little as one or two weeks, others may hold them for many
months. Some admins keep articles in local or technical newsgroups around longer than
articles in other newsgroups.
Newsgroups generally come in either of two types, binary or
text. There is no technical difference between the two, but the naming differentiation
allows users and servers with limited facilities the ability to minimize network bandwidth
usage. Generally, Usenet conventions and rules are enacted with the primary intention of
minimizing the overall amount of network traffic and resource usage.
Newsgroups are much like the public message boards on old bulletin
board systems. For those readers not familiar with this concept, envision an
electronic version of the corkboard in the entrance of your local grocery store.
Newsgroups frequently become cliquish and are subject to
sporadic flame wars and
trolling, but they can also be a
valuable source of information, support and friendship, bringing people who are interested
in specific subjects together from around the world.
Back when the early community was the pioneering computer
society, the common habit seen with many articles was a notice at the end disclosed if the
author was free of, or had a conflict of interest, or had any financial motive, or axe to
grind, in posting about any product or issue. This is seen much less now, and the reader
must read skeptically, just like in society, besides all the privacy or phishing issues.
There are currently well over 100,000 Usenet newsgroups, but
only 20,000 or so of those are active. Newsgroups vary in popularity, with some newsgroups
only getting a few posts a month while others get several hundred (and in a few cases a
couple of thousand) messages a day.
Weblogs have replaced some of the uses of
newsgroups (especially because, for a while, they were less prone to spamming).
A website called Deja News began archiving Usenet in the mid-1990s.
DejaNews also provided a searchable web interface. Google bought the archive from them and
made efforts to buy other Usenet archives to attempt to create a complete archive of
Usenet newsgroups and postings from its early beginnings. Like DejaNews, Google has a web
search interface to the archive, but Google also allows newsgroup posting.
Non-Usenet newsgroups are possible and do occur, as private
individuals or organizations set up their own nntp servers. Examples include the
newsgroups Microsoft
runs to allow peer-to-peer support of their products and those at news://news.grc.com.
How
newsgroups work
Newsgroup servers are hosted by various organizations and
institutions. Most Internet service providers
host their own news
servers, or rent access to one, for their subscribers. There are also a number of
companies who sell access to premium news servers.
Every host of a news server maintains agreements with other
news servers to regularly synchronize. In this way news servers form a network. When a
user posts to one news server, the message is stored locally. That server then shares the
message with the servers that are connected to it if both carry the newsgroup, and from
those servers to servers that they are connected to, and so on. For newsgroups that are
not widely carried, sometimes a carrier group is used for crossposting to aid distribution.
This is typically only useful for groups that have been removed or newer alt.*
groups. Crossposts between hierarchies, outside of the Big 8 and alt.* hierarchies,
are failure prone.
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