From Newsgroup: alt.free.newsservers
On Sun, 29 Mar 2026 22:15:47 -0000 (UTC), pagalysis <
pagalysis@4ax.com> wrote in article <10qc8aj$307jc$
1@paganini.bofh.team> . . .
On 25 Mar 2026, D <J@M> posted some >news:b9c2b062486d823808d36866530c8f91@msgid.frell.theremailer.net:
*note: active unmoderated usenet newsgroups have for more than three
decades (since ~ 1994) attracted almost entirely "troll farm" clutter,
mainstream ai-generated/enhanced chatbots/botnets chatting/chattering,
posting/replying, coactively around the clock on every "active" forum
list of currently most active usenet newsgroups (top 500) starting at
the top . . . some of these newsgroups may provide a better signal to
noise ratio than the usual million-to-one (i.e. ~99.9999% troll farm),
but that could be pollyannaish wishful thinking too ... caveat emptor
1. free.usenet
2. alt.fan.rush-limbaugh
3. uk.legal
4. talk.politics.guns
Where did you get this information?
any telnet client should work fine (e.g., windows ...\system32\telnet.exe)
the freeware "putty" works great with tor proxy, and auto-saves log files:
(using Tor Browser 15.0.8)
https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/
PuTTY: a free SSH and Telnet client
The latest version is 0.83. Download it here.
...
puttytel.exe (a Telnet-only client) >https://the.earth.li/~sgtatham/putty/latest/w64/puttytel.exe
...
[end quoted excerpt]
e.g., download these current newsgroup lists from five popular nntp servers:
freenews.netfront.net (47409):
=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~= PuTTY log 2026.03.29 ...
Making proxy SOCKS 5 connection to localhost port 9150
Making primary Telnet connection to freenews.netfront.net port 119
200 news.netfront.net InterNetNews NNRP server INN 2.7.0 ready (posting ok) >list
215 Newsgroups in form "group high low status"
...
news.blueworldhosting.com (45920):
200 nnrp.usenet.blueworldhosting.com InterNetNews NNRP server INN 2.8.0
(20250329 snapshot) ready (posting ok)...
news.neodome.net (45741):
200 news.neodome.net InterNetNews NNRP server INN 2.6.3 ready (posting ok)...
nntp.csiph.com (45116):
200 csiph.com InterNetNews NNRP server INN 2.8.0 (20260121 snapshot) ready
(no posting)...
paganini.bofh.team (48634)
200 paganini.bofh.team InterNetNews NNRP server INN 2.6.4 ready (posting ok)...
then open these log files in a spreadsheet (i use libreoffice calc), each server's "group high low status" is computed (=b1-c1, copy, select column, paste formula), sort descending, and voila, depending on server retention
and completeness, results vary . . . e.g. blueworld currently shows 45920
total newsgroups, 44554 (y), 1344 (m), 21 (n), "b-c" result in column "e":
a b c d e
alt.atheism 6434463 1 y 6434462
alt.fan.rush-limbaugh 6126364 1 y 6126363
alt.politics 5080628 1 y 5080627
fr.soc.politique 4427439 9 y 4427430
alt.politics.bush 3634296 1 y 3634295
it.sport.calcio.milan 3370687 1 y 3370686
talk.politics.misc 3293912 1 y 3293911
rec.arts.tv 2872396 1 y 2872395
talk.politics.guns 2727039 1 y 2727038
free.usenet 2552126 1 y 2552125
...
but the blueworld server has complete (mostly, from 1981 forward) article retention, so these total numbers should approximate the grand total from across archives and the current blueworld inn server storage (21.x years)
by contrast, the neodome server has about two years (~787 days) retention,
so reflects more current trends (some binary groups are also very active),
but this focus is unmoderated plain text newsgroups on public newsservers:
a b c d e
free.usenet 4958136 3464999 y 1493137
alt.test 1103335 427414 y 675921
rocksolid.shared.test 415354 1772 y 413582
alt.fan.rush-limbaugh 1173433 825291 y 348142
talk.politics.guns 957027 706160 y 250867
free.pt 692244 465188 y 227056
alt.atheism 1103084 888338 y 214746
soc.culture.israel 462855 297585 y 165270
rec.arts.tv 822642 670190 y 152452
uk.legal 522059 374763 y 147296
fr.soc.politique 706903 566161 y 140742
alt.binaries.bloaf 58397293 58258560 y 138733
soc.culture.jewish 425838 290863 y 134975
alt.checkmate 647324 516899 y 130425
de.talk.tagesgeschehen 714443 603980 y 110463
soc.culture.usa 341772 232451 y 109321
...
e.g., fr.soc.politique has "140742" articles within the last 787 days, so
about ~178 articles per day over the past two years, about 65300 per year, nearly in the top ten . . . cf. alt.free.newsservers at 1619 in two years,
for an average of about ~ 750 articles per year, about 2 articles per day
averaging results from more servers would yield a more weighted inventory,
and probably many usenet subscribers, lurkers, researchers etc. are using multiple servers, scoring/filters, for whatever purpose usenet is serving,
i've used it mainly as a public repository for posting uncensored content
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