Usenet Newsgroup: Usenet Newgroup Uncensored Listings

Usenet Newsgroups Listings With uncensored Usenet Newsgroup Descriptions and Links To Usenet Newsgroup Content, including alt binaries pictures newsgroup

Master List of Usenet Newsgroups

Usenet Newsgroup directory of over 30,000 of the most popular uncensored usenet newsgroup listings, with usenet newsgroup charter descriptions when provided, as well as links to open the newsgroup in a web-based reader, if the group is available.

Usenet Newsgroup FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)

A Usenet newsgroup is a discussion group which is active on Usenet, the Internet's original discussion group system. Unlike modern Web-based newsgroups and forums, Usenet discussion newgroups are trafficked over a distributed network of special servers.

These servers are referred to as news servers, and unlike web servers which deliver web content to web browsers, news servers deliver Usenet newsgroup messages to client software called newsreaders, which are designed only to handle Usenet discussion group content.

However, websites such as Google NewsGroups have created a web-based interface to the Usenet, so you may also use your web browser to access Usenet newsgroups today.

As a good introduction to Usenet newsgroups, we reccommend trying Google NewsGroups, for several reasons.

First, it is completely free. Second, it is essentially a news server and newsreader in one package, so you do not have to find a news server provider and newsreader software seperately and configure them to talk to each other, nor do you have to pay for them. Third, it is very simple to start using and will likely get you up to speed on newsgroup discussions as soon as possible.

There are two other very unique and powerful features of Google NewsGroups. The first is that Google NewsGroups is the most complete Usenet archive, and contains most of the messages that have ever been posted to Usenet. Most if not all other Usenet servers only have messages going back the last 30 to 120 days (which is referred to as the newsserver's retention.

Complimentary to Google NewsGroups's massive archive is that it features a very fast and powerful search engine which allows you to find messages from at any point in Usenet newsgroup history, which is a very powerful tool itself. IN many cases, if you want to ask a question on a particular subject on Usenet, you might do a search for previosu discussions on the subject, which may answer your question altogether or at least point to which Usenet newsgroup is on-topic to your desired topic.

After you get your feet wet in discussion newgroup using Google NewsGroups, you may wish to explore other areas of the Usenet which are not covered by Google NewsGroups. Although Google NewsGroups has a great many advantages mentioned, it also has some drawbacks.

The first drawback is that when Google originally aquired the canonical Usenet archive files from DejaNews.com, they also created a new web-based system which allowed Google Groups users to easily create new discussion newsgroup which are not distributed back to the global Usenet community.

This is a big problem for two reasons.

1. In most cases a canonical newsgroup for any given topic already exists, but new users may not go through the trouble of finding these newsgroups before starting their own group.

2. In most cases, the Google newsgroups created by users have very little if any traffic, and are generally nothing more then a confusing fragmentation of discussion communities for Google Groups users.

3. Google Groups does not do a very good job of clearly identifying which newsgroupss are Google Groups-only and which are genuine Usenet discussion newsgroups.

The second drawback is that Google Groups has significantly more lag in message distribution then a good news server. On a good news server, you might ask a question one minute and have an answer back within the next few minutes. On Google Groups this is unlikely because of the relative delay.

The third drawback is that Google Groups does not carry any binary newsgroups, which are among the most popular newsgroups on Usenet. Binary newsgroups are text discussion newsgroups which have been hacked, in a way, to contain binary content instead of text messages. Largely, the binary content consists of images (jpgs), videos and movies (avi, mpeg, DiVx, etc), and software packages. These binaries are converted to a special text encoding (like yEnc) so they can travel the text-only Usenet, but can easily be reconverted back into their useable binary form with a variety of utilities, which are usually built into newsreader software.

For simplified access to pre-downloaded, thumbnailed, and indexed binary images and videos from binary usenet newsgroups, UsenetBinaries.com offers millions of galleries to this content which can be browsed and downloaded over a web browser. They also offer traditional newsserver access.

Windows XP and Windows Vista come with combination email client/newsreader packages, named Outlook Express and Windows Mail respectively. These newsreader offerings are the traditional method of accessing Usenet, and are a very good and free option for Windows users. However, neither package provides support for yEnc-encoded binaries, which have become the defacto standard for binary Usenet content, so while you may be able to view and download certain binaries with these packages, most will not be downloadable.

Both of these newsreaders need to connect to a news server. In some cases, your ISP may offer news server access free as part of your ISP account, but many do not. The main reason for this is that news servers consume a tremendous amount of hardware, maintenance, and bandwidth resources compared to other services such as web and mail, and are extremely expensive to maintain, often costing ISPs over $30,000 a year in operating cost. Usually, to connect to your ISP's newsserver, you only need enter its address in Outlook Express, such as 'news.yourisp.com' for example. In some cases a username and password may be required.