newsgroup

The terms newsgroups and discussion forums are used interchangeably. In the World Wide Web(WWW) and Usenet, discussion forums are referred to as newsgroups. In general, newsgroups are topic-related Internet forums that serve the asynchronous, public exchange of opinions, experiences and news.

There are thousands of newsgroups on the Internet for political, social, technical, health-related, economic, sports and other discussion topics, as well as those for specific professional groups or hobbies.

Newsgroups run like a bulletin board on which news, contributions, comments or discussion topics are posted. Every Internet user can post his comments and answers to the topics, while respecting netiquette. Newsgroups can be controlled by a moderator; however, they can also be unmoderated. In moderated newsgroups, posts arereviewed by a moderator for violations of netiquette and posted guidelines before being posted to the forum.