USENET for the political season
If you like to keep up with politics, USENET is a great place to be. Some people love debates, and coincidentally, many of those same people seem to love the USENET system. The USENET system has a few distinct advantages over Internet forums that you may want to consider if you are into politics and are following the US presidential election this particular year.
more and less concentrated
Internet forums tend to attract people who strongly agree or disagree with the general position of the forums. For example, if you were to go to an internet forum dealing with the environment, you would probably find a rather dysfunctional mix of true believers and trolls who are constantly picking on each other. USENET tends to be different.
First, there are newsgroups that are much broader in subject matter than most Internet forums. For example, you can go to groups like talk.politics and enjoy conversations that aren’t limited by forum moderator preferences. If you don’t like that newsgroup, you can go to soc.politics and see what they have to offer. These groups offer a broader selection of topics and discussions than your average forum.
If you want a very focused conversation, you can head over to a newsgroup like alt.politics.usa.constitution to express your views on the founding framework of the United States. You’ll find that, particularly in this newsgroup, people on the USENET system are good at staying on topic compared to what you’ll see on Internet forums. Someone isn’t going to barge into a political economics conversation and post a picture of their cat, for example, which is nice for people who like their conversations a bit more focused and intellectual.
rarefied audience
USENET is very popular, with over 100,000 active groups, but its use is not as wide as the Internet. USENET is also set up in a way that encourages people to find the information they want by making specific choices about the newsgroups they join. This creates a situation where most people on USENET subscribe to newsgroups because they want to participate rather than just cause trouble.
Whether you’re a political junkie or a little more interested than the average individual, USENET’s political newsgroups may offer you something you’ll really enjoy.