You can request access to this list by emailing a human and requesting access. Unfortunately, I have little information on this list, as it is a private list. Also, no archive is available to search. Your Usenet reader can normally show the messages in either a chronological order, or show a response hierarchy as different people respond to messages left. Additionally, this tool allows you to retrieve and post usegroup items, post emails to authors, and follow threads.
Search criteria can be quite complex, or simple as can be.
However, keep in mind that the more specific your search criteria, the less of a result set you will receive. When you are searching, every character in every posting on over 17,000 usegroups are searched, so you often get many postings you are not interested in. Deja News - A good online search engine that allows directed searching to be performed against fairly recent usenet group postings. This tool allows you to retrieve and post usegroup items, post emails to authors, and follow threads. The interface is a little easier to use than Alta Vista, but you are limited to two search arguements, unfortunately, which sometimes limits the specificity of your searches.