Documentation - Usenet
USENET Newsgroup Feed to End June 9, 2009
The University of Chicago has been at the heart of USENET newsgroups since its days as an email list aggregator in the early 1980s. As we in NSIT review our services, however, we're forced to admit that the heyday of USENET is long over; the uchi.* newsgroups haven't seen significant use in years, and overall usage on campus continues to drop each year.
Accordingly, on June 9, 2009, NSIT will stop distributing a newsfeed on campus. Those people still seeking access to USENET can turn to Google Groups; additionally, many ISP's make a USENET feed available to their subscribers, and there are also third-party services such as news.individual.net and motzarella.org.
The ancestor to the modern web-based bulletin board, Usenet newsgroups are forums for discussion that are most comparable to email lists, except that the messages go to the public (unless the group is a local group) and one does not need to be subscribed to participate. Usenet is the main source of newsgroups at the University of Chicago.
Last updated: 6/12/09