Ask Candid Candice a question about Moo Canada:

What is Usenet?

Usenet is an Internet service made up of thousands of newsgroups. A newsgroup is a public discussion area allowing interested participants to read and respond to messages posted by other interested participants. Generally, there will be a few topics of discussion going on at the same time, but they all share some common theme. There are over 10,000 newsgroups in Usenet, and there are more being added all the time. There is a newsgroup dedicated to every theme one can possibly imagine, from Japanese cartoons to nuclear proliferation.

There are two types of newsgroups: moderated and unmoderated. A moderated newsgroup does not allow people to post directly to the newsgroup. Rather, the postings go to the newsgroup's moderator who determines whether or not to pass the posting to the entire group. An unmoderated newsgroup allows a reader to post directly to the other readers.

In order to access Usenet you need a news reader. Netscape and Explorer both include news readers with their product. In UNIX the 'tin' news reader is most popular.