Here are some ways to find interesting newsgroups:

* Read these articles that are regularly posted to news.groups and
  news.lists:
    List of Active Newsgroups, Part I and II
    Alternative Newsgroup Hierarchies, Part I, II, and III

  These articles are archived at all the usual FAQ archives
  including:

  http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/hypertext/faq/bngusenet/news/groups/top.html

* Search through the news hierarchies at:
    http://www11.w3.org/hypertext/DataSources/News/Groups/Overview.html

* Read and ask questions in news.groups.questions.

* Regularly read news.announce.newgroups, which is where new 
  newsgroups are announced.

* Look at the Newsgroups header to see what group(s) an interesting 
  article is crossposted to.

* Look at the master list of newsgroups with short descriptions:

    ftp://ftp.uu.net/networking/news/config/newsgroups.gz
    ftp://ftp.uu.net/networking/news/config/newsgroups.Z

  After you use ftp to retrieve one of these you will need to
  uncompress it.

* Look at Infinite Ink's Web page, which has links to lists of 
  newsgroups:

    http://www.best.com/~ii/internet/

* Look at the `newsgroups' file on your system.  This file contains a
  list of all newsgroups that your host receives, with a short
  description.  Sometimes this file is in /usr/lib/news/newsgroups --
  you can ask your system administrator where it's located on your
  system.

* Use nngrep to get a list of newsgroups your host receives (but without
  descriptions) by doing one of the following:

  Type                  In order to...
  ====                  ==============
  nngrep -a |less       View all newsgroups at your host in the less pager
  nngrep -a text |less  View all newsgroups with `text' in their name

* From within nn you can use the G command to be prompted for all
  newsgroups that contain some text you specify, and to go to one you
  are interested in.  See section 2.2 and/or 5.4.2 for instructions.

Some parts © 2009 Advameg, Inc.