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Miloslav Ciz 2024-10-09 14:00:06 +02:00
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usenet.md
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@ -6,7 +6,7 @@ Back in the day there were no [web browsers](browser.md), there was no web. Many
Usenet invented many things that survive until today such as the words *[spam](spam.md)* and *[FAQ](faq.md)* as well as some basic concepts of how discussion forums even work. It was also generally quite a lot for the [free speech](free_speech.md), which is good.
Usenet was originally [ASCII](ascii.md) only, but people started to post binary files encoded as ASCII and there were dedicated sections just for posting binaries, so you co go [piiiiiiiiirating](piracy.md).
Usenet was originally [ASCII](ascii.md) only, but people started to post binary files encoded as ASCII and there were dedicated sections just for posting binaries, so you could go [piiiiiiiiirating](piracy.md).
It worked like this: there were a number of Usenet servers that all collaborated on keeping a database of *articles* that users posted (very roughly this is similar to how [blockchain](blockchain.md) works nowadays); the servers would more or less mirror each other's content. These servers were called *providers* as they also allowed access to Usenet but this was usually for a fee. The system uses a [NNTP](nntp.md) (Network News Transfer Protocol) protocol. The articles users posted were also called *posts* or *news*, they were in [plain text](plain_text.md) and were similar to email messages ([mailing lists](mailing_list.md) actually offer a similar experience). Other users could reply to posts, creating a discussion thread. Every post was also categorized under certain **newsgroup** that formed a hierarchy (e.g. *comp.lang.java*). After so called *Big Renaming* in 1987 the system eventually settled on 8 top level hierarchies (called the *Big 8*): comp.* (computers), news.* (news), sci.* (science), rec.* (recreation), soc.* (social), talk.* (talk), misc.* (other) and humanities.* (humanities). There was also another one called alt.* for "controversial" topics (see especially alt.tasteless). According to [Jargon File](jargon_file.md), by 1996 there was over 10000 different newsgroups.