One of the most useful, entertaining and living parts of the Internet is Usenet. Usenet is the part of the internet which distributes the 20,000 plus newsgroups which are in existence. And just what is a newsgroup? well, they are basically public discussion forums - places where anyone can post articles, read articles others have posted, and reply to them if you wish.

There are thousands of subject topics covered, some are very small, some are vast. Everything from recreational ice skating (rec.sport.skating.ice.recreational) through to those with an interest in african-grey parrots (alt.pets.parrots.african-grey) are covered by one group or another, and if it isn't there's every chance that eventually it will be as new groups are created all the time.

Newsgroups are named and ordered in a hierarchical fashion with the first word in the newsgroup name stating which hierarchy the group lies in. Most groups fall into what are known as "The Big Eight" - namely "alt." (alternative) "comp." (computing) "misc." (miscellaneous) "news." (news and admin relating to usenet) "rec." (recreational) "sci." (science) "soc." (society) and "talk." (debate/discussion). For Zetnet users the Big-8 is effectively the Big-10 due to the existence of UK and Zetnet hierarchies. The "uk." hierarchy is a large and very good set of newsgroups covering topics with specific focus on a uk audience. The "zetnet." hierarchy is a whole set of groups only available to Zetnet subscribers and covers topics from support through to specific interests as well as general chat.

Newsgroups are an area of the Internet which follow various items of "Net-etiquette" or "Netiquette" more tightly and religiously than others. To this extent I advise you to read a newsgroup for a while before you post to it. Looking up the charter for the group and any related FAQ (frequently asked questions) is also adviseable, although not all groups possess such documents.

There are several places I would recommend that you have a look at, these two should point you in the right direction...

http://www.yahoo.com/News_and_Media/Usenet/Newsgroup_Listings/
http://www.usenet.org.uk

I would also recommend that you take the newsgroup news.announce.newusers as this contains regular postings of useful information to help you through this particular mine field of the Internet.

Also make sure you take zetnet.announce and zetnet.answers as both groups contain useful and important information for Zetnet Subscribers.

If you would like any advice or on selecting groups to read and post to, or you'd like something explaining further then please email me and I'll do my best to guide you in the right direction.

Support Team (support@zetnet.net)

For a list of local Zetnet News Groups click here