Newsgroups provide a mechanism whereby mail messages are
systematically made available to large groups of people.
In this case the mail message is said to be "posted"
to the newsgroup. It is expected that a posted message will
be replied to by other readers of the newsgroup, and those
replies are usually also posted to the newsgroup. Therefore,
subscribers can participate in discussions that may go on
for very long periods and range over many topics related
to the subject matter of the newsgroup.
Newgroups are just email, but distributed to a broad audience.
Newsgroups and their Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) can
be one of the richest sources of information on the Web.