Enabling Dissemination of Meta Information in the Usenet Framework

The paper discusses a transparent and flexible way to disseminate meta information within the global conferencing system, Usenet news. Examples of such information are ratings for Usenet articles or information about the behavior of other users. In particular, the paper describes how the Usenet "overview'' mechanism was modified to disseminate meta information to off-the-shelf Usenet clients. Experiences with the modified overview mechanism are discussed by example of two fully working prototype implementations disseminating social navigation information and collaborative filtering ratings to Usenet clients.