Ever wish you could chat on a regular basis with people who share your interests? Ever wish you could argue on a regular basis with people who don't? Either way, you'll probably be interested in the Usenet, a worldwide network of more than 14,000 online forums (or newsgroups, as they're called). A Usenet newsgroup is an ongoing discussion that you can join -- and leave and come back to -- any time you like; you just read what's been posted, post your comment or response, and come back and see what others had to say. You don't even need an Internet connection to join a Usenet forum; online services, such as AOL and CompuServe, offer them too.

Usenet refers to the collection of newsgroups (sometimes called the Big Eight hierarchies) and a set of agreed-upon rules for distributing and maintaining them. Usenet newsgroups are arranged hierarchically first by the name of the group, followed by the name of the subgroups. Each name in the hierarchy is separated by a period. For example, the discussion group about rose gardening is rec.gardens.roses. This means the conversation is in the general grouping of rec. (which stands for recreation), and a subgroup of recreation called gardens. In this particular case, an additional subgroup of gardens has been created for roses. Each additional subgroup in a hierarchy defines how narrow or specialized the discussion topic is. It's not uncommon to find newsgroups with several subgroups.

The Usenet Big Eight hierarchies are:

comp - computer science and related topics
news - information about the newsgroups
rec - hobbies and recreational activities
sci - scientific research and applications
soc - social issues, including politics
talk - debate on controversial topics
misc - anything that doesn't fit in the above categories

System administrators decide which newsgroups will be carried on their systems. Making newsgroups available to their users means dedicating hard-drive space for storage, so decisions have to be made about the allocation of those resources. Many administrators will not carry the "alt." groups. Some even refuse to carry any group with the word "sex" in the name. You have to check with your provider to find out what newsgroups they carry.