Usenet is a worldwide distributed discussion system. It was developed from the general-purpose UUCP dial-up network architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979, and it was established in 1980. Users read and post messages (called articles or posts, and collectively termed news) to one or more categories, known as newsgroups. Usenet resembles a bulletin board system (BBS) in many respects and is the precursor to Internet forums that are widely used today. Usenet can be superficially regarded as a hybrid between email and web forums. Discussions are threaded, as with web forums and BBSs, though posts are stored on the server sequentially.
One notable difference between a BBS or web forum and Usenet is the absence of a central server and dedicated administrator. Usenet is distributed among a large, constantly changing conglomeration of servers that store and forward messages to one another in so-called news feeds. Individual users may read messages from and post messages to a local server operated by a commercial usenet provider, their Internet service provider, university, employer, or their own server.
Usenet II was a proposed alternative to the classic Usenet hierarchy, started in 1998. Unlike the original Usenet, it was peered only between "sound sites" and employs a system of rules to keep out spam. The network still exists, but has carried almost no posts apart from FAQs for many years.
The newsgroup hierarchy revived the old naming system used by Usenet before the Great Renaming. All groups had names starting "net.", which serve to distinguish them from the "Big 8" (misc., sci., news., rec., soc., talk., comp., humanities.). A separate checkgroup system, using the same technical mechanism as the one produced by David C. Lawrence for the Big 8, enforced the Usenet II hierarchy and prevents the creation of unauthorized newsgroups within it.
The basic principles of operation were controlled by a Steering Committee, which appointed "hierarchy czars" who were responsible for the content of specific portions of the namespace, or hierarchies.
Usenet II had strictly enforced rules. Readers of messages in Usenet II must be fully compliant with the RFC 1036 (Usenet) standard plus some additional format compliance rules specific to Usenet II. A message header must contain a valid email address in the From field. It must have an NNTP-Posting-Host header field containing a sound site. The distribution field must be set to "4gh" (a reference to Shockwave Rider by John Brunner). If the Subject field starts "Re:", indicating a follow-up, there must be a valid References field containing the Message-ID of a previous message. Crossposts to groups outside the net.* hierarchy are cancelled automatically.
You know that it would be untrue;
You know that I would be a liar;
If I was to say to you;
Girl, we couldn't get much higher
Come on, baby, light my fire,
Come on, baby, light my fire,
Try to set the night on fire
The time to hesitate is through,
No time to wallow in the mire,
Try now we can only lose,
And our love become a funeral pyre
The time to hesitate is through,
No time to wallow in the mire;
If I was to say to you;