The Usenet, originally Unix User Network is a global electronic network that represents its own independent service on the Internet alongside the World Wide Web. It was created in 1979, long before the World Wide Web. It provides all kinds of professional discussion forums in pure text form, the newsgroups, in which basically anyone can participate. The participant usually uses a news reader for this purpose. It represents a significant body of knowledge dating back to the early 1980s. There is also the parallel structure of Binary Usenet, which can also distribute binary files as attachments.
Functionality of Usenet
The way Usenet works is often compared to bulletin boards: someone writes a message (post) and posts it to the bulletin board, where it is visible and accessible to anyone interested. However, this comparison only reflects a partial aspect of Usenet, since communication via bulletin boards usually only runs in one direction: a message is usually not answered by someone who in turn sends a (reply) message to the bulletin board board staples; Further communication takes place via another method. However, on Usenet, replying to a message with another message within the same place is the usual way.
A more appropriate comparison, from which the Usenet language also comes, is the newspaper industry:
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- Someone writes an article (a news or an article ) for the newspaper (newsgroup).
A reader refers to this article and writes a letter to the editor (a follow-up ) that he sends to the newspaper. - By publishing this letter to the editor, it becomes an article that other readers can now refer to. This creates communication in both directions.
- However, Usenet differs in that it does not have an editorial team that preselects the articles or letters to the editor to be published. The exception is the relatively few moderated newsgroups, whose moderators are generally democratically elected and bound by majority decisions.
The advantages of Usenet are its speed and the high number of participants. Within a few hours, huge discussion trees (so-called threads) can emerge on controversial topics. Due to its redundant distribution across thousands of news servers in many different countries, Usenet is also comparatively insensitive to censorship.
Usage and Manners of Usenet
Usenet and newsgroups are accessed via a program installed on the computer, a so-called newsreader. Limited access is also possible via email or via a corresponding website (Web-To-News-Gateway). In the case of a newsreader, the address of the news server to be used must usually be communicated to it first. The program can then list all the newsgroups that exist there. The user selects the ones they want to read and the newsreader downloads those newsgroups’ posts for display. The user selects a specific newsgroup and can view a list of upcoming postings, usually sorted either chronologically or by topic (thread). He/she selects the postings that interest him/her, reads them and can respond to them in order to create a new posting. Of course, there is also the option to create a posting on a completely new topic.
The special nature of communication between several people via text messages leads to specific problems. Netiquette is a collection of recommendations for dealing with one another that have developed over the years and are considered useful by many participants. However, individual points of netiquette, especially the recommendation to reveal one’s real name, are quite controversial.
In contrast to chat, you cannot expect a response after just a few seconds on Usenet, because the message must first be passed on from server to server. In addition, many participants read the posts offline, which means they download the new posts in the groups they subscribe to on their local hard drive once or several times a day, then write their answers offline and send them back to their server. This is one of the reasons why most participants react irritably to excessive repetition of the same content. Sending an article to several groups (crossposting) should also be used sparingly. Multipostings (the same article sent multiple times under different message IDs) and repeated advertising (spam) are undesirable .
In most newsgroups, what should be posted in the group is specified in the respective charter. We also strongly recommend reading the FAQ of a newsgroup, where frequently asked questions are answered. Anyone who asks a frequently asked question again often has to expect a rude tone in the answers. It is also advisable to first read through a number of existing articles before writing something yourself. You get a feeling for the climate of the group.
Netiquette sometimes differs from hierarchy to hierarchy. For example, in some hierarchies the use of pseudonyms is not welcome, in other hierarchies it is seen by many users as a violation of netiquette, and in other hierarchies it is generally accepted. What is acceptable and what is not is occasionally the subject of heated debate. Since the course of many Usenet discussions is similar, various rules have been formulated as so-called Usenet laws. The best-known example is Godwin’s law.
Comparison With Mailing Lists
A newsgroup has a similar function to a mailing list. Typically, both a newsgroup and a mailing list are dedicated to a specific topic. It is not necessary that readers of a message be online at the exact time it is sent. Many participants write their messages offline and submit them to the server later. Because the use of mailing lists and newsgroups is very similar, in individual cases there are even gateways that copy messages in a specific mailing list to a specific newsgroup (and/or vice versa).
Although the use of mailing lists and newsgroups is relatively similar, the two systems differ in technical terms. A mailing list depends on a specific server that manages users and receives emails and forwards them to all subscribers. Usenet, on the other hand, is organized decentrally; many groups are available on dozens or even hundreds of servers, which makes the system insensitive to the failure of individual servers and thus increases the availability of the entire system. In addition, there is usually no central user management on Usenet, so no one can control who has access to a particular newsgroup.
The content of mailing lists can be mirrored on Usenet by the internet service gmane. In this way, mailing lists can be used in parallel with newsgroups with a newsreader.
Comparison With Web Forums
Web forums offer a very similar method of communication to Usenet. However, the programs (software) required for access differ. In the case of a web forum, the author or administrator centrally specifies the appearance of the messages and the functions for displaying and editing messages; the display takes place in the browser. On Usenet, however, the news reader determines the arrangement and appearance of the individual messages (postings) . Depending on the newsreader used, there are different ways to display and select news. For example, the news on a topic can be arranged hierarchically so that you can immediately see from the indentation which message refers to which previous message (thread view). In addition, certain participants or discussions can be hidden.
Further differences to web forums are:
As a rule, only a single news server is contacted to retrieve all messages from all subscribed newsgroups or to publish messages, but since all news servers exchange the messages with each other, they are stored on many systems ( redundancy ). Web forums, on the other hand, only store the messages on one or a few servers.
All messages are usually purely text-based; Graphics or markups are undesirable, although attachments or HTML messages are technically possible.
The relatively long existence of Usenet also makes an important difference: Over time, its own Usenet culture has developed with a long tradition that has produced its own manners and language. The development of a separate culture in web forums can also be seen, but this is primarily oriented towards young internet participants who have their own language and also maintain their own manners. There is only very limited exchange between these cultures. These different cultures seem to be the cause of some conflicts between Usenet and web forum enthusiasts.
While censorship in web forums is usually carried out by central authorities, on Usenet the technical possibility for decentralized censorship is available through third-party cancellation . However, the responsibility that censorship-authorized web forum users have is not required of Usenet participants, as Usenet has the legal status of a global communications platform rather than that of a localizable web presence.
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