As of October of 2002, there are around 100,000 Usenet newsgroups, of which approximately a fifth are active. This number varies, depending on the news server carrying the newsgroups. October is the tenth month of the year in the Gregorian Calendar and one of seven Gregorian months with the length of 31 days. ... 2002 is a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Usenet is a distributed Internet discussion system that evolved from a general purpose UUCP network of the same name. ... A news server is a set of computer software used to handle Usenet articles. ... A newsgroup is a repository, usually within the Usenet system, for messages posted from many users at different locations. ...

While it would be impractical for Wikipedia to list each and every newsgroup, several newsgroups are notable and popular, and some have had a considerable history. Wikipedia is a Web-based, free-content encyclopedia written collaboratively by volunteers and sponsored by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. ...

Newsgroups of interest include:

• alt.arts.poetry.comments — for poetry and poetry critique
• alt.atheism — discusses atheism
• alt.ascii-art — a group for posting, admiring and discussing ASCII art.
• alt.binaries.slack — artwork created by and for the Church of the SubGenius.
• alt.callahans — Spider Robinson's Callahan's Place online
• alt.config — creation of new newsgroups in the alt.* hierarchy.
• alt.games.lucas-arts.monkey-island — Aglami, core of insanity.
• alt.fan.douglas-adams — discussing the writer Douglas Adams.
• alt.folklore.urban — confirming and debunking myth, rumour and old-wives-tales.
• alt.history.what-if — discussion of alternate history scenarios.
• alt.pub.dragons-inn — play by email gaming and fantasy fiction
• alt.religion.kibology — He who Greps.
• alt.religion.scientology — discussion of the controversial subject of Scientology.
• alt.revisionism — discussion of Holocaust revisionism.
• alt.sex — the first alt.* newsgroup for discussion of sexual topics.
• alt.sex.bondage — discussion of BDSM sex (largely replaced by soc.subculture.bondage-bdsm).
• alt.sex.stories — text-based erotic stories of all types.
• alt.sexual.abuse.recovery and alt.sexual.abuse.recovery.moderated
• alt.suicide.holiday — pro-choice discussion of suicide.
• alt.support.childfree — discussions for people who neither have nor want children and identify as childfree.
• alt.sysadmin.recovery — the Scary Devil Monastery.
• alt.talk.creationism — discussion of the pros and cons of creationism.
• alt.tasteless — discussion of subject matter in too poor taste to be discussed elsewhere.
• alt.tv.simpsons — discusses the television show The Simpsons.
• alt.usenet.kooks — discussion of Usenet kooks and their idiosyncratic theories.
• alt.zines — discussion of small-press publications, magazines, and pamphlets (zines).
• comp.soft-sys.matlab — the MathWorks calculation and visualization package.
• news.admin.net-abuse.email — discussion of abuse of email by spammers and other parties.
• news.groups — creation and deletion of newsgroups in the Big 8 (comp.*, humanities.*, misc.*, news.*, rec.*, sci.*, soc.*, and talk.*)
• rec.arts.poems — for the posting of poetry
• rec.arts.sf.written.robert-jordan
• rec.arts.tv.mst3k.misc — discussion of the TV series Mystery Science Theater 3000.
• rec.autos.sport.nascar — discussion of Nextel cup and other racing series.
• rec.humor.funny — edited (moderated) jokes.
• rec.arts.erotica — text-based erotic stories — was banned at many sites.
• rec.humor.oracle — Internet humor
• rec.music.country.western — discussion of country music then and now.
• rec.sport.pro-wrestling — general discussion of professional wrestling and current events using wrestling related terms.
• rec.sport.soccer — general discussion of world football (soccer).
• soc.support.youth.gay-lesbian-bi — support group for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered teenagers and youths.
• talk.bizarre — a newsfroup for experiencing the bizarre.
• talk.origins — evolution-creationism controversy which maintains an extensive FAQ.
• it.arti.trash — one of the most active on italian topics. Vito's annual meeting included.

Founded on July 6 1997 by poet Michael Giardina, alt. ... alt. ... Atheism is the state either of being without theistic beliefs, or of actively disbelieving in the existence of deities. ... ASCII art, an artistic medium relying primarily on computers for presentation, consists of pictures pieced together from characters (preferably from the 95 printable characters defined by ASCII). ... alt. ... J. R. Bob Dobbs The Church of the SubGenius is a satirical pseudo-religious organization, originally based in Dallas, Texas, which gained popularity in the 1980s and 1990s subculture, with a large presence on the Internet. ... The title given to this article is incorrect due to technical limitations. ... Spider Robinson (born Paul Robinson November 24, 1948 in New York City) is a Canadian science fiction writer. ... alt. ... The hierarchy is a major class of newsgroups in Usenet, containing all newsgroups whose name begins with , organized hierarchically. ... Alt. ... Douglas Noël Adams in an undated publicity photograph Douglas Noël Adams (March 11, 1952–May 11, 2001), also known as Bop Ad or Bob (after his illegible signature) or by his initials DNA, was a British comic radio dramatist and author, most notably of The Hitchhikers Guide... alt. ... Play by mail games are games, of any type, played through postal mail or e-mail. ... Kibology is $US20, same as in town. ... The newsgroup alt. ... A Scientology Center on Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, California Scientology is a system of beliefs, teachings and rituals, originally established as a secular philosophy in 1952 by science-fiction author L. Ron Hubbard, then recharacterized by him in 1953 as an applied religious philosophy. ... alt. ... Richard Harwoods Did Six Million Really Die? Holocaust denial is the claim that the mainstream historical version of the Holocaust is either highly exaggerated or completely falsified. ... The creation (c. ... alt. ... A collar is a common symbol of BDSM. BDSM is a term which describes a number of related patterns of human sexual behaviour. ... The Usenet newsgroup alt. ... alt. ... Suicide (from Latin sui caedere, to kill oneself) is the act of wilfully ending ones own life; it is sometimes a noun for one who has committed or attempted the act. ... Childfree describes those who do not have, and do not desire, children. ... alt. ... The newsgroup alt. ... Christianity, Islam and Judaism hold the belief that the universe was created by a Supreme Being. ... alt. ... alt. ... The Simpsons is the longest-running animated television series in American television history, with 16 seasons and 356 episodes since its debut on December 17, 1989 on FOX, and is a spin-off of The Tracey Ullman Show. ... alt. ... Crank (or kook, crackpot, or quack) is a pejorative term for a person who writes or speaks in an authoritative fashion about a particular subject, often in science, but is alleged to have false or even ludicrous beliefs. ... Alt. ... Overview A zine—a contraction of the word magazine—is most commonly a small circulation, non-commercial publication of original or appropriated texts and images. ... The MathWorks is a company which specializes in technical computing software, including MATLAB, Simulink and Stateflow. ... news. ... Bust of Homer, one of the earliest European poets, in the British Museum Poetry (ancient Greek: ποιεω (poieo) = I create) is an art form in which human language is used for its aesthetic qualities in addition to, or instead of, its notional and semantic content. ... Rec. ... From left to right, Crow T. Robot, Joel Robinson, and Tom Servo (the latter dressed as a candystriper). ... The Internet Oracle (formerly known as The Usenet Oracle) is a collaborative effort at collective humor in a pseudo-Socratic question-and-answer format. ... One of the more frequent jokes on the internet is to produce a fake or joke web counter. ... rec. ... rec. ... Soc. ... talk. ... talk. ... Charles Darwin, father of the theory of evolution by natural selection. ... Christianity, Islam and Judaism hold the belief that the universe was created by a Supreme Being. ...

See also

• Google Groups contains a complete browsable list of groups at http://groups.google.com/groups?group=*