Talk:Usenet newsgroup

Notation
In the various articles about newsgroups, Usenet, list of newsgroups, and other places on Wikipedia, there are at least three different standards uses for listing a newsgroup in an article. Those three standards are:


 * plain lettering: alt.ascii-art
 * italics: alt.ascii-art
 * block lettering:

Which of these three is the "correct" way to list a newsgroup in a Wikipedia article? Personally I think the italicized version should be correct, but I'm not sure if there is an "official" way to list a newsgroup. --Modemac 18:18, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Google is polluting its newsgroup archives
In early 2005, Google started polluting its newsgroup archives by including public and private mailing lists without any indication of the difference. --tshapin 11:50, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Moderation
Can somebody add content decribing moderation of USENET newsgroup?


 * Wouldn't that involve discussing the concept of the "approved" line in a header? Dexter Nextnumber (talk) 07:31, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Verifiability
By what specific method are these facts verifiable? Is it acceptable practice to discuss newsgroups when the guidelines for reliable sources say otherwise? This question may appear to be silly, however, it is in regard to better documentation for Wikipedia. Ste4k 00:59, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia is not a place to expound on first-hand knowledge. It is a place to state what verifiable sources have to say on a subject, and those sources must be secondary. As things stand the entire article is first-hand knowledge. It needs a lot of references before it can be considered a true encyclopedia article. DQweny (talk) 01:39, 16 October 2009 (UTC)
 * "'...and those sources must be secondary'"
 * Sorry to disagree, but the source you cited not only does not say that, the string "second" is not found in the text of the article on Verifiability at all. However, there is a wikilink there to the proper reference page.  You may want to take a chance to read and consider it.  Cherry picking some choice quotes from the proper citation (WP:PSTS): "Our policy: Tertiary sources can be helpful in providing broad summaries of topics that involve many primary and secondary sources." "Our policy: Primary sources that have been reliably published (for example, by a university press or mainstream newspaper) may be used in Wikipedia, but only with care, because it is easy to misuse them."  "Deciding whether primary, secondary or tertiary sources are more suitable on any given occasion is a matter of common sense and good editorial judgment, and should be discussed on article talk pages."  So, no, the statement "sources must be secondary" is not within the bounds of the exact same Verifiability concept you pointed to; I'm simply having trouble verifying that your opinion on the matter is correct.  —Aladdin Sane (talk) 04:16, 16 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Fair enough. But an article still can't consist entirely of the article writer's unverified personal opinion. That's the problem with this article. DQweny (talk) 17:04, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Newsgroups "precursor" of WWW?
The lead section says:


 * "Newsgroups of the 1980s thus became the precursor to the World Wide Web of the 1990s."

This seems quite misleading to me, except in the weak sense that ngs existed before the WWW. You could equally (and perhaps more accurately) say that FTP and Gopher (and even email) were precursors of the Web. I'd suggest deleting this sentence unless it can be reworded to be more meaningful. (And, come to think of it, did they become the precursors or were they the precursors?) AndrewWTaylor 16:11, 16 October 2006 (UTC)


 * No comments on this for 2 weeks - I'll delete the sentence; and also the inappropriate mention of Outlook Express AndrewWTaylor 12:29, 31 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Good, it doesn't make any sense to me either. Rissa, Guild of Copy Editors (talk) 04:44, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

minor important addition to article, tho messed up.
I added a link to the web archive from wayback machine (I can only add references via wayback machine @ my station)a site that lists all the usenet hierarchies in alphabetical order, but the link appears as a 1 @ the bottom of the article. I invite any who would be willing to teach me to do this better, to so do (I have always preferred the awkward "so do", and variants to ending sentences with prepesitions).Thaddeus Slamp 16:39, 26 March 2007 (UTC) Of course it would also be nice if someone fixxed my fix, without removing it, since I think that the basic idea is a pretty darned good one.Thaddeus Slamp 16:41, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

MUCHA LANA (removed)
(Long chain letter in Spanish removed from here. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 09:16, 11

history of newsgroups
While I agree the "precursor" comment (above) was misleading, I think some sense of history should be included in the introduction. Newsgroups were the first main way networked discussion happened - before the the Internet was widely used. It would also be nice to give a sense of the extent of usage (I have not read the whole article so not usre if this is in there somewhere). Clearly Newsgroups are a less significant part of all networked discussion now than they were at one time but have they declined in an absolute sense? Fholson 11:30, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Another long chain letter removed from here. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 08:04, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Spam removed. -nickerbocker

...And again (Link to Russian page this time). AndrewWTaylor (talk) 14:44, 2 April 2009 (UTC)


 * In the 1980s there were lots of BBS'es with "message areas" - not "newsgroups" - but they were treated the same way by the sysops that ran their systems. Dexter Nextnumber (talk) 07:35, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Programa EXCLUSIVO - Realmente Funciona (CONTENT DELETED)
(Yet another long chain letter in Spanish deleted. What is it about this article that attracts them?) AndrewWTaylor (talk) 21:00, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Added to the lead
I've added a bit to the lead about newsgroups remaining popular despite the advent of torrents, online forums, etc. I think it's worth expanding on this point for this article. In Internet terms, newsgroups are an ancient technology, and efforts are being made to shut them down from the ISP level, yet according to Wiki's own Usenet article the amount of material available via newsgroups continues to increase. 68.146.81.123 (talk) 21:20, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

But in the main body this idea of ISP blocking access is not developed, as announced in the first paragraph. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.145.147.38 (talk) 11:46, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

Cum sa faci bani pe net (CONTENT DELETED)
Another long chain letter removed from here. Al (talk) 19:53, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

filme (CONTENT DELETED)
And another long chain letter removed from here Al (talk) 19:54, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

Revising links list
I'm revising the links list to remove links that do not point to sites or resources specifically about newsgroups. Rationale: we have other articles in Wikipedia which are about Usenet in general; presumably the reader will click to these articles and follow the related links therein.

139.67.20.225 (talk) 19:45, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

Payservers
A Comparison of payservers needs to be made. Divide into blockaccounts (ie Astraweb, ...) and servers requiring a subscription (ie Giganews). Appearantly many ISP's disallow the downloading of binaries via usenet groups and/or don't allow the use of it al all. Payservers appearantly work around this problem. 91.182.60.211 (talk) 09:20, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

soc.culture
Searching for non-socio-cultural subjects in groups named like that might be comparable to noticing Latin (or Esperanto) porns called "interrecial" or "ethnic" (bad Anglo-Saxon imHo). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 201.3.140.208 (talk) 22:01, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

Rewrite
>"A Usenet newsgroup is a repository usually within the Usenet system, for messages posted from many users in different locations. Despite the name, newsgroups are discussion groups, and are not devoted to publishing news."

I think this should be changed to: "Usenet newsgroups are discussion groups within Usenet and, later, the Internet systems. Newsgroups don't publish news per se, the name comes from the term "Netnews," which initially referred to technical developments and subsequent discussion.  Rissa, Guild of Copy Editors  (talk) 04:52, 22 July 2015 (UTC)