Someone asked about USENET.

USENET is a bit analogous to a bunch of Mudcat forums on various topics, distributed daily around the internet to a great many host computers, where anyone with a computer account can read them. Many of the regulars on Mudcat used to be regulars on the USENET newsgroup rec.music.folk Before the web got going, USENET was the best way for many people to get oddball information.

The major differences between Mudcat and USENET are:

- usenet messages are usually only available from your internet provider for a limited number of days. (you can now get old TEXT news from sites like www.dejanews.com -- I think they have everything back to about 1994, though USENET goes back to the 70's).

- Mudcat threads of discussion are about folk. USENET has well over 25,000 newsgroups, each with many different threads (an average provider might carry 20,000 newsgroups, holding the postings for about three days). Some of the newsgroups recieve hundreds of topical messages each day. Some newsgroups recieve little or no messages applicable to their topic of concern. Some usegroups only exist because they have amusing names.

- Most of USENET is absolutely unmoderated -- people post anything they want there, and although USENET can only handle text, encoding schemes have been developed to code pictures and programs as text, so now most of USENET's bandwidth is used to just distribute pornography. There's also a tremendous amount of advertising or "SPAM" on USENET. However, there's still a lot of genuinely thoughtful discussion to be found on USENET. Publicly funded sites will generally not carry pictures or programs.

Usually when you sign up for an internet account, one of the programs that you're told how to install is a USENET newsreader program. The first time you run this (after getting it set up to know your internet provider's USENET server's address), it should get a list of all the newsgroups your internet provider carries. Each newsreader is different, but should have some sort of help file to get you used to reading and/or posting. Basically though, you should somehow choose a few newsgroups to "subscribe" to. Then you download a list of the headers (subject lines) from that newsgroup. Then you can download particular messages/articles that you want to read. You can also upload a question to them. I find Mudcat is much quicker and more likely to answer a question about folk or traditional music than any newsgroup. However, as a last resort, after checking mudcat and dejanews, you could submit your own question to any of the following newsgroups and cross your fingers:

rec.music.folk
uk.music.folk
alt.music.blues
alt.music.blues.delta
rec.music.bluenote.blues
uk.music.rhythm-n-blues

If you want to get into USENET in a serious way, you'd be well advised to get a newsreader that can filter out messages from people you recognize as boring. Being able to read off-line is also a feature to look for. Like e-mail programs, the specialty programs are the best, but you can also get Microsoft or Netscape afterthought specials. You can get good free software from www.nonags.com