Datasets:

OwnedByDanes
/

Usenet-Corpus-1980-2013-Full-Samples

license: other
license_name: proprietary-license-required
license_link: LICENSE
pretty_name: Usenet Corpus 1980–2013 — Full (Samples)
size_categories:
  - 10K<n<100K
task_categories:
  - text-generation
  - text-classification
language:
  - en
  - pl
  - nl
  - es
  - fr
  - it
  - de
  - ru
  - ja
tags:
  - usenet
  - internet-history
  - forums
  - conversational
  - sample

Usenet Corpus 1980–2013 — Full (Samples)

A small, browsable showcase sample of the Usenet Corpus 1980–2013 (cleaned) dataset — long-form, pre-web Usenet posts. This repo is a free preview; the full, commercially-licensed corpus (408.0M posts, 103B tokens) is at:

Full cleaned dataset (gated): https://huggingface.co/datasets/OwnedByDanes/Usenet-Corpus-1980-2013-Full
Threaded companion: https://huggingface.co/datasets/OwnedByDanes/Usenet-Corpus-1980-2013-Threaded

What's in this sample

Eleven gzipped JSON Lines files: one per hierarchy (~~5,000 posts each; ALT ~2,000), plus a Big 8 combined and an all-hierarchies combined sample (~~9,000 posts each). The per-hierarchy and combined files are independent draws and overlap.

Posts are selected as whole conversations (threads) of at least 3 posts — a deliberate showcase cut so the sample contains coherent discussions rather than isolated one-off posts. It is not representative of the full corpus's shape, which is mostly single-post threads; it is curated for readability. Related posts sit together within each file, and cross-post duplicates are removed within the sample. These are the same posts as the Threaded sample repo, without the three thread fields — see that repo if you want the conversation structure.

Record schema

Each line is a JSON object:

Field	Type	Description
`id`	string	Stable per-post identifier (`msg-` + hash of the original Message-ID).
`group`	string	Newsgroup the post was archived under.
`date`	string	Original post date (RFC 2822).
`author`	string	Author display name as posted. Email addresses are redacted.
`subject`	string	Subject line.
`text`	string	Post body.

Provenance and safety

Drawn from the cleaned, de-duplicated corpus: binary attachments and alt.binaries.* removed, adult groups excluded, author emails redacted, Message-IDs replaced with hashes, and content matching ClamAV malware signatures removed (the corpus passes a whole-file ClamAV scan with no detections). Content is otherwise preserved as posted — unmoderated historical text that may be offensive, biased, or wrong, and should be treated as a primary historical source.

License

Proprietary. © 2026 OwnedByDanes LLC. This sample is provided for evaluation only and conveys no right to use, copy, redistribute, or train on the data. Any use requires a separate written commercial license from OwnedByDanes LLC. See the LICENSE file. To request a license: todd@ownedbydanes.com.