A news repository is a WWW Home Page with links to the various indexes. It is e.g. being used to manage the news repository for comp.lang.beta maintained at Aarhus University, Denmark.
Threads is written in the object-oriented BETA programming language.
It is a convenient way to catch up on recent discussions. You need access to a NNTP server from which Threads can download news articles, and you need a directory to contain the news repository. You naturally also need the threads executable compiled for your platform. The index.html file is only created first time Threads is invoked. You have to edit it manually to make it refer to new volumes each year.