blog.anta.net

After a hiatus, the newsgroup news.newusers.questions (newsgroup, website) has now returned with a new Moderation Board and a new moderation platform (thanks to albasani.net).

As per its charter, news.newusers.questions is for questions, answers and advice about using Usenet news and other Internet newsgroups and services. The group was first created in May 1991 and was converted to a moderated group in June 1997. (Presently, Big-Eight groups are no longer moderated “in place”; instead, the current procedure is to create new moderated groups where needed.)

During the final years of the 20th century, an enormous number of new users began to explore the Internet through news.newusers.questions, partly because the newsreader bundled with version 3 of the Netscape browser was subscribed to the group by default. Questions were continuously posted and answered. Traffic in the group was high. The group had a number of backup moderators as well as an extended “nnq worker” community.

The present abundance of social networking sites, web forums and other websites has reduced the usage of newsgroups. Nevertheless, Netnews is far from dead; discussions abound, FAQs are posted and new groups are created. On average, newsgroup users seem to be more experienced than in the 1990s, when the yearly influx of new users was clearly discernible every autumn as schools started.

If you have a question about newsgroups or if you would like to help new users, welcome!