Mensa Online

Mensa Web Sites

   Mensa web sites are open to anybody. (Many also have members-only areas.)

   Greater New York Mensa (you are here) www.gnym.us.mensa.org
   If you are typing it in, gnym.org is somewhat shorter. It will redirect you to www.gnym.us.mensa.org .

   Greater New York Mensa is on Facebook: www.facebook.com/GreaterNYMensa

   Our neighboring Local Groups:

• to the Southwest:  Central New Jersey Mensa  www.cnj.us.mensa.org
• to the West:  Northern New Jersey Mensa  http://njmensa.org
• to the North:  Mid-Hudson Mensa  www.mid-hudson.us.mensa.org
• to the Northeast:  Connecticut and Western Massachusetts Mensa  www.cwm.us.mensa.org
• to the East:  Southern Connecticut Mensa  http://scm66.org

   Increasing the scope:

• GNYM is part of American Mensa's Region 1, Northeast  http://region1.us.mensa.org  Region 1 members elect an RVC (member) to the AMC (national board of directors). The RVC writes a monthly column about goings-on in the Region.
• There are Local Groups across the country.
• Our National Group is American Mensa. There are also national Special Interest Groups.
• There are National Groups around the world.
• American Mensa is part of Mensa International

Online communities / discussions / forums / newsgroups / chats

Hosted or managed by American Mensa:

   The AML Community is the American Mensa's official online community. It is restricted to current members only. It hosts a forum with many sections, and multiple chat rooms: www.community.us.mensa.org

   American Mensa is on Facebook: www.facebook.com/AmericanMensa

Hosted by others:

    The following forums are unofficial and usual open to the public, even if they have Mensa in the name. Even if they verify membership upon joining, they often accumulate ex-members. The people on these forums may or may not be Mensans. The forums may or may not be moderated. Many will have some amount of spam (irrelevant, abusive, offensive, advertising, and fraudulent messages) and even "hostile content" (viruses, trojans, links to bad web sites, etc.).

Usenet newsgroups

   Usenet newsgroups were originally available only via Usenet. MOST of them are now available via the World-Wide Web.
   A web-based newsgroup provider can be free with onscreen advertisements, or paid.
   The best-known free provider, Google Groups, merges Usenet newsgroups with its own hosted groups.
   Google Groups provides access to 4,486,298 groups. Most of these are Google-hosted groups. 46,908 of them are Usenet groups. (Feb., 2010)
   Homepage of Google Groups: http://groups.google.com/
   You can browse all groups http://groups.google.com/groups/dir?, or all Usenet groups: http://groups.google.com/groups/dir?sel=gtype%3D0 .
   All of the Usenet mensa.* groups (11 total) have been frozen since 2005 or 2008.
   Google Groups doesn't provide a direct way to search for Usenet *.mensa or *.mensa.* groups.
   A search for all groups about containing mensa in the name or description returns 76 results that include the 11 mensa.* Usenet groups, 9 *.mensa Usenet groups, and 56 Google-hosted groups. (Feb., 2010)
   The only Usenet "mensa" groups that still have traffic are:
rec.org.mensa: http://groups.google.com/group/rec.org.mensa, and
alt.mensa http://groups.google.com/group/alt.mensa .
   The Google-hosted Mensa groups might have something to offer too.

   Before they became available via WWW, users could only access the Usenet newsgroups to read and to publish messages by means of newsreader software. The Usenet protocols still work on the Internet. Here are two "news:" hyperlinks: news:rec.org.mensa and news:alt.mensa .
  Different web browsers handle "news:" hyperlinks differently. On Windows XP, Firefox and Internet Explorer will open them with Outlook Express by default. Opera includes news reader software, so it processes "news:" hyperlinks directly. On other systems you might need to install news reader software separately, and optionally configure your web browser to handle the hyperlinks. All news reader software requires you to type in the address of a news server before you can access the Newsgroups. Check your ISP help pages for information, or search for a free or paid NNTP (news) server.

Other groups and forums:

   There are many providers of free forums. For example, Google Groups (discussed above), etc. Each one hosts multiple Mensa-related forums. Many are still active.

    A search on Yahoo! Groups for groups related to Mensa: http://groups.yahoo.com/search?query=mensa find 847 groups. (Nov., 2011.) Some are still active. Some are moderated.
    The Yahoo! group For-M was very active until it died off in December, 2008. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/For-M (formerly hosted on ONElist, and then eGroups). Anyone can join and view the old messages. It still claims 118 members. (Nov., 2011.)

    For many years CompuServe hosted a Mensa Forum. American Mensa dropped its sponsorship of the Mensa Forum on CompuServe in January, 2006. However, the forum continues there as The Intelligence Forum. http://community.compuserve.com/n/pfx/forum.aspx?nav=start&webtag=ws-intel

IRC (Internet Relay Chat):

   The IRC server "Undernet" hosts an active #mensa channel.
   Homepage of the #mensa IRC chat channel on Undernet: http://alamo.satexas.com/~dizzy/mensa.html
   You can connect using an IRC client such as mIRC (nags after 30 day trial) or other client. (Must manually select an Undernet server, then join #mensa.)
   You can also connect through a web browser. Use searchirc.com to search for mensa-related IRC channels: http://searchirc.com/search.php?I=%23mensa&Submit=Search

Historical:

   Over the years, there have been many places where Mensans could be found online. Some have come and gone with changes in technology and people's interest. Several historical on-line resources:

   There was an American Mensa Email Directory SIG (hosted by Chicago Mensa) that maintained a large list of Mensan email addresses, and an International Mensan Email Address List, but these were shut down when the age of spam began.

   There was an e-mail mailing list called M-Talk.

   Before the modern Internet, several Mensa chapters and individual Mensans operated BBSes (Bulletin Board Systems). Some carried relayed messages and forums using FidoNet and RIME (RelayNet International Message Exchange). These old BBSes were copied onto the WorldWideWeb, shut down, or both.

   If you haven't found what you are looking for, you can also try an Internet search engine, such as Google and Yahoo! (below). The Global Mensa Directory on the British Mensa website is also extensive.

(opens in new window) Search WWW   Search www.gnym.us.mensa.org