Newsgroups and Messageboards

Newsgroups : A newsgroup is an electronic discussion group consisting of collections of related postings (also called articles) on a particular topic. These are posted to a news server which then distributes them to other participating servers. Like mailing lists, you often need to subscribe to these newsgroups in order to be able to post to them or to 'track' a discussion. If you are not intending to do this you should be able to read the discussions without subscribing. News servers are often identifiable by the word news in their address (e.g. news.netscape.com). There are various ways in which to receive newsgroups, the first is to get a specific newsgroup reader (such as Agent), often your E-mail program (e.g. Outlook Express) will be able to receive newsgroups so you don't need a dedicated newsgroup reader. The other option is to read newsgroups over the internet on sites such as Deja News, although often these sites may not contain the newsgroups you may require. Again, all these facilities are free.

Bulletin Boards/Messageboards: Messageboards essentially work in the same way as a newsgroup, but without the use of a news server. These messageboards are scattered about all over the Internet covering a variety of different topics. These will all be situated on the Internet so there is no need for a specialist piece of software to be installed.

For links to Newsgroups and Messageboards, click here