Newsgroup

A discussion group that's based on postings by members on a particular topic. These topics range from sports, autos, investing, teen problems, and some stuff you probably don't want to know about. The way newsgroups work is users post messages to a news server which then sends them to a bunch of other participating servers. The groups can be either "moderated", where someone decides which postings will become part of the discussion, or "unmoderated", where everything posted is included in the discussion. To participate in a newsgroup, you must subscribe to it. It doesn't cost anything, but some groups can be hard to get into. Nearly all newsgroups are found on Usenet, which is a collection of servers around the world. Because of the global spectrum of newsgroups, they make up largest bulletin board system in the world. From the last I heard, there are more than 13,000 newsgroups in existence, with new ones being added all the time. There are many "Newsreader" programs which allow you to access and participate in newsgroups, but since the ability is integrated into Netscape Communicator and Microsoft Internet Explorer, you can just use your web browser instead.