USENET is not the internet.

Most people know that the internet is a large network of networks. If you're reading this guide on a computer, you're probably reading it over a hypertext network that runs on the internet, known as the World Wide Web.

The internet is not the World Wide Web, and the World Wide Web is not the internet.

USENET is not the internet either. In fact, it doesn't even need the internet in order to function, although in practice most USENET traffic is transported over the internet. This is done because the internet is the in thing, and because we get embarrassed even thinking about how they used to do it before the internet came along.

USENET is a very large store-and-forward messaging system.

Originally designed just so that people on two different university sites could hold public discussions on a kind of electronic bulletin board, USENET (also known as "news") grew as more sites joined.

USENET messages were stored on a file system in an area called the spool. To read a message you use a program called (unsurprisingly) a newsreader, and this also enables you to add messages to a spool. Messages on each spool are automatically conveyed to the spools on all the other sites, enabling people on the different sites to hold conversations by replying to one another's messages.

USENET is a store-and-forward messaging system because messages are stored in the spool and forwarded to every other USENET site. The neat thing about this is that when you want to read a USENET message, you'll find it on your local site, no matter where in the world it was created. This has advantages and disadvantages.

Newsgroups

As USENET grew, the number of messages grew, and the number of different things that people wanted to talk about also grew. To enable people to find the subjects they want to talk about easily, USENET has newsgroups. By selecting a newsgroup in your newsreader, you elect to see only a small subset of all messages, which are hopefully going to be more or less on the topic you're interested in.

Threads

Finding the right newsgroup wasn't now a problem, but following a conversation could still be difficult if the messages were mixed up with a hundred others. So newsreaders started to support threading, sorting replies directly after the messages so that readers could follow the conversation chronologically. Most newsreaders now support this function.

Killfiles and scorefiles.

Another innovation to enable people to follow conversations is the killfile. At it's simplest, this is just a list of email addresses of posters from whom you don't want to read any messages--maybe they're boring, or irritating, or they simply don't say anything you're interested in. The newsreader simply doesn't show the messages you don't want to see.

Even with newsgroups, threading and killfiles, things can still get a little hard to follow. Some newsgroups average about 500 messages per day. This is where scorefiles come into their own. Typically a scorefile will enable you to specify how to calculate a numeric score for each posting based on any attributes in the header of the posting: subject, author, and so on. Then the newsreader can present you with the threads with the highest scores first. This is much more versatile than a killfile and can make USENET a more enjoyable experience as you learn more about what interests you in a newsgroup.

Hierarchies and the Great Renaming.

As the number of newsgroups grew, a now-defunct group of news administrators known as the Backbone Cabal decided to reorganise all newsgroups into hierarchies and subhierarchies (so, for instance, all religious newsgroups would be in the soc.religion subhierarchy within the soc [social]] hierarchy).

Creating a new newsgroup would be a privilege reserved for one person: David C. Lawrence, also known as tale. tale honors votes held in the newsgroup news.groups according to strict discussion and vote-taking rules.

Big Seven, Big Eight.

The original renaming created seven top level hierarchies:

• comp: computing
• sci: science
• rec: recreation
• soc: social
• news: administrative
• talk: fast-moving high volume discussion on controversial subjects. Okay, flames.
• misc: miscellaneous, none of the above

The humanities hierachy was added as an afterthought, making eight top level hierarchies.

alt: Anarchists, lunatics and terrorists.

Some people objected to the new system, and set up the alt (for alternative) hierarchy. It has also become known jokingly as the anarchists, lunatics and terrorists hierarchy. Anybody can create a newsgroup in that hierarchy.

Binary newsgroups.

Although the transport system for USENET supports only ascii text, it has always been possible to post binary files to USENET if you knew how. The two most popular methods are uuencode and base-64 Mime encoding, and both of these are supported by most newsreaders. It's very important to post binary files only to newsgroups where binary files are expected, partly because a large file full of unreadable gibberish text is seldom a welcome contribution to a conversation, but mainly because the space requirements of most binary files are enormous. The most popular binary newsgroups are in the alt.binaries hierarchy. Binary newsgroups actually account for the vast majority of the bandwidth requirements of USENET, so many smaller sites, particularly the university sites, do not carry these hierarchies.

Green Cards and Spam.

In 1994, two American lawyers hired a coder to write a simple script to post an ad for their scheme to exploit foreigners using the US green card lotteries as bait. The ad was posted to many newsgroups. Although there had already been occasional "make money fast" ads, this was one of the first systematic spams. Spamming is now a big problem for USENET, but it is kept under control by a combination of spool filtering and cancelling.

The long September.

As the internet became more popular, USENET has changed. USENET was originally an academic network, and as late as 1994 it was quite normal to see a huge drop in traffic at the end of the academic year. A fresh influx of complete novices (newbies) could be guaranteed each September, but after the first few weeks of chaos they would settle down and mature. This seasonal trend has become far less marked than before, leading old timers to joke "it's been a long September."