I remember CIX. Some groups were friendly and welcoming, others not so much!
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Usenets? newsgroups? FidoNet? CIX?
Have read about BulletinBoard though in computer history class. What were they, like Yahoo Chat or IRC or AOL Chat?
Think like Telnet running in DOS.
Youâd dial directly into a BBS server, and access resources via a super basic ascii interface.
MajorMUD. Any players here? Those were the days⌠MMO like World of Warcraft, only completely text and imagination based.
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CIX was like a slightly moderated usenet. You would dial in subscribe to topics, download your subscriptions, upload your posts and log off again. Your actual interaction would be done offline and then youâd dial up again and so on. All using software called Ameol which was rather good.
Now I feel old!
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On the alt.* hierarchy, sure. 
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I am assuming that alt.* was a component of Usenet. What happened to it?
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See The Big 8 here :
Itâs still alive, and since it was easy to create a newsgroup in alt you could find a lot of nice topics, but also a lot of bad stuff, pedophiles exchanging photos among the worst.
But are there reliable free news servers?
Not many and pretty limited. Many free trials https://greycoder.com/best-free-usenet-servers/
Ran a Wildcat! BBS back in the day. Single line going to a US Robotics 56k internal ISA modem. Thing ran like a champ, though the BBS software was a bit difficult to configure. No doors, either. But it was a niche BBS for writers and we had a good crew.
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