usenet.htm: How to search the web, by fravia+ Usenet

~ Usenet ~

				Usenet

Version March 2001

Usenet and maillists searching

This page is still in fieri. Bear with me, usenet searching techniques deserve a very good page. Yet, while still working on that, I wish to help right now my readers with a "quick & dirty" reference page for usenet and maillists searching purposes.

[Introduction] [related sections]

[newsgroup searching]    [newsgroup & maillists perusing]
[deja/google]    [Usenet replayer]    [Newsone]
[liszt masks]    [Listtool mask]    [Catalist mask]
[Nuthinbutnews]    [Sucknews]    [Subdimension]    [Spaceports]
[Alabanza] [Usenet via accmail (Sonador)]
[Green Egg]

Introduction

Usenet will give you an incredible mass of micro-information, with mostly very useful results, especially for seeking, combing, klebing and stalking purposes. Keep in mind that usenet searching can be VERY time-consuming, and that some special skills are needed to perform it with an high degree of effectiveness.

To access 'correctly' usenet you should use news reader software which provides a convenient user interface in order to list, track and display the articles you may be interested in. The same software also allows composing and submitting new articles, should you want to contribute (or lure or troll). All you need to know is the newsserver machine name, which you will use to configure appropriately your software. There are many free versions of news reader software, moreover a news reader is built into many Internet Browsers.

To peruse usenet, you must access a news server, which is nothing else than a computer system which provides shared storage for Usenet articles. Usenet must use "shared storage" because its total volume is HUGE. Instead of requiring each reader to obtain and store 200,000 articles in 2 GBytes per day, the articles can be kept in a central location and thus can be "shared" by many readers.
This sharing works in the following way: when you request to read an article, a copy is sent from the server to your news reader. After you read the first article and move onto the next, the copy is usually discarded, so it does not take up space on your computer.
In most cases, news servers are accessed using the Internet, but they can be accessed over a LAN, if such a news server exists on the LAN.
Note that most internet service subscribtions include access to a news server which you can use for free. In order to make profit, many news servers are not open to the general public (ahem... in theory :-) in fact in recent years they have been more and more commercially "bastardized" for exclusive use by "customers".
I will list here various links that you can use to peruse usenet and to access usenet "on the fly" during your queries.

Be aware of some typical usenet "quirks": Each server has ONLY A PART of the total articles. Your news reader can only display articles which are present on the news server you access. If an article is not present on the server, it is because either that article has never arrived at your server, or it has been cancelled, or else it has expired.
Because there is a limited amount of storage on a local news server, articles "must" expire. But fortunately, the accumulated body of information of Usenet is not lost: There are a number of WWW sites which archive and index Usenet articles. Thus you can retrieve posts which have expired (or perhaps had not even arrived) at your local news server.
Instead of asking a question in a news group, you can use the Usenet archives to retrieve articles which discussed your question long ago.
By searching first and posting questions only if you find no answers, everyone will be much happier (this is valid for messageboards as well, btw :-)
Searching first you will get an answer faster. You don't have to wait for your message to reach the far corners of the world. You don't have to rely on someone nice enough to write a reply. Perhaps those in the know aren't listening right now, even if they answered the same question in depth in the past.
Searching offers an added advantage: you will also find the groups which have an interest in your topic. Do not underestimate it. So if you cannot find the answer in the archived messages, you will have a good starting place to ask questions.

A final word of WARNING: there are a series of anonymity concerns that you should consider when posting on usenet. Visit my [anonymity] section or read directly my [When posting on Usenet] snippet.

We will examine'general' newsgroups repositories, but remember that there are also many 'specific' usenet repositories (which are of course time-limited). For instance, say, the slick Austrian small 15-days repository for [software reversing newsgroups] or -as Giglio points in his '[Zen of porn-images searching]' some huge 10-days repositories for all sort of erotic newsgroups.
See [the importance of names] to understand why these repositories can be QUITE useful just delivering the necessary 'angles' for searches and queries.

Newsgroups searching

Dejavue
Dejavue has been acquired by Google

Usenet repository: a dynamic repository of practical wisdom with access to more than 40,000 online discussion forums

NEW ADVANCED GOOGLE USENET MASK

Usenet Replayer

Usenet replayer defines itself "an usenet agency. It provides a set of tools to communicate via USENET. All functions of Usenet replayer are free of charge. The following functions are provided:

news resources archive
web news server
send questions to news groups
get the USENET messages
news server searching

You have to sign up with avalid email address. As usual in these cases, use an extra email address ad hoc to avoid spam, when heavily spammed just discard into the void and use another.

Newsone

"Usenet news for everyone"
Cengiz Akinli's huge 'present' to the web-community. Slow, but hey, it works! And you can subscribe (enabling cookies).

If you haven't been by NewsOne.Net in a while, it may be worth your time to drop by. The system is a lot closer to a true, production quality newsreader, with full threading, and the ability to list the full thread of any article from the article view. Plus, article browsing is smarter because instead of listing articles in a threaded format, we list just threads, along with the number of messages contained in them. You go directly to a list of the thread by clicking on that number, or view the thread leader by clicking on the subject. If you want to help Cengiz, read more.

http://newsone.net/

Newsgroups & Maillists perusing

newsgroup perusing

[http://news.spaceports.com/]
[http://24.95.128.86/sucknews/]
[http://www.subdimension.com/nettools/usenet/index.shtml]

[http://www.remarq.com/] messageboards perusing
[http://tile.net/news/] tile: all usenet groups perusing

Liszt, the mailing list directory

I'm sure I don't need to underline how powerful these tools are for seekers

Liszt: Mailing Lists

Liszt: Usenet Newsgroups

Liszt: IRC Chat Channels

Listtool
You can search for mailing and discussion lists by keyword

http://www.listtool.com/search.html listtool... try "windows"

Look for:
In:	List name Host name List title Lists with web archive interface only

Catalist
You can search for mailing and discussion lists by name or host name

Powerful tool: you can search for multiple topics by separating them with a comma. For instance, a search on "search,hints" will return all the entries containing the word "search" (also "research" too) OR the word "classical". To search for a topic that actually contains a comma, type two commas in a row.

http://www.lsoft.com/lists/list_q.html Catalist

Nuthinbutnews
You can search for your preferred newsgroups among the huge list at http://www.nuthinbutnews.com/grouplist.shtml.
Note that this works fine for scripts and discussion, but that you'll have (ahem) to enter the database to access binaries and images (it's a pay-usenet access)!

http://www.nuthinbutnews.com/
This is the "web interface": http://www.nuthinbutnews.com/cgi-bin/wimi.cgi

sucknews
A nice one for perusing and searching the most recent additions. "Uncensored newsgroup access".

http://24.95.128.86/sucknews/

subdimension
Do you want to use usenet group but don't want to setup a news clients? Are you sick and tired of DEJA NEWS not having binaries? Does your ISP only carry a small subset of usenet groups that they have decided are "SAFE" for you to read? Do you use AOL (bleah :-(
Then the following is for you (and you'll find there a quick anonymizer as well, eh Malan :-)

http://www.subdimension.com/nettools/usenet/index.shtml

spaceports
A very good one for perusing and searching ANY usenet group.

http://news.spaceports.com/

Search your own newsgroups @ Alabanza
Find the newsgroups likely to be of some interest for you among zillions of newsgroups using the "alabanza" facility

[http://alabanza.com/kabacoff/Inter-Links/cgi/news.cgi?bots]
Substitute whatever you are interested in to the "bots" keyword above.

Usenet via accmail (Sonador)
Visit the [accmail] section of this site if you need more info about accmail based searching techniques.
To use the "Sonador" system, simply send an email to [email protected] with "help" both in the subject and in the text fields. The Sonador Automated Usenet Service allows you to read and post to Usenet newsgroups through email. This service is perfect for people who are limited to email usage, such as Juno customers and corporate slaves, or for people who just don't have time to sift through Usenet with a news reader. The concept is simple: Your favorite groups are searched for keywords, and any matching articles are emailed to you. More than 22000 newsgroups are supported.

Homepage: [http://www.sonador.com/News/]

GreenEgg!
Visit the Green Egg!

Alice's service to the webcommunity is extremely simple and EXTREMELY POWERFUL at the same time. Basically an automated list (thank to the Rumor bot) of all URLs that appear inside usenet... ordered per group...
Here Alice's own words: The Green Eggs report is a collection of URL's that were spotted by the Rumor Database System. Rumor collects URL's from the Usenet Spool as it goes by. Rumor collects about 1,500 New and Unique URL's Every Day. To make sure A URL is good, we get it. Rumor does NOT Traverse the web. Rumor only gets any FTP, Gopher and of cource HTTP web resource it finds. Rumor then places that URL in the first group from the Groups: line in the news message.

Randori
http://www.randori.com/: 14 Day Free Trial Period for Internet Access Providers Fast, reliable, complete access to USENET newsgroups 24 hours/day.

Related sections

[Fravia's anonymity lab]

[trolling tactics] [enemy tracking] [luring lore] [stalking lore] [stalking tools]

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