The name 'Newsgroup' is a bit of a misnomer. Newsgroups do not report current events the way newspapers do. They are bulletin boards on the Internet, formed by groups of people who want to swap information on a particular subject.

Users post messages in Newsgroups asking for advice or opinions on the relevant subject matter. Others post replies, to which further postings can be added forming a discussion. When one posting builds up a series or replies, it is called a thread.

The majority of Newsgroups are part of an organisation called USENET, which stands for User's Network, a huge international discussion system that sets the standards that Newsgroups abide to.

There is a Newsgroup for almost every subject you can think of from baking bread to body art. There are over 25,000 different Newsgroups on Netscape Online's Newsgroup server to choose from. If you know of a Newsgroup that is not on our server, you can ask us to add it.

You can usually decipher the area of interest of a Newsgroup by looking at its name. i.e. comp.unix.wizards or news.groups.reviews.

The basic USENET hierarchies include:

• COMP: Computer topics

• REC: Recreational topics

• SCI: Scientific topics

• SOC: Social issues

• TALK: Conversational topics

• NEWS: Help topics regarding Newsgroups

• MISC: Groups that don't fit well elsewhere

• ALT: Alternate

Therefore, looking at the examples above, comp.unix.wizards would have computers as it's general area of interest and referring specifically to Unix wizards.

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