USENET A world-wide system of discussion groups, with comments passed among hundreds of thousands of machines. Not all USENET machines are on the Internet. USENET is completely decentralized, with over 10,000 discussion areas, called NewsGroup s.
Usenet is a world-wide distributed discussion system. It consists of a
set of "newsgroups" with names that are classified hierarchically by
subject. "Articles" or "messages" are "posted" to these newsgroups by
people on computers with the appropriate software -- these articles are
then broadcast to other interconnected computer systems via a wide
variety of networks. Some newsgroups are "moderated"; in these
newsgroups, the articles are first sent to a moderator for approval
before appearing in the newsgroup. Usenet is available on a wide variety
of computer systems and networks, but the bulk of modern Usenet traffic
is transported over either the Internet or UUCP.