The 60,000+ Usenet discussion groups are divided and identified by various suffixes which roughly indicate their purpose: For example, "rec" is for hobbies and fan clubs like rec.bicycles.racing; "sci" for scientific talk (such as sci.med.aids) and "alt" for alternative issues such as alt.politics.homosexuality.

There are also geographic divisions - "can" for Canadian chat groups such as can.military.brats or "bc" for British Columbia (bc.general has lots of political gossip). Another similar format is: misc.invest.canada

To search the content of Usenet postings, use Google Groups.