| May 2012 | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| S | M | T | W | T | F | S |
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | ||
| 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 |
| 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 |
| 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 |
| 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | ||
What is a Usenet newsgroup, you say? It’s pretty amazing, actually. Usenet is part of the Internet. It supports tens of thousands of newsgroups, which are discussion groups devoted to specific subjects. There are Usenet newsgroups to discuss almost everything. For example, there are newsgroups dedicated to:
and almost everything else.
On these groups, people from all over the world discuss the subject. Unlike chat rooms, these discussions are not real time. People read and respond to posts whenever it’s convenient. If you have a question about the subject, you can ask, and usually someone will post an answer to your question, within hours. The person may be hundreds or thousands of miles away. It’s amazing. And once in a while, you yourself may know the answer to someone’s question and be able to help.
On many of these newsgroups, the posters seem to know all the latest info. Just scanning the newsgroup can keep you informed about the latest developments in a subject.
You can access newsgroups via Google, or via dedicated software. Most of the dedicated software is freeware or shareware.
And yet—there isn’t a newsgroup yet for people who read and write weblogs.
A newsgroup about weblogs would permit discussions about things like:
Your vote could be key to getting this newsgroup approved.
I’ve made a formal request to start a newsgroup about weblogs. There’s a correct procedure for doing this. I researched it, got coached by one of the Usenet experts on how to do it, and filed it. It appears, of course, on a newsgroup, called news.groups. You can see it here.
What happens next is, there’s a discussion about the need for a newsgroup like this, and then there’s a vote. The discussion and vote are open to the public. Anyone who would like to use such a newsgroup is officially invited to participate in the discussion and in the vote.
If you’d like a discussion group like this, click here, and use the “Post a follow-up to this message” link at the bottom of the page to add a comment saying that you would find such a newsgroup useful. In a month or so, there will be a vote to approve the newsgroup. In order to pass, there must be 100 more Yes votes than No votes, and two thirds of all votes must be Yes.
I’ll keep you posted here on the status so that you can join in the voting when the time comes as well, if you wish.
If you have any questions about this, post them in the Comments section here, and I’ll try to answer them.
UPDATE: People were more interested in a forum, so I started one. Read about it here..
#1
#2Hi Patrick,
Thanks for your support!
-Vik
Hey Vik - There *is* the alt.writing.diaries newsgroup. But when a call for votes DOES come, YOU CAN COUNT ON ME.
Cheers for now
Patrick