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Usenet
*** Shopping-Tip: Usenet
'''Usenet''' is a distributed
Internet discussion system that evolved from a general purpose
UUCP network of the same name. It was conceived by
Duke University graduate students
Tom Truscott and
Jim Ellis (computing) Jim Ellis in 1979. Users read and post
electronic mail email-like messages (called "articles") to a number of distributed
newsgroups, categories that resemble
bulletin board systems in most respects. The medium is distributed among a large number of servers, which store and forward messages to one another. Individual users download and post messages to a single server, usually operated by their
ISP or university, and the servers exchange the messages between each other.
Introduction
Usenet is one of the oldest
computer network communications systems still in widespread use. It was established in 1980 following experiments the previous year, over a decade before the
World Wide Web was introduced and the general public was admitted to the
Internet. It was originally conceived as a "poor man's
ARPANET," employing
UUCP to offer mail and file transfers, as well as announcements through the newly developed
A News news software. This system, developed at
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and
Duke University, was called USENET to emphasize its creators' hope that the
USENIX organization would take an active role in its operation (Daniel ''et al'', 1980).
Today, almost all Usenet traffic is carried over the Internet. The
As of 2005 current format and transmission of Usenet articles is very similar to that of Internet
electronic mail email messages. However, whereas email is usually used for one-to-one communication, Usenet is a one-to-many medium.
The articles that users post to Usenet are organized into topical categories called
newsgroups, which are themselves logically organized into hierarchies of subjects. For instance,
[news:sci.math sci.math] and
[news:sci.physics sci.physics] are within the
sci hierarchy, for
science. When a user subscribes to a newsgroup, the
News client news client software keeps track of which articles that user has read.
When a user posts an article, it is initially only available on that user's news server. Each news server, however, talks to one or more other servers (its "newsfeeds") and exchanges articles with them. In this fashion, the article is copied from server to server and (if all goes well) eventually reaches every server in the network. The later
peer-to-peer networks operate on a similar principle; but for Usenet it is normally the sender, rather than the receiver, who initiates transfers. Some have noted that this seems a monstrously inefficient protocol in the era of abundant high-speed network access. Usenet was designed for a time when networks were much slower, and not always available. Many sites on the original Usenet network would connect only once or twice a day to batch-transfer messages in and out.
Usenet is of significant cultural importance in the networked world, having given rise to, or popularized, many widely recognized concepts and terms such as "
FAQ" and "
spam (electronic) spam".
Today, Usenet has diminished in importance with respect to
mailing lists and
weblogs. The difference from
mailing lists, though, is that Usenet requires no personal registration with the group concerned (subscription is necessary only to keep track of which articles one has already read, and that information need not be stored on a remote server), that archives are always available, and that reading the messages requires no mail client, but a news client (included in most modern e-mail clients).
ISPs, news servers, and newsfeeds
Most
Internet service providers, and many other Internet sites, operate
news servers for their users to access. ISPs that do not operate their own servers directly will often offer their users an account from another provider that specifically operates newsfeeds. Usually the ISP will get a kickback for referring the customer to the Usenet provider. In early news implementations, the server and newsreader were a single program suite, running on the same system. Today, one uses separate newsreader client software—a program that resembles an email client (and is often integrated with one) but accesses Usenet servers instead.
Not all ISPs run news servers. A news server is one of the most difficult Internet services to administer well because of the sheer amount of data involved. Some ISPs outsource news operation to specialist sites, which will usually appear to a user as though the ISP ran the server itself. Many sites carry a restricted newsfeed, with a limited number of newsgroups. Commonly omitted from such a newsfeed are foreign-language newsgroups and the
alt.binaries hierarchy which largely carries software and
erotica and, in the 21st century, accounts for over 99 percent of the article data.
For those who have access to the Internet, but do not have access to a news server,
Google Groups ([http://groups.google.com]) allows reading and posting of text news groups via the
World Wide Web. Though this or other "news-to-Web gateways" are not always as easy to use as specialized newsreader software—especially when threads get long—they are often much easier to search. Users who lack access to an ISP news server can use Google Groups to access the
[http://groups-beta.google.com/group/alt.free.newsservers alt.free.newsservers] newsgroup, which has information about open news servers.
There are also Usenet providers that specialize in offering service to users whose ISPs do not carry news, or that carry a restricted feed. One list of such providers is available at [http://www.exit109.com/~jeremy/news/providers/providers.html Jeremy Nixon's list of Usenet providers].
See also
news server operation for an overview of how news systems are implemented.
Newsreader clients
Newsgroups are typically accessed with special client software that connects to a news server. With the rise of the
world wide web, web
front-ends have sometimes been used to access newsgroups via the aforementioned news-to-web gateways. However, these gateways often provide limited features, and for that reason using a local client is still regarded as the best way to access newsgroups.
News client Newsreader clients are available for all major operating systems and come in all shapes and sizes. Mail clients or "communication suites" also now commonly have an integrated newsreader. Often, however, these integrated clients are of low quality, e.g. incorrectly implementing Usenet protocols, standards and conventions. Many of these integrated clients, for example the one in
Microsoft's
Outlook Express, are disliked by purists because of their misbehavior.
Moderated and unmoderated newsgroups
A minority of newsgroups are '''moderated'''. That means that messages submitted by readers are not distributed to USENET, but instead are emailed to the '''moderators''' of the newsgroup, for approval. Moderated newsgroups have rules called '''charters'''. Moderators are persons whose job is to ensure that messages that the readers see in newsgroups conform to the charter of the newsgroup. Typically, moderators are appointed in the proposal for the newsgroup, and changes of moderators follow a succession plan.
The job of the moderator is to receive submitted articles, review them, and inject approved articles so that they can be properly propagated worldwide. Such articles must bear the Approved: header line.
Unmoderated newsgroups form the majority of USENET newsgroups, and messages submitted by readers for unmoderated newsgroups are immediately propagated for everyone to see.
Creation of moderated newsgroups often becomes a hot subject of controversy, raising issues regarding censorship and the desire of a subset of users to form an
intentional community.
Technical details
Usenet is a set of protocols for generating, storing and retrieving news "articles" (which resemble Internet mail messages) and for exchanging them among a readership which is potentially widely distributed. These protocols most commonly use a
flooding algorithm which propagates copies throughout a network of participating servers. Whenever a message reaches a server, that server forwards the message to all its network neighbors that haven't yet seen the article. Only one copy of a message is stored per server, and each server makes it available on demand to the (typically local) readers able to access that server. Usenet was thus one of the first
peer-to-peer applications, although in this case the "peers" are themselves servers that the users then access, rather than the users themselves being peers on the network.
One difference between Usenet and newer
peer-to-peer applications is that one can request the automated removal of a posting from the whole network by creating a cancel message, although due to a lack of authentication and resultant abuse, this capability is frequently disabled. Copyright holders may still request the manual deletion of infringing material using the provisions of
World Intellectual Property Organization treaty implementations, such as the
United States U.S. Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act.
Organization
The major set of worldwide newsgroups is contained within eight hierarchies, operated under consensual guidelines that govern their administration and naming. The current "Big Eight" are:
*'''comp.*''': computer-related discussions (''comp.software, comp.sys.amiga'')
*'''misc.*''': Miscellaneous topics (''misc.education, misc.forsale, misc.kids'')
*'''news.*''': Discussions and announcements about news (meaning Usenet, not current events) (''news.groups, news.admin'')
*'''rec.*''': Recreation and entertainment (''rec.music, rec.arts.movies'')
*'''sci.*''': Science related discussions (''sci.psychology, sci.research'')
*'''soc.*''': Social discussions (''soc.college.org, soc.culture.african'')
*'''talk.*''': Talk about various controversial topics (''talk.religion, talk.politics'')
*'''humanities.*''':
Fine arts,
literature, and
philosophy (''humanities.classics'', ''humanities.design.misc'')
(Note: the asterisks are used as
wildmat patterns, examples follow in parentheses)
See also
Great Renaming.
The
alt.* hierarchy is not subject to the procedures controlling groups in the Big Eight, and it is as a result less organized. However, groups in the alt.* hierarchy tend to be more specialized or specific—for example, there might be a newsgroup under the Big Eight which contains discussionals about children's books, but a group in the alt hierarchy may be dedicated to one specific author of children's books.
Binaries are posted in alt.binaries.*, making it the largest of all the hierarchies.
Many other hierarchies of newsgroups are distributed alongside these. Regional and language-specific hierarchies such as ''japan.*'' and ''ne.*'' serve specific regions such as
Japan and
New England. Companies such as
Microsoft administer their own hierarchies to discuss their products and offer community technical support. Some users prefer to use the term "Usenet" to refer only to the Big Eight hierarchies, others include alt as well. The more general term "netnews" incorporates the entire medium, including private organizational news systems.
Binary content
Usenet was originally created to distribute text content encoded in the 7-
bit ASCII character set. With the help of programs that encode 8-bit values into ASCII, it became practical to distribute
Binary and text files binary content. Binary posts, due to their size and dubious copyright status, were in time restricted to specific newsgroups, making it easier for administrators to allow or disallow the traffic.
The oldest widely used encoding method is
uuencode, from the
Unix uucp package. In the late 1980s Usenet articles were often limited to 60,000 characters, and larger hard limits exist today. Files are therefore commonly split into sections that require reassembly by the reader.
With the header extensions and the
Base64 and Quoted-Printable
MIME encodings, there was a new generation of binary transport. In practice, MIME has seen increased adoption in text messages, but it is avoided for most binary attachments. Some operating systems with
metadata (computing) metadata attached to files use specialized encoding formats. For Mac OS, both
Binhex and special MIME types are used.
Other lesser known encoding systems that may have been used at one time were
BTOA,
XX encoding,
BOO, and
USR encoding.
In an attempt to reduce file transfer times, an informal file encoding known as
yEnc was introduced in 2001. It achieves about a 30% reduction in data transferred by assuming that most 8-bit characters can safely be transferred across the network without first encoding into the 7-bit ASCII space.
History
UUCP/USENET Logical Map - June 1, 1981 / mods by S. McGeady 11/19/81
(ucbvax)
+=+
=+==+
| | | |
| | wivax | |
| | | | |
| | microsoft| uiucdcs | |
| | genradbo | | | | | | (Tektronix)
| | | | | | | purdue | |
| decvax+
+=+
=+=+=+ | | | |
| | | | | | | pur-phy | | tekmdp
| | | | | | | | | | |
+@@@@@@cca | | | | | | | | |
| | | | +=pur-ee=+=+
==+
+ | |
| csin | | | | | |
| | +==o
+
=+==+
==+
=+
=teklabs=+
| | | |
| | | pdp phs grumpy wolfvax |
| | | | | | | |
| | cincy unc=+
+
+
=+ |
| | | bio | |
| | | (Misc) | | (Misc) |
| | | sii reed | dukgeri duke34 utzoo |
| | | | | | | | | |
| +
=+=+=+==+
=++
+==++
duke=+
+
=+==+
===+ |
| | | | | | | | | | u1100s
| bmd70 ucf-cs ucf | andiron | | | | |
| | | | | | |
| red | | | | | pyuxh
| | | | zeppo | | | |
| psupdp---psuvax | | | | | | |
| | | | alice | whuxlb | utah-cs | | houxf
| allegra | | | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | +--chico---+
| +
+=mhtsa
=research | /=+
=harpo=+==+ | |
| | | | | | / | | |
| hocsr | | +=+
=+=/ cbosg---+ | |
| ucbopt | | | | | esquire |
| : | | | cbosgd | |
| : | | | | |
| ucbcory | | eagle
+
+
+
+
==+ | |
| : | | | | | | | | | +-uwvax--+
| : | | | mhuxa mhuxh mhuxj mhuxm mhuxv | |
| : | | | | |
| : | | | +----------------------------o--+
| : | | | | |
| ucbcad | | | ihpss mh135a |
| : | | | | | |
| : \--o--o------ihnss----vax135----cornell |
| : | | | | |
+=+==ucbvax
=+
+==+=+
+
=+=+
==+
===+
(UCB) : | | | | (Silicon Valley)
ucbarpa cmevax | | menlo70--hao
: | | | |
ucbonyx | | | sri-unix
| ucsfcgl |
| | |
Legend: | | sytek
=+
=+
------- | | | |
- | / \ + = Uucp sdcsvax=+
=+=+
+ intelqa zehntel
= "Bus" | | |
o jumps sdcarl phonlab sdcattb
: Berknet
@ Arpanet
Original by
Steven McGeady, ''Copied with permission from '''The Usenet Oldnews Archive: Compilation''''' [http://quux.org:70/Archives/usenet-a-news/NET.general/81.12.14_azure.300_net.general,fa.unix-wizards.txt]
Copyright© 1981, 1996 Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman
The first newsgroup experiments occurred in 1979.
Tom Truscott and
Jim Ellis of
Duke University came up with the idea as a replacement for a local announcement program, and established a link with nearby
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill University of North Carolina using
Bourne shell scripts written by
Steve Bellovin. The public release of
A News news was in the form of conventional compiled
software, written by Steve Daniel and Truscott.
UUCP networks spread quickly due to the lower costs involved, and ability to use existing leased lines,
X.25 links or even
ARPANET connections. By 1983 the number of UUCP hosts had grown to 550, nearly doubling to 940 in 1984.
As the mesh of UUCP hosts rapidly expanded, it became desirable to distinguish the Usenet subset from the overall network. A vote was taken at the 1982 USENIX conference to choose a new name. The name Usenet was retained, but it was established that it only applied to news.[http://communication.ucsd.edu/bjones/Usenet.Hist/Nethist/0111.html] The name UUCPNET became the common name for the overall network.
In addition to UUCP, early Usenet traffic was also exchanged with
Fidonet and other dial-up
Bulletin board system BBS networks. The
Network News Transfer Protocol, or NNTP, was introduced in 1985 to distribute Usenet articles over
Internet protocol suite TCP/IP as a more flexible alternative to informal Internet transfers of UUCP traffic. Since the Internet boom of the 1990s, almost all Usenet distribution is over NNTP, obsoleting the earlier dictum that "Usenet is not the Internet."
Early versions of Usenet used Duke's
A News software. At
University of California, Berkeley Berkeley an improved version called
B News was produced by Matt Glickman and
Mark Horton. With a message format that offered compatibility with Internet mail and improved performance, it became the dominant server software.
C News, developed by
Geoff Collyer and
Henry Spencer at the
University of Toronto, was comparable to B News in features but offered considerably faster processing. In the early 1990s,
INN InterNetNews by
Rich Salz was developed to take advantage of the continuous message flow made possible by NNTP versus the batched store-and-forward design of UUCP. Since that time
INN development has continued, and other news server software has also been developed.
Usenet was the initial Internet community and the place for many of the most important public developments in the commercial internet. It was the place where Tim Berners-Lee announced the launch of the World Wide Web [http://groups-beta.google.com/group/alt.hypertext/msg/395f282a67a1916c], Marc Andreesen announced the creation of the Mosaic browser and the introduction of the image tag [http://groups-beta.google.com/group/comp.windows.x/msg/7fde2f6d4d5dc4e7], which revolutionized the
World Wide Web by turning it into a graphical medium. On the more nefarious side, it was also the first place to suffer from spam, with the infamous
Canter & Siegel lawyers (aka the Green Card Lawyers) spamming Usenet [http://groups-beta.google.com/group/alt.pub.coffeehouse.amethyst/msg/477832eb09859797] and drawing the ire of Internet users everywhere.
Web-based archiving of Usenet posts began in 1995 at
Deja News with a very large, searchable database. In 2001, this database was acquired by
Google.
AOL announced that it would discontinue its integrated Usenet service in early 2005, citing the growing popularity of weblogs, chat forums and on-line conferencing. The AOL community had a tremendous role in popularizing the Usenet some 11 years earlier, with all of its positive and negative aspects. This change marked the end of the legendary
Eternal September. Others, however, feel that Google Groups, especially with its new user interface, has picked up the torch that AOL has dropped – and that Eternal September has yet to end.
Over time, the amount of Usenet traffic has steadily increased. It is important to note, however, that much of this traffic increase reflects not an increase in discrete users or newsgroup discussions, but instead the combination of massive automated spamming and an increase in the use of ''.binaries'' newsgroups in which large files (frequently pornography or pirated media) are often posted publicly. A small sampling of the change (measured in feed size per day) follows:
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! style="text-align:right"|Daily Volume!!Date!!Source
|-
| style="text-align:right"|4.5
Gigabyte GB||1996-12||Altopia.com
|-
| style="text-align:right"|9 GB||1997-07||Altopia.com
|-
| style="text-align:right"|12 GB||1998-01||Altopia.com
|-
| style="text-align:right"|26 GB||1999-01||Altopia.com
|-
| style="text-align:right"|82 GB||2000-01||Altopia.com
|-
| style="text-align:right"|181 GB||2001-01||Altopia.com
|-
| style="text-align:right"|257 GB||2002-01||Altopia.com
|-
| style="text-align:right"|492 GB||2003-01||Altopia.com
|-
| style="text-align:right"|969 GB||2004-01||Altopia.com
|-
| style="text-align:right"|1.30
Terabyte TB||2004-09-30||Octanews.net
|-
| style="text-align:right"|1.27 TB||2004-11-30||Octanews.net
|-
| style="text-align:right"|1.38 TB||2004-12-31||Octanews.net
|-
| style="text-align:right"|1.34 TB||2005-01-01||Octanews.net
|-
| style="text-align:right"|1.30 TB||2005-01-01||Newsreader.com
|-
| style="text-align:right"|1.67 TB||2005-01-31||Octanews.net
|-
| style="text-align:right"|1.63 TB||2005-02-01||Newsreader.com
|-
| style="text-align:right"|1.81 TB||2005-02-28||Octanews.net
|-
| style="text-align:right"|1.87 TB||2005-03-08||Newsreader.com
|-
| style="text-align:right"|2.00 TB||2005-03-11||Various sources
|}
Internet jargon and history
Many terms now in common use on the Internet—so-called "
jargon"—originated or were popularized on Usenet. Likewise, many conflicts which later spread to the rest of the Internet, such as the ongoing difficulties over
spam (electronic) spamming, began on Usenet.
Google Groups
{{main|Google Groups}}
Google Groups hosts an archive of Usenet posts dating back to May 1981. A Usenet Timeline is provided in the Help section.
Since February 2001 Google Groups provides a controversial web interface to Usenet newsgroups. It also allows the creation
of
mailing lists like
Yahoo! Groups, combining the technical deficits of both approaches.
One of many concerns that have been expressed about the Google interface is that novices may have difficulty realising that they are participating in a Usenet newsgroup rather than in a
web forum hosted by Google.
The access on a raw ''plain text'' version of the original article was removed. The rather cryptic syntax to view an article available on Google Groups by its Message-ID can be simplified to
http://purl.net/net/msgid/''without-angle-brackets@example.org''
[http://purl.net/net/msgid/4zCix009Cv2acya@bionic35.bionic.zer.de
http://purl.net/net/msgid/4zCix009Cv2acya@bionic35.bionic.zer.de]
Sociological implications
The architecture of Usenet is sometimes characterized as anarchy (word) anarchic or as democracy civic/democratic. Some see it as a global community or collection of online community online communities. While the views vary, one shared perspective among the users is of Usenet as an alvernative media alternative medium to institutionalized mass communication, more open to participation from a wider variety of the general public.
Usenet can be a tool boosting an individual's ability to communicate, free from governmental and other organizational restraints. Seven major features that stand out are:
#In its origin, Usenet was the alternative to ARPANET (the precursor of today's Internet), created by those who could not join ARPANET. Usenet was originally proposed as a general service network (news, mail, file transfers) but it didn't really turn out that way. With the ARPANET having long since evolved into the public access Internet, and virtually all Usenet traffic traversing the Internet, the distinction as a separate network is mostly sentimental.
#Usenet is open to a variety of users. It does not require user registration, institutional affiliation, or a specific fee like other communication systems. Users, with proper knowledge, can post their own messages as well. The system does not require any identification and accepts pseudonyms.
#The content is not censorship censored very much. Much of the process of receiving, posting, and circulating messages is automated, and the sheer number of messages makes censorship very difficult, except for categorical banning of potentially problematic newsgroups or the entire Usenet.
#Creation of new newsgroups is possible for anybody with proper knowledge in certain parts of Usenet, namely within the alt hierarchy.
#Some point out that some newsgroups are helpful in their own way because of the resources of a variety of participants. Many participants are willing to answer questions on subjects ranging from software troubleshooting, and other technical issues, to such topics as pros and cons of different medical treatments for a rare disease.
#Virtually all messages posted to the Usenet system are archived and made available in publicly-searchable databases on the World Wide Web. This allows for a great depth of historical records of news, information, and of the behaviour of individuals who choose to attach their real name to messages.
#The structure of the network is somewhat anti-hierarchical, one might argue. There is no center through which all articles go. Various news servers are connected with each other and the circulation of the articles is done in a fashion that is very similar to a bucket-relay. There is no essential set of newsgroups that a news server must carry. Some newsgroups are locally maintained. Consequently, it is very hard, if not utterly impossible, to construct a complete list of newsgroups for a given moment, let alone postings from a given week.
To some, these features are indications of what societies could become, or would likely become, when interactive information networks such as Usenet and the Internet become the dominant means of communication.
These analogies of the social aspect of Usenet are not necessarily compatible with each other. Anarchism tends to emphasize individual freedom, community values, mutual ties and cooperation. Democracy usually requires a binding 'majority rules' decision, running counter to anarchic principle, as some would argue.
There exist various indications that those analogies are either one-sided or wrong. The reality of how Usenet is used might be not as simple as some might imagine from the above descriptions. However, others claim that what functions online can also work offline. If democracy is not compatible with the anarchistic nature of Usenet or Internet in general, then it is bad for democracy.
Communication on Usenet may be perceived by some (critics or users) as not very constructive, or worse yet, undesirable. In certain newsgroups it is frequently excessively aggressive, as some people engage in flame wars. The discussion might seem unproductive, with endless disputes. It may contain profanity offensive language and very objectionable opinions on sensitive issues related to racism, gender role, etc. The non-offensive messages might be "spam (electronic) spam," or unsolicited off-topic postings such as advertisements for pornography sites. A group may be flooded with messages by a very limited number of participants, being not very open and friendly to newcomers. In addition, the most active parts of the Usenet include exchange of pornographic files (especially pictures) and music files (especially in MP3 format). Newsgroups with more mature audiences, however, tend to avoid nasty exchanges, focussing on discussing more productive things, such as the On-topic newsgroup topic.
In addition, the said freedom in the alt hierarchy is limited in that unless a newly created newsgroup meets certain conditions and goes through certain procedures, it will not be carried by many news servers, potentially resulting in a wasted effort. In general, the seemingly anarchic system is indeed not without some administrative-level controls. These carriers exert influence on newsgroups' birth and survival as well. Nevertheless, if a critical mass of users requests that their server administrators allow for the creation of a new newsgroup, the creation process is more likely to succeed.
It is also noticeable that there is an obvious hierarchy in the way newsgroups are organized. While some of the other interfaces for online communication support much less hierarchical organization of information, such as the World Wide Web, Usenet is not one of them.
The more general criticisms that apply to Usenet and many other kinds of online communication include the statement that Usenet is mostly a text-based medium, empowering the literate and articulate, while being less accessible to others. The counterpoint to this argument is that being text-based makes Usenet more accessible to visually impaired computer users who use text-reading software to navigate through the Internet. The issue of the digital divide, namely that some people simply do not have access to the Internet, is another reason one might point out that Usenet is not entirely democratic or open.
See also
''This article is partly based on the InfoAnarchy infoAnarchy wiki.''
Usenet terms
*AOLer
*backbone cabal
*Breidbart Index
*FAQ
*flaming and flame war
*Usenet flood Flood aka flooders and flooding
*FWAK
*Godwin's Law
*Eternal September It's always September
*kill file
*list of newsgroups
*MSTing
*scorefile
*Skitt's law
*Internet_sock_puppet sock puppet
*sporgery
*Internet troll Trolling
*There is no Cabal
*Usenet Death Penalty
*Usenet cabal
*Wackyparsing
*X-No-Archive
*Your mileage may vary
Usenet history
*rec.sport.pro-wrestling
*alt.fan.warlord
*alt.tv.simpsons
*Cindy's Torment
*Eternal September
*Greg Deeter
*Great Renaming
*Meow Wars
*rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated
*rec.music.white-power newsgroup vote
*Scientology vs. the Internet
*Serdar Argic
Usenet administrators
''There are no Usenet administators, each server admin is free to do whatever pleases him or her as long as the users tolerate this, and the peers accept it. Nevertheless there are famous admins, see separate articles:''
{| align="left"
|
*Russ Allbery
*Dave the Resurrector
*David Lawrence David (Tale) Lawrence
|}
*Gene Spafford Gene (Spaf) Spafford
*Henry Spencer
*Mark Horton
{{-}}
Usenet personalities
{| align="left"
|
*Fred Cherry
*Joel Furr
*Kibo
*alt.romath Romath
*Archimedes Plutonium
*Mark V Shaney
|}
*Internet Oracle
*Valery Fabrikant
*Serdar Argic
*Robert E. McElwaine
*Wednesday White
*Hipcrime
{{-}}
References
*Stephen Daniel, James Ellis, and Tom Truscott (1980). ''[ftp://ftp.std.com/obi/USENET/a/usenet/uprop.n USENET - A General Access UNIX® Network]''.
*Bruce Jones, archiver (1997). [http://communication.ucsd.edu/bjones/Usenet.Hist/Nethist/index.html USENET History mailing list archive] covering 1990-1997.
Further reading
* {{cite book|author=Michael Hauben, Ronda Hauben, and Thomas Truscott|title=Netizens : On the History and Impact of Usenet and the Internet (Perspectives)|publisher=Wiley-IEEE Computer Society P|year=1997-04-27|id=ISBN 0818677066}}
* {{cite book|author=Bryan Pfaffenberger|title=The USENET Book: Finding, Using, and Surviving Newsgroups on the Internet|publisher=Addison Wesley|year=1994-12-31|id=ISBN 020140978X}}
* {{cite book|author=Kate Gregory, Jim Mann, Tim Parker, and Noel Estabrook|title=Using Usenet Newsgroups|publisher=Que|year= June 1995|id=ISBN 0789701340}}
* {{cite book|author=Mark Harrison|title=The USENET Handbook (Nutshell Handbook)|publisher=O'Reilly|year=July 1995|id=ISBN 1565921011}}
* {{cite book|author=Henry Spencer, David Lawrence|title=Managing Usenet|publisher=O'Reilly|year=January 1998|id=ISBN 1565921984}}
* {{cite book|author=Don Rittner|title=Rittner's Field Guide to Usenet|publisher=MNS Publishing|year=June 1997|id=ISBN 0937666505}}
* {{cite journal
| title=GroupLens: applying collaborative filtering to Usenet news
| journal=Communications of the ACM
| volume=40 | issue = 3 | year=March 1997 | pages=77–87
| url=http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=245108.245126
| author=Konstan, J., Miller, B., Maltz, D., Herlocker, J., Gordon, L., and Riedl, J.
| id = {{doi|10.1145/245108.245126}}
}}
* {{conference reference|Author=Miller, B., Riedl, J., and Konstan, J.|Title=[http://www.grouplens.org/papers/pdf/usenix97.pdf Experiences with GroupLens: Making Usenet useful again.]|Booktitle=Proceedings of the 1997 Usenix Winter Technical Conference|Year=January 1997|Pages=|}}
External links
- DMOZ directory of Usenet information, software, and service providers
- IETF working group USEFOR (USEnet article FORmat)
- son-of-1036 (287 KB, historical RFC 1036 bis draft)
Text content related
- Google Usenet archive
- 20 Year Usenet Timeline - selection of memorable and historic Usenet postings
- Netscan - Microsoft Research Usenet Social Accounting Search Engine - measurements of Usenet newsgroups, authors and threads since September 1999
Binary content related
- NewzLeech, Free usenet binaries search engine
- Archive of medium size postings with free full access and posting option
- UsenetLive, Search engine for the alt.binaries newsgroups, returns Subject, Date and Newsgroup for free
- Newzbin, Usenet binary search engine, returns Subject, Date and Newsgroup for free
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