Usenet, or Unix User Network is a communications medium in which users read and post textual messages (called "articles") to a number of distributed bulletin boards (called "
newsgroups"). The medium is sustained among a large number of servers, which store and forward messages with one another. Usenet is of significant cultural importance in the
networked world, having given rise to, or popularized, many widely recognized concepts and terms such as "
FAQ" and "spam".