Usenet

Usenet is a distributed discussion system where users post “articles” into “newsgroups” (often just “groups”). Newsgroups span a huge range of topics, organized into a heirarchy. The name usenet is typically used to refer to 8 or 9 specific heirarchies (the .alt heirarchy, which is not managed by the same group as the other 8, is often, but not always, included); netnews describes the broader world of all newsgroups using the same set of technologies. The terms are sometimes used interchangably.

Moderation

I recently became (with Dan Cross) the moderator on comp.os.plan9. I’d used Usenet/nntp for a long time, but had never run a server or done any moderation work on it. Some of these links were helpful in learning.

This moderation FAQ from the Big 8 Board was really helpful. It took longer than it should’ve to realize that no, that really is all there is to it, and yes, a lot of that is out-of-band via email.

The list of moderation software on that page was interesting, too, but mostly for reference. It’s mostly… very old and clunky, that which still works. Since comp.os.plan9 is so low-traffic (for now!), I’m doing the moderation by hand at the moment (using Plan 9’s nntpfs to post the approved messages) and working on some moderation software I can host on Plan 9. That part is… fun. :-)

Servers

I use Eternal September as my NNTP server. They’ve been good. The’ll let you peer, although I haven’t needed that, and they’ll let you add the Approved: header if you’re actually authorized (point them at a Usenet thread with the Big-8 mods, for example.

I set up my own server to play with to get a better feel for things, especially ramping up to taking over moderation. I’m running INN, which seems to be sort of the “default” answer. The overview and FAQ were helpful. INN is way overkill for what I’m actually doing with it, but it was useful to have the most mainstream thing for reference.

Protocols

In trying to understand nntp itself a little better, these pages on NNTP reply codes and NNTP commands were helpful. RFC 3977 is what actually defines the protocol (updating the original RFC 977).

History

I missed the days of ClariNet being a thing. These haven’t worked for a very long time now, but here’s how to get ClariNet on INN.

Also mentioned in the [troff_links] page, there is a cookbook (archive) (pdf (archive)) made from recipes submitted to alt.gourmand.