Usenet is one of the oldest parts of the Internet.
It consists of discussion groups called "newsgroups". Servers propagate messages in a peer-to-peer fashion. Clients connect to servers to read and post to newsgroups.
Access to Usenet is normally tolled. If you pay a fee, you may purchase real NNTP access to a Usenet server, and connect your own client software (and trade large files at binary groups). Many Usenet participants are stuck using free methods like http://groups.google.com to read and post.
Usenet hierarchy[]
The tree listed here is restricted to those groups, past or present, that have some substantial connection to NetHack. The full Usenet hierarchy is of course much vaster than this.
- comp.
- comp.sources.
- comp.sources.games
- comp.sources.
- rec.
- rec.games.
- rec.games.hack (obsolete)
- rec.games.roguelike.
- rec.games.
- net. (obsolete; see Great Renaming. All known versions of Hack were posted here)
- net.sources.
- net.sources.games
- net.sources.