newsgroup

messaging One of Usenet's huge collection of topic groups

or fora. Usenet groups can be "unmoderated" (anyone can

post) or "moderated" (submissions are automatically directed

to a moderator, who edits or filters and then posts the

results). Some newsgroups have parallel mailing lists for

Internet people with no netnews access, with postings to the

group automatically propagated to the list and vice versa.

Some moderated groups (especially those which are actually

gatewayed Internet mailing lists) are distributed as

"digests", with groups of postings periodically collected

into a single large posting with an index.

Among the best-known are comp.lang.c (the C-language forum),

comp.arch (on computer architectures), comp.Unix.wizards (for

Unix wizards), rec.arts.sf-lovers (for science-fiction

fans), and talk.politics.misc (miscellaneous political

discussions and flamage).

Barry Shein [email protected] is alleged to have said,

"Remember the good old days when you could read all the group

names in one day?" This gives a good idea of the growth and

size of Usenet.

See also netiquette.

[Jargon File]

(1994-12-13)