RemarQ (formerly known as Supernews) no longer offers a searchable Usenet database.
Until summer of 2000, RemarQ offered a less powerful and less extensive alternative to Deja.com. The following review covered how RemarQ used to work. It could be used to search for newsgroups (or discussion forums as they are called on RemarQ), to search messages, and to read and post to the forums. Use the table of contents on the left to navigate this review.
Databases:
RemarQ offers a database of Usenet newsgroups. It can be searched to find newsgroups or to find individual messages.
Partners: See the RemarQ Partner Page for a list of sites including Excite and Lycos which use the RemarQ database.
Strengths:
* Can read and post news
* Alternate Usenet database to Deja.com and can find messages not available on Deja.com
Weaknesses:
* Searches can be slow or time out
* Not very advanced search features
Default Operation: Multiple search terms are processed as an OR operation by default.
Boolean Searching: + - only
Proximity Searching:RemarQ offers phrase searching which can be designated by double quotes "like this" around a search phrase. No other proximity search operators are available.
Truncation: No truncation or single wildcard symbols are available.
Case Sensitivity: RemarQ is not case sensitive. All search terms look for a match regardless of upper and lower case.
Field Searching: No field searching is available.
Limits: No limits are available.
Stop Words: RemarQ does have stop words such as "the" but they do not have a list of stop words.
Sorting: The hits appear to be sorted by a relevance ranking algorithm. No other options to sort by date, forum, or author are available.
Display: The display includes the date, subject, author, RemarQ forum name, and Usenet newsgroup name. RemarQ displays 25 hits at a time. When selecting a hit, the entire thread is displayed. That can take awhile for long threads.