Newsgroup

A Newsgroup is a primitive version of a web forum that was in use prior to the World Wide Web's true existence as one of the first ever uses of the internet. Newsgroups are still incredibly popular today.

An individual newsgroup is a topic, for example there is a newsgroup about the TV show Red Dwarf. People post to the newsgroup if they like Red Dwarf, and they write things that are related to Red Dwarf - whether they like it or not.

Newsgroups ultimately needed a lot of moderation, as they were perpetually being overrun by trolls, who would do something like post to the Christianity newsgroup "There is no God!", or even better, with a cross post to the Christianity newsgroup AND the Athiest newsgroup, making the two groups fight with each other.

Newsgroups are forever being cleaned up primarily because of trolls, and people are constantly being banned from them. In the early days of their existence there were numerous court cases in relation to people posting defamatory material on newsgroups or deliberately causing hostility (trolling).

When properly moderated, newsgroups can be a great place to discuss your favourite topic. With the advent of web forums that have much greater security, in addition to people nowadays more easily able to hide their true identity and otherwise get away with trolling a lot more, newsgroups are today not used to anywhere near the same level that they were in their heyday.