Good question. Usenet is a collection of tens of thousands newsgroups. It may sound vague but think of a newsgroup as a large message board. People can post messages and follow-up, or reply to those messages. These posts and follow-ups create something called a thread. Threads are groups of messages with the same subject. For example, John can post a message along the lines of 'Has anyone ever seen Casablanca?' and then Mary can follow-up that message saying that she has, in fact, seen the movie and liked it. Even further, John can follow-up Mary's response asking what she liked about the movie and so on and so forth. This discussion about Casablanca is called a thread. Each individual message in the thread is called a post.
Usenet as a whole is public. Most anyone can access the various newsgroups and posts in those newsgroups at any time, following-up to those posts or starting their own threads. The way this is possible is through propagation. Propagation is the process in which news servers share articles and newsgroups with other news servers around the world. Here is a simple example of how propagation works:
| Quick Serve Self Access propagates news with 4 major ISP's in the Chicagoland area and those 4 providers peer, or share news, with 4 other news servers and so on, creating a very large network of news servers sharing articles. That means Quick Serve Self Access, when receiving new threads and posts to the various newsgroups it has access to, shares them with those 4 ISP's. In turn, when those 4 ISP's receive new posts, they share with Quick Serve Self Access as well as their own propagation pool. By this process news gets passed around and shared between thousands of providers because each news server has different news servers to propagate with. |
There will always be a slight delay of accessing posts as the various articles are propagated and there are cases where an article simply isn't available for lack of propagation but for the most part it's a very solid setup of redundancy. The bottom line is that the more quality the news feed you have access to and the quality of the news servers your provider peers with will determine the quality of your Usenet experience.
Hierarchies are the different types of newsgroups out there. What it signifies is the basic theme of the newsgroup. Common hierarchies are rec, alt and misc. Rec is for recreational and more mainstream newsgroups, such as rec.games and rec.birds. Alt is for alternative newsgroups, but still very valid and useful such as alt.abuse.recovery and alt.dorks. Misc is for miscelleneous groups like misc.education and misc.forsale. Outside of those main hieratchies, however, there are hundreds of other hierarches further dividing Usenet. Hierarchies such as chi for Chicago-related newsgroups, il for Illinois newsgroupsall the way to pl for Polish groups as well as for most of the countries in the world. For a complete listing of all available hierarchies go to The Master List of Newsgroup Hierarchies.
Posts have a basic structure:
Poster's Name
This is the name of the person who is posting the message. Normally it will have that person's name, like John Smith, as well as their e-mail address, like johnsmith@self-serv.net. This information is useful because it's important to know who posted the message for authentication reasons. Otherwise anyone could pretend to be John Smith and post with that name, potentially confusing people.M
Newsgroup(s) Posted To
There are a lot of newsgroups. When you are subscribed and reading through a lot of articles in a newsgroup, this field can tell you what other newsgroups that particular message was posted to. When you post to more than one group at one time with a single message, it is called crossposting which is a bad thing, in some cases. Usually limiting yourself to one newsgroup per message is a good idea. There's less potential for an accidental spamming and subsequent flaming that way.
Subject
This is an important part. It tells you what the post is about. Only the subsequent threads have Re: in the subject line as well as the normal subject of the thread. A good example of this is the Casablanca example from above. John's original post has a subject of 'Anyone seen Casablanca?' and Mary's follow-up to that post would have the subject of 'Re:Anyone seen Casablanca?'. You can change the subject mid-thread but it's normally frowned on in the newsgroup. Word to the wise: If you want to change the subject of a thread mid-thread, just start a brand new thread with the subject.
Message Body
This is the most vital part of your message. It's the message itself. In the message body you can quote other people's messages and comment on them as well as start new topic yourself. It's a free expression forum. The posts, while on topic, can range all over the place about that topic. That leads us to the two evil sides of Usenet...
The two most dreaded things about Usenet...spamming and flaming.
Spamming
Spamming can take many forms. The most widepsread and common form is advertising. Advertising even newsgroup-related products is still considered inappropriate (i.e. advertising joe's golf balls in rec.sports.golf). There are specific groups for this. For example, you can advertise that you are selling a couch in chi.forsale, assuming you live in Chicago and are selling a couch.
Another form of Spamming is off-topic posting and crossposting. With off-topic posting you post a message to a group that either has nothing to do with the thread you posted to, or is not related to the newsgroup at all. Crossposting is when you post one message to many groups at once. Usually the message isn't totally applicable in all of those groups so you should normally limit one message posting to one group and then post that message again to another group, one at a time making sure it's applicable and appropriate for that group. If you do not, you might encounter a backlash of anger better known as...
Flaming
Flaming is a highly negative and often mean backlash to a post. It occurs when either you post inappropriate subject matters to a group, break some rule of that newsgroups's FAQ or someone doesn't agree with you to such an extent that they feel the need to lash out because of it. Usually the flaming isn't totally justified and is often overkill but the point is still there: pay attention to your surroundings. Know where you are posting and what rules apply.
Just the FAQs, Ma'am
Most groups have a general Frequently Asked Questions listing. In it are the rules and regulations that the regular posters follow in the group. Reading it, understanding it and following it will lead to a long and enjoyable Usenet experience. In general the FAQ is posted to the group at regular intervals, such as every week or so. Checking through the group's headers is the best way to find it. Normally the subject is something to the tune of rec.blah FAQ 04/09/98 or something to that effect. If you do not see one, search for an offical homepage for that specific newsgroup and, if all else fails, post one message to the group simply asking if a FAQ is available. Trust me, you'll be better off in the long run. Remember the saying: When in Rome... do as the Romans do.
Here are some links to some useful Usenet Client sites and Usenet Links