Newsgroups were one of the first applications to take advantage of this new-fangled internet technology via Usenet, way back in 1980 long before the World Wide Web came into being, and it's still going strong today. Effectively, although not technically, newsgroups work like an email list - instead of sending a message to lots of people, you send a message to the list itself which then passes the message on to all members. Discussion threads develop in the same way as on normal email.
Put simply, newsgroups are communities of people who gather together to discuss a certain set topic - and there are newsgroups on almost any subject you care to imagine: current affairs, health, books, movies, religion, quantum physics, philosophy, and so on and so on. There are tens of thousands of groups, catalogued within a strict hierarchy, which takes the form of the subgroup and then one or more descriptive words, separated by full stops. For example, a popular group discussing the works of author Douglas Adams can be found at alt.fan.douglas-adams.
The main hierarchies are:
comp.* (computer-related)
news.* (newsgroup - not news - related)
rec.*(entertainment)
sci.* (science)
soc.* (social discussions)
misc.* (miscellaneous)
humanities.* (self-explanatory, that one) and
alt.* (alternative, ie the things that don't fit in anywhere else).
You can search newsgroups using
Google Groups, which lists every newsgroup since 1995, including all archives.
Although a lot of activity that previously occurred on newsgroups has been superseded by the web, there are still many very active communities out there.
Virgin Media provides a world-class newsgroups service free of charge, and we keep over 30,000 of the most popular newsgroups in the world up to date on our news servers. To find out more information have a look
here.
A couple of warnings before you set off into the unfettered world of newsgroups: spam originated here, and this is where the scourge of the computer virus first came into its own. You should never under any circumstances whatsoever sign up using your main email address in a newsgroup. If you do, it is guaranteed to get spammed almost immediately, and you will never be able to reclaim its spam-free state. If you are a Virgin Media customer, you can set up additional secondary email accounts in the
Customer zone.
Be very wary of Binary newsgroups. There are many reputable companies who use them (like us!) but the vast majority carry attachments of pirate software, video, music, porn, games and the like. Unless you're absolutely sure of the company you are subscribing to, never ever, subscribe to a binary group, because almost everything in them contains viruses. Even video files can be infected with nasties.
To read more about the fascinating history and folklore surrounding Usenet and newsgroups, browse the ever-excellent
Wikipedia.
Updated on 16th March
