Many of you have heard of Usenet, but you may not know exactly what it is. Usenet is a public bulletin board system (BBS) available through Internet service providers (ISPs) around the world. It's an enormous collection of discussion topics, or newsgroups, to which anyone can post his or her thoughts, opinions, advice, whatever. These posts are messages that can be read (and answered) by most anyone with Internet access. Best of all, it's free.
The Usenet system at first appears chaotic and massive, but once you understand the basics, it's easy to wade through the junk and get to what you're really looking for.
The first step in using Usenet is getting there. You can access newsgroups through your browser - either Netscape Navigator or Microsoft Internet Explorer, but I recommend using software that is specially designed for it. If you're using a Macintosh, try NewsWatcher. For Windows, have a look at Free Agent.
Usenet isn't part of the World Wide Web, but its own separate entity. Usenet travels over the same lines and wires as the Web, but has its own method of communication, called NNTP, or network news transfer protocol. Usenet is also much more text-based than the Web, as there are no pictures to look at (although you can download pictures from some newsgroups and look at them offline). But what they lack in pretty pictures, newsgroups make up for in text - there's a whole lot of it.
So how do you make sense of all this stuff? Well, once you've connected to Usenet (make sure you get an NNTP server address from your ISP), you're going to see a very long list of nonsense that may seem a little daunting (the listings look like this: misc.books.technical, alt.sex.footfetish, and on and on).
Don't be afraid. This is a list of newsgroups. Newsgroups are the topics or categories that you can read on Usenet. Once you look at a few, you'll notice that their titles follow a pattern. Newsgroups that start with alt. are "alternative" and therefore generally hip. Those beginning with comp. are about computers, while ba. stands for the (San Francisco) Bay Area. The subsequent words in a newsgroup's name narrow down the topic. You'll learn to read this code before long.
There are a couple of newsgroups you should read your first time on Usenet. My vote for the most important one is news.newusers.questions. Some other good ones are: news.announce.newusers, and news.newusers. In these groups, you can get questions answered, hear new announcements, and practice posting, respectively.
After poking around a bit and discovering some newsgroups that interest you, try reading them for a while before you start posting. Etiquette is an important part of using newsgroups: If you immediately start posting and asking questions that have been answered a million times before, the regulars can get irritated. So lurk a little and get a sense of what is considered proper.
Once you start posting, most readers will probably be friendly and understand what you're saying. But beware of the person who's had a bad day, lives on the other side of the world, barely understands what you're saying, and starts a flame war. Flame wars are bad and should be avoided at all costs. How can you tell if someone's starting one? Don't worry, you'll know it.
Some newsgroups are moderated, meaning someone oversees all the posts that are made and can delete ones that are offensive or don't fit the topic. This helps keep flame wars and troublemakers in check (though moderators rarely exercise their power unless there is a major problem). Most newsgroups are self-moderated, meaning it is up to the newsgroup's users to keep things in check.
Usenet holds a wealth of information, from crazy philosophical ramblings to scientific dialogs, directions for making homemade guitar pickups, and almost any other topic you can imagine. Many newsgroups have loyal followers who give one another a strong sense of community. There's a lot of Usenet out there - ready to check it out?
The best way to get started is to jump in and read news.newusers.questions. Once you've got the basics down, you'll be on your way to posting thousands of messages and keeping all those other Usenet readers from going outside into the sunlight.
It's important to note that everything you post to newsgroups gets stored forever and is searchable, so beware of making posts that you might regret later. (The Web site Deja News lets you search archives of past postings.) And please, don't start any flame wars.
This article originally appeared in HotWired.
