In general, it is a bad idea to forward these newsgroups to your neighbors without asking them first; they should only be received at a site by choice. Not only is this generally-accepted net etiquette, it helps to preserve the freedom to do and say as the posters please in these newsgroups, as the only people who get them are those who asked to get them. This freedom is more restricted in the Usenet as a whole, because every mainstream posting and every mainstream newsgroup name must be acceptable to a much wider audience than is present in these hierarchies. Because of the sheer size of the mainstream Usenet, extra-long or controversial postings are more likely to cause problems when posted to the Usenet; however, these alternative hierarchies exist precisely to support those kinds of postings (if germane to the hierarchy).
Usually, there is is no restriction on getting these groups as long as you have the capacity to receive, store, and forward the groups; software after B 2.11 news is required to make the distribution mechanism work properly for these groups. How to join each distribution is described below.
Note that the "uunet" service carries all of these hierarchies.
Contact uunet-request@uunet.uu.net for subscription details.
Feeds may possibly be obtained from husc6.harvard.edu, news.mcs.com,
rpi.edu, rutgers.edu, spl1, and telly.on.ca among others.
The IEEE is willing to distribute these newsgroups via NNTP to any site
that desires to carry them. If you would like a feed of these
newsgroups, have the news admin for your site contact 'usenet@ieee.org'
for a feed.
Here you can find a compiled list of
newsgroups related to Eastern Europe and countries of xUSSR
Newsgroups with hyphenated names are treated no differently:
just convert all dots to hyphens. E.g., to post to
soc.net-people, send mail to <soc-net-people@cs.utexas.edu>.
We carry the main seven USENET hierarchies, plus many of the
useful alt groups. Newsgroups which we don't carry should
generate a "user unknown" bounce message.
Most of the *.test groups have been disabled because they
generate autoreplies which frequently land in my mailbox.
The gateway supports mail-to-news only, i.e. you can only post news.
There is no way you can use the gateway to receive news via email
or to otherwise read news.
Cancel control messages are not supported. Once it is posted,
there is no easy way for you to cancel it.
Forged email and anonymous email are not appreciated. Please
don't do it. If the gateway becomes a magnet for such mail,
I'll have to turn it off. Thanks for your cooperation.
Alt
---
"alt" is a collection of newsgroups that is being distributed by a
collection of sites that choose to carry the groups. Many Usenet
sites do not receive these groups. Here is a recent list of many
active "alt" newsgroups:
Bit
---
"bit" is a collection of newsgroups which are being distributed by a
collection of sites that choose to carry them. The "bit" newsgroups
are redistributions of the more popular BitNet LISTSERV mailing lists.
Contact Jim McIntosh Biz
---
"Biz" is a distribution of newsgroups that are carried and propagated
by sites interested in the world of business products around them -- in
particular, computer products and services. This includes product
announcements, announcements of fixes and enhancements, product
reviews, and postings of demo software. Current biz groups include:
ClariNet
--------
The ClariNet hierarchy consists of newsgroups gatewayed from
commercial news services and other ``official'' sources. A feed of
the ClariNet groups requires payment of a fee and execution of a
license. More information may be obtained by sending mail to
"info@clarinet.com".
GNU
---
gnUSENET (gnUSENET is Not USENET) is a set of newsgroups that are
gated bi-directionally with the Internet mailing lists of the GNU
Project of the Free Software Foundation. GNU (GNU's Not Unix) will be
a complete operating system, including application programs, with
freely redistributable source code. Please use ONLY gnu.misc.discuss
for discussion of topics considered contrary to GNU aims and political
philosophy (e.g., porting of GNU code to Apple machines, usefulness of
intellectual property laws, etc.).
The GNU mailing lists and newsgroups, like the GNU project itself,
exist to promote the freedom to share software. So please don't use
these newsgroups (or the other GNU lists) to promote or recommend
non-free software. (Using them to post ordering information is the
ultimate faux pas.) If there is no free program to do a certain task,
then somebody should write one!
Use gnu.emacs.help to discuss software on gnu.emacs.sources and to ask
for sources. gnu.emacs.sources is archived by many sites and they
want sources ONLY!
The gnu.*.bug groups are pseudo-moderated (that is, the group is
marked moderated so that postings are mailed to prep.ai.mit.edu and
then redistributed to the both the mailing list and newsgroup from
there). The gnu.*announce groups are all fully moderated.
If one of your USENET feeds cannot provide you with a feed of the
gnUSENET newsgroups, send mail to gnu.gnusenet.config@prep.ai.mit.edu
to ask for a feed.
Questions about GNU can be directed to gnu@prep.ai.mit.edu or:
Free Software Foundation
675 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02139
USA
+1-617-876-3296
HEPnet
------
HEPnet is a collections of networks interconnecting high-energy and
nuclear physics research sites. The HEPnet netnews hierarchy was
created to facilitate discussions in the HEP and NP communitites. The
hierarchy is is maintained by National HEPnet Management. All groups
are bi-directionally gatewayed to mailing lists and automatically
archived. Questions, requests for feeds, and group deletions/additions
should be sent to netnews@hep.net (Internet), netnews@hepnet (BITNET),
or hepnet::netnews (HEP-ES DECnet).
IEEE
----
The IEEE newsgroups concern the IEEE -- the Institute of Electrical
and Electronics Engineers.
Inet/DDN
--------
Another alternative hierarchy is the "inet/ddn" distribution. This
consists of many newsgroups bearing names similar to traditional Usenet
groups and corresponding to Internet discussion lists. These groups are
circulated using the NNTP transport mechanism amongst sites on the
Internet in an attempt to reduce the number of copies of these groups
flowing through the mail (some sites get these groups via UUCP and
other transport mechanisms, but the volume can be substantial and load
may be significant without a high-speed link). Further details may be
obtained by writing to Erik Fair Info
---
The "info" hierarchy is a collection of mailing lists gatewayed into
news at the University of Illinois. The lists are selected based on
local interests but have proven popular at a number of sites. Groups
are removed when they become available via more mainstream
hierarchies. Sites are encouraged to mark *'ed groups as 'n' in their
active file. These groups are generally concerned with getting real
work done and readers dislike extraneous postings. Postings can still
be made by emailing to the listed contact address.
K12
---
K12Net is a collection of conferences devoted to K-12 educational
curriculum, language exchanges with native speakers, and
classroom-to-classroom projects designed by teachers. The
conferences are privately distributed among FidoNet-compatible
electronic bulletin board systems in Africa, Asia, Australia,
Europe, and North America, as well as available from uunet.uu.net
as Usenet newsgroups in the hierarchy k12.*
Classroom-to-classroom projects are featured in the K12 "Channels"
which are periodically reassigned based on usage and appropriate
project length. They comprise the k12.sys hierarchy.
Forums for casual conversation among students are divided by grade
level in the k12.chat hierarchy; there is also an area for teachers to
exchange general ideas about using telecommunications in education.
For more information, contact one of the members of
the K12Net Council of Coordinators:
Jack Crawford
RELCOM
------
Relcom.* is the hierarchy of Russian-language newsgroups distributed
mostly on the territory of the former Soviet Union (non-CIS countries
included). These groups are available in Europe and Northern America;
due to the 8-bit encoding (KOI-8) of Cyrillic letters, minor software
modifications may be required.
Newsgroups under the hierarchy relcom.commerce contain classified
advertisements and are relatively high-volume; the nature of the
information distributed in those groups may contradict policy of some
networks. However, they may be valuable for researchers and
businessmen interested in the first-hand information on the economics
of FSU countries.
Eugene Peskin
U3B
---
Groups dealing with AT&T 3B{2,5,15,20,4000} computers -- everything
except for the UNIX PC/3B1. Both uunet and ames carry these groups.
u3b.config 3B Distribution configuration.
u3b.misc 3B Miscellaneous Discussions.
u3b.sources Sources for AT&T 3B systems.
u3b.tech 3B Technical Discussions.
u3b.test 3B Distribution Testing.
VMSnet
------
This hierarchy is for topics of interest to VAX/VMS users (but not
necessarily VMS-specific). These groups are a project of the VMSnet working
group of the VAX SIG of the US Chapter of DECUS (the Digital Equipment
Computer User's Society). They are carried by most major usenet news sites,
and almost half of all netnews sites. To find a feed, contact the system
managers of news sites near you, and/or post to a local or regional
newsgroup and ask if anyone in the area is carrying the VMSnet newsgroups.
If you have tried these alternatives and still can not find a site in your
local area that carries the VMSnet groups, you can send mail to the VMSnet
Network Coordinator, currently Terry Poot
Groups of Distribution
All groups distributed worldwide are divided
into seven broad classifications: "news", "soc", "talk", "misc",
"sci", "comp" and "rec". Each of these classifications is organized
into groups and subgroups according to topic.
There are groups in other subcategories, but they are local: to
institutions, to geographic regions, etc. and they are not listed
here. Note that these distribution categories can be used to restrict
the propagation of news articles. Currently, distributions include:
world worldwide distribution (default)
can limited (mostly) to Canada
eunet limited (mostly) to European sites in EUNet
na limited (mostly) to North America
usa limited (mostly) to the United States
There may be other regional and local distribution categories available
at your site. Most US states have distribution categories named after
the two letter abbreviation for that state or category (e.g., "ga" for
Georgia, "nj" for New Jersey). Please use an appropriate distribution
category if your article is not likely to be of interest to USENET
readers worldwide.
Please notify me of any errors or changes to the information in this article.
David Lawrence, tale@uunet.uu.net
How to Post Message to Newsgroups.
If you send mail to
To: some-news-group@cs.utexas.edu
Cc: some-other-news-group@cs.utexas.edu
will be crossposted to some.news.group and some.other.news.group.
------
Donald E. Blais Internet: blais@utexas.edu
UTexas Computation Center UUCP: uunet!cs.utexas.edu!blais
Austin, TX 78712 Phone: +1 512-471-6387 +1 512-471-3241