How is Usenet Organized?
The Usenet system is a vast multidimensional network of ideas, spanning nearly every aspect of human thought: Science, The Arts, Politics, Religion, Sports, Commerce, and so forth. Newcomers to this network may feel a bit like Isaac Newton, described by poet William Wordsworth as “a mind forever voyaging through strange seas of thought … alone.” So it might help to have a map. This article is your guide to the major hierarchies in the Usenet system, along with a sampling of interesting stops along the way. Many of the newsgroups are moderated, which means that new messages have to be read and approved by a human moderator before they appear in the system. Newsgroups without a moderator are often so overrun with advertising and off-topic messages that they’re not worth visiting.
