This document has not been updated in years. The links have been updated more recently than the text, but neither can be considered reliable. I continue to keep this document on my website mostly because a few people continue to think it worthwhile enough to link to (they even change the address when the site moves, see).
At this point, though, you're really better off going elsewhere. First of all, everything herein except the references section has been revised. I haven't webbed these revised versions, partly because I was never actually able to get all of the information needed to revise them fully, but Google has webbed them, so hey. For the most recent full drafts, please see Part 1 and Part 2a.
As for the references section, a really thorough researcher may want to use it to find out what documents existed in the late 1990s, or as a way of tracking down alternative locations for things, but you're better off with current link-lists; my standard recommendation is that you start with the relevant page of the news.newusers.questions official website. Note that that link does not send you straight to the page in question; it sends you to a map of mirror sites, and once you've picked your mirror site, follow the link labeled "Creating New Newsgroups".
In particular, please note that section 3.2 is no longer the most current guide to the details of the Big 8 newsgroup creation process. The Guidelines for Big Eight Newsgroup Creation by Russ Allbery, although not yet technically "official", are in practice the basis for over 90% of the decisions made in the process, and should be consulted in place of section 3.2.
From: "news.groups FAQ" <mcq@wco.com>
Subject: news.groups: A Survival Guide [FAQ]
Newsgroups: news.groups
Organization: Asymptotically Approaching
Summary: This FAQ explains the Big 8 newsgroup creation process, gives
advice about posting and debating in news.groups, and lists
further references. Read this before posting to news.groups.
URL: http://turing.postilion.org/these-survive/newsgroups/debate.html
Last-modified: 17 June 1997 by Joe Bernstein <joe@sfbooks.com>
With extremely minimal modifications 25 November 2001 by Joe Bernstein
news.groups: A Survival Guide
-----------------------------
"Besides, sci.aquaria would make it to Europe."
-- Richard Sexton
by Joe Bernstein <joe@sfbooks.com>
and Rebecca G. McQuitty <mcq@wco.com>
with contributions and other help from Russ Allbery, Ken Arromdee,
Bruce Baugh, Lee S. Bumgarner, Lee Daniel Crocker,
Michal Douglas, Lynn Diana Gazis-Sax, Ginger Sackett Glaser,
Denis McKeon, Natalie Ramsey, Chris Stone, Kate Wrightson,
and a bunch of other helpful news.groups denizens.
news.groups is the place to discuss the creation and reorganization of newsgroups in Usenet's global Big 8 hierarchies: comp.*, humanities.*, misc.*, news.*, rec.*, sci.*, soc.*, and talk.*.
Often called "the sewer of Usenet", news.groups is full of pitfalls. You risk receiving rude responses if you post here, whether or not you deserve them.
These are the few good reasons to be here:
If you're here for any other reason, you're in the wrong place. You can find the right place by reading news.announce.newusers or asking for help in news.groups.questions. To create a group outside the Big 8, you need to find the corresponding newsgroup in your group's hierarchy (for example, use alt.config for groups in alt.*).
If you're here to discuss Usenet newsgroup creation, welcome! This FAQ is for you. It's about the procedures of newsgroup creation that shape debates, about what debates are like, and about how to keep all our lives from being too horrid.
People can be good to each other here. The people who stick around genuinely care about Usenet, and we'll be grateful if you show that you do, too.
We recommend everyone read Sections 3 - 7, intended for people who have just arrived in the wake of a current proposal. Section 8 is for incipient news.groupies. Section 9 gives additional references.
[When posted to Usenet, ]This post is divided into two parts. This, the first part, includes Sections 1 - 5. The second part includes Sections 2 and 6 - 10.
"The number of sysadmins who will decline to carry the group if properly voted on and newgrouped by Tale is precisely zero. Well, maybe 1, but Barry's always been a little strange." -- Lee Daniel Crocker
But creating a working newsgroup requires convincing many individual news administrators to create the group on their systems and to exchange articles in it with each other. A group that is created at many sites has the crucial attribute of good propagation -- articles posted to the group will reach a large proportion of sites and will be widely accessible.
Since the mid-1980s thousands of news administrators have come to rely on a single process to help them decide which groups in the Big 8 to carry. This process is not fast, pretty, or perfect. It does usually produce newsgroups that many people want, and not produce newsgroups that lack widespread interest or general agreement.
Proposals are posted and refined in a public newsgroup (news.groups) where news admins can follow the discussion. A vote then weighs the real interest in a new group against the educated objections of experienced Usenet users. If the group passes, one trusted individual posts a control message creating it.
That trusted individual is currently David C. Lawrence, aka "tale" <newgroups-request@isc.org>. His is not an elected position, and no established procedure exists for removing or replacing him. He has no real authority; news admins can simply trust someone else (and some do) if they want a different policy. tale, like everyone else involved in newsgroup creation, is a volunteer.
The process evolved from several years' trial and error, and its glacial changes continue today. tale regularly posts "The Guidelines", the only official description of the process, under the heading "How to Create a New Usenet Newsgroup". These Guidelines lag behind currently implemented policy.
Just as the Guidelines arose from the cumulative knowledge and experience of newsgroup creation gurus, precedents in namespace and moderation policy give rise to "guidelines" in the creation of new newsgroups. These guidelines, however, exist only in the collective memory of the news.groups population, and they are much more open to interpretation and argument.
You are free to make arguments about any area of the process on some basis other than precedent, if you like. Just don't be surprised if someone replies, "Nonsense! We tried that in 1989, and it was a colossal failure."
Other hierarchies have different processes, and one option for users who don't like the one in news.groups is to create a new hierarchy. In fact, such dissatisfaction is exactly what resulted in the creation of alt.*.
NOTE:This section, like the rest of the document, is no longer current. It's also been well replaced. Please see Russ Allbery's Guidelines for Big Eight Newsgroup Creation in preference to this section.
The first step is the creation of a document called a Request for Discussion (RFD). The RFD's authors are called "proponents"; nobody appoints proponents, and anyone may submit an RFD. Proponents have the tough job of representing the interests of the group's future users while they work with the news.groups population to fit the group into the structure of Usenet. To do this, they need to be participants in the newsgroup or mailing list whose traffic will move into the new group, and they need to discuss the RFD there before submitting it.
The transition between an idea and an RFD is one of the hardest parts of the process, and experienced folks called "group-mentors" <group-mentors@acpub.duke.edu>, have volunteered to help out. Consulting group-mentors is not required but can be extremely helpful, even for knowledgeable proponents.
The RFD contains the name, status (moderated or unmoderated), rationale, and charter for all the groups it proposes. RFDs for moderated groups also contain the moderation policy and the names of the moderators.
The proponents submit the finished RFD to the news.announce.newgroups moderator (tale). He may post the RFD unchanged, or he may perceive a problem and bounce it to "group-advice" <group-advice@isc.org>, a small group of experienced news admins he has asked to help him. group-advice members then suggest improvements.
Suggestions from group-advice to proponents are non-binding but may be strongly urged. In contrast, tale himself may insist on changes (rare), or he may reject the RFD (even rarer). He usually bases these decisions on restrictions in the Guidelines or on technical issues of legality, newsgroup name structure, or moderation policies -- tale has never opposed a newsgroup based on its (legal) content.
Official discussion begins in news.groups as soon as tale posts the RFD. Good proponents pay attention to the debate and make changes to their proposal based on it. Making significant changes to the proposal requires another RFD, so a single discussion may see several of them.
However, proponents own their RFD, and are free to ignore all suggestions (not that we recommend it). Proponents also own their topic, as two proposals on similar topics may not normally proceed at the same time. This ownership may expire if 90 days pass without a vote or a new RFD.
When the proposal reaches its final form, the proponents apply for a vote by submitting a questionnaire to the Usenet Volunteer Votetakers (UVV). This will not be accepted if more than 60 days have passed since the most recent RFD. UVV members volunteer for each vote individually, when their time allows and they can maintain neutrality on a particular proposal.
The votetaker writes a Call For Votes (CFV), which the news.announce.newgroups moderator posts to the same groups as the RFD. This happens at least 21 days after the first RFD or 10 days after the last RFD, whichever is later. The vote almost always lasts 21 days with a second CFV posted halfway through. Anyone who reads Usenet can vote YES, NO, or ABSTAIN; if more than one group is on the ballot, each newsgroup is voted on independently. The current guidelines do not permit conditional votes such as "Both X and Y, or neither".
The point of the "vote" is to weigh interest in actually using the new group against educated objections to it -- objections from those who don't like the way the changes would affect groups they now read, and technical objections to the name or charter. For this to work, all voters need to see a complete and unaltered CFV, and the people who will be using the group will need to have easy access to it.
These goals lead to heavy restrictions on acceptable campaigning. What you can do is to place a pointer to the CFV where people have already displayed interest in the topic, and inform the votetaker that you've done so. Redistributing even an unaltered CFV is not OK. If you distribute an edited CFV, voting instructions, or the ballot itself, the votetaker may reject those ballots or annul the whole vote.
Voters must e-mail their votes to the votetaker. The votetaker tallies the votes, determines the outcome, and writes a RESULT to appear in the same groups as the CFV. Each newsgroup passes or fails separately; passage requires 100 more YES votes than NO and twice as many YES votes as NO. (The latter rule, created after the vote on sci.aquaria, illustrates the way rules tend to arise from precedents in this process.) As a check on the integrity of the system, the RESULT includes a list of all voters' e-mail addresses and how they voted.
Everyone has five days after the RESULT appears to bring forward claims of voting fraud or other problems with the vote. Usually the result stands. If the group passes, tale posts control messages advising all Usenet sites to act on it.
(Bells ring. Crowds cheer. Photons and electrons propagate.)
And the last gory detail: The vote is followed by a waiting period for proposals on similar topics. If the vote failed, similar RFDs can't be posted for six months. If it passed, the affected traffic must settle in for three months before new proposals can alter it.
That's all there is to this. :-)
"There are only a few gods with actual fit-permissions. The rest just send e-mail." -- Kate Wrightson
news.groups is open to everyone. If you come here to debate one proposal, you'll see people commenting on it that you've never heard of before and will never hear of again. They care about your group because it will be a part of Usenet: It will be an element in the overall namespace, affect traffic in related groups, and be a precedent until the end of time.
The news.groups population includes those interested in each of the current proposals, lost and wandering newcomers, news.groups regulars, and random lurkers from who-knows-where.
Mostly people who don't read news.groups at all. These people are called "trolls" (a net.term for people who post deliberately inflammatory stuff) or "spam-trolls" (because in addition to being really gross, the authors of this particular stuff send it all over the net). Answers to the original posts come from dozens of ignorants who feel they just have to respond to (for example) "ALL RIGHT-HANDED MEN SHOULD BE CASTRATED".
news.groups' confusing name and its status as a political entity make it a frequent target for this garbage. The regulars are working on a reorganization that will deal with the problem. In the meantime, you can help if you refrain from answering. Use your killfile if you have one; many will allow you to kill on the basis of crossposting alone.
A regular reader of news.groups. No, really...
Some of us administer news sites and have a direct interest in what happens. Some of us have decided that an aspect of newsgroup creation policy demands attention. Some of us are official net.gods or net.kooks. Some of us are just (choose one) helpful / nosy. You're certainly welcome to join us.
We have our bad side. We apply our long-standing concerns to new proposals, and we're willing to debate them past any reasonable interest on the part of most netizens. Some of us tend to be completely irrational with only brief moments of lucidity, and the rational among us stumble more than we'd like. If you see someone posting screeds wholly unrelated to your proposal, the best thing to do is just ignore it.
But most of us are here to help produce good groups, and the information we provide can be valuable. Most of us have seen several debates and observed how well the resulting groups work. Many (not all!) news.groups regulars have some expertise in the details of namespace, moderation policy and software, and the group creation process.
We don't necessarily have any expertise in the topic of your proposal, so be prepared to explain it patiently until the debate is done. Once in a while (not often) our concerns and yours will be in irreconcilable opposition -- that's one of the reasons we have votes.
But news.groups regulars possess a wide variety of opinions and routinely disagree. If you start seeing unanimity among us, you might consider the possibility that we're right. :-) If you really hate us, well, that's what alt.* is for.
"Reason, etiquette, accountability, and compromise are strangers in far too many newsgroups these days." -- spaf
Yes. (What did you think?) If you haven't already, go to news.announce.newusers NOW and read the articles there.
We'll let Bruce Baugh <bruce@kenosis.com> answer that:
Various aspects of USENET make it easy for there to be continuing ramifications for bad behavior.
Kill files are one of the more obvious. Act up long enough to get someone else to put you in his or her killfile, and you lose the chance to make an improved impression indefinitely.
Propagation delays are another. For weeks after you post, someone will be encountering it for the first time, and they won't get to your improvements for a while yet. This can be particularly pernicious when your posts are going out a lot faster than the ones you're reacting to are coming in. The bad impression can be sustained for some time.
Further, there's the collective experience of news.groups, which is that once people show they can be jerks for extended periods (i.e., more than the occasional lapse which (alas) hits us all from time to time), reform is usually temporary.
Further further :-), bad behavior on one's own part tends to bring it out in others. And once a thread as a whole starts to degenerate, reversal is nearly impossible.
Remember, you want to convince the masses that you're right, not to alienate them. Come up with data, answer questions, stay calm, and you can watch the favorable reaction roll in like the tide.
Yes. news.groups is full of people from all over the net, and they're not all going to behave as people do in your corner of it. Watch your blood pressure. :-)
Here's what you can do to help:
The next two are more than just suggestions; disregarding these will result in widespread condemnation, and perhaps accusations of net-abuse:
+----------------------------------------------------------------+ | Usenet is not real life. Do not bring debates off-line. Do | | not mailbomb. Do not attack anyone's home or day job. Do not | | post street addresses or phone numbers. Do not *think* about | | contacting a spouse or employer. | +----------------------------------------------------------------+
Having to write that is depressing, but the worst is now over. Read on....
news.groups: A Survival Guide (Part 2) -------------------------------------- "The name of the newsgroup would be rec.kibo.hunting." -- Joel K. Furr
"I support the creation of well focused newsgroups which are not duplicitous." -- tale
The purpose of discussion in news.groups is to produce good newsgroups. A good newsgroup is one that is well constructed -- its name and charter do everything they're supposed to. A good newsgroup doesn't significantly overlap with other Big 8 groups, and it draws interest from around the world.
Creating such newsgroups is not a matter of defeating opponents; rather, it is a matter of creating consensus, often through compromise. On the other hand, compromise isn't always The Answer; both the basic principles of newsgroup creation and the fundamental concerns of the proposed newsgroup's participants should always remain in sight.
The name is only thing that everyone who deals with your group is guaranteed to see. Names have to guide interested people to your group and uninterested people away from it. Good names provide intuitive clues about the charter.
Names guide partly by being organized into hierarchies that group similar traffic together. Hierarchies also help news admins carry only the kinds of traffic they want and control how long they keep it. This can be as trivial as a cat-lover not wanting to carry dog groups, or as important as an admin with limited space deciding not to carry binaries. Names have to be consistent with each other if they're going to help people navigate, so they need to agree with existing precedents and with the "Guidelines on Usenet Newsgroup Names".
Naming debates often revolve around two conflicting precedents, or around the existence of groups pre-dating the currently preferred standards. Be careful what precedents you cite, because someone in news.groups will probably know the full history of whichever one you pick (even if it's someone who never posts ;-).
No "official" document explains the purpose of every sub-hierarchy in the Big 8. We develop namespace as we go, based on general consensus, precedent, and demonstrated need for new hierarchies. The only way to learn namespace is to spend time on Usenet and in news.groups.
They want you to show global interest in the group.
A good rationale gives the current Usenet traffic on the topic, traffic on existing mailing lists, and the results of any straw polls taken before the RFD. These numbers matter, because a subject may be wildly popular in the real world and irrelevant on the net, or vice versa. Current traffic establishes that a topic is popular on the net.
But the real issue is interest rather than traffic, so the rationale can sometimes justify a newsgroup on other grounds. For example, the need to put important posts in a low-traffic environment justifies .announce groups.
The point is that the rationale must somehow justify the group's creation in Usenet -- not real world -- terms, or the proposal is likely to draw objections and NO votes.
The readership and FAQs of an unmoderated group have much more influence on it than any charter. So why care? Here are some reasons to be concerned, distilled from a post by Russ Allbery <rra@stanford.edu>:
In short, the charter is the only permanent, universally recognized reference we have about the group's intended purpose.
A moderated group's charter is only as good as the moderators who enforce it. Creating a moderated newsgroup takes an awful lot of faith.
Moderators have complete power over their newsgroups, and the charter serves as an agreement about how they plan to use that power. Provided that the moderator volunteers are trustworthy -- and the great majority are -- the charter will have enormous influence on the group. Even small details in moderated charters are worth clarifying.
In addition to trustworthiness, being a moderator requires a certain amount of technical savvy. news.groups readers are likely to evaluate this while reading the discussion and the RFD.
Moderated newsgroup proposals are subject to a never-ending controversy about moderation itself. Charters with unusual restrictions will be subject to still more intense debate.
Dimitri Vulis: One of the many things wrong with you, Peter, is that you're a quitter.
Peter da Silva: Yep. I only spent seven years pushing this proposal.
Usenet's long and radical free speech tradition prompts many people to flatly oppose moderation. They are especially concerned when a moderated group would occupy a spot in namespace that could be filled by an unmoderated one, or when moderation would weed out relevant posts based on their content. Supporters of this position often describe moderation as censorship.
But Usenet has increasing problems with off-topic posts, spam, trolls, and flames. In hierarchies where controversy is rife and an unmoderated group would be subject to endless crossposted flamewars, the group's charter is almost meaningless. Moderation is one of the only solutions we have for these problems, so many people routinely support moderated groups. Moderation supporters often speak of groups with big problems as "cesspools", and talk about signal-to-noise ratios.
Yet another common position draws on Usenet's history of expanding to accommodate all points of view. Some people want to continue this by creating a broad variety of groups; they are most concerned with ensuring that the group will garner interest in its proposed form, and that the interested people want exactly what they're getting. These people talk about freedom of association.
One possible compromise on this issue is minimal moderation, sometimes even non-content-based robomoderation. Another is companion moderated and unmoderated groups (a soc.*/talk.* pair, for instance).
Just don't expect any compromise, however reasonable, to shut everybody up. This debate stretches back to the beginnings of Usenet, and it's not going to be resolved in the near future. (talk.moderation, anyone?)
If soc.religion.kibology exists and you propose soc.religion.kibology.hunting, all the traffic in .hunting would still be on-topic in its parent newsgroup. And "good" newsgroups shouldn't overlap with each other -- that makes it hard to know where to post and where to look for information.
One solution to this problem is to rename each parent newsgroup when a child is born. Keeping all the groups in the hierarchy at the same level directs users to the new subgroups, moving traffic out of the hierarchy's "central" group. This is exactly what's wanted when a new group is created; there's no reason for the new group's existence if users can't or won't find it. In addition, renaming alerts news admins to the changes in the original group. News admins also tend to like renaming because it makes news system maintenance easier and slightly improves server performance.
That's one side. Not everyone agrees, and that's putting it mildly -- even in news.groups. The counter argument is that broad, inclusive groups are worthwhile in their own right, even when they overlap with subgroups. Since most newsreaders display available groups as a simple list, users shouldn't need for all groups to be at the same hierarchic level in order to find the subgroups. Renaming causes inconvenience and confusion for users during the transitional period. And finally, the technical advantages are small ones.
Whatever you believe, renamings are never mandatory; group-advice recommends renaming for the reasons given above. Confusion over this stems from the fact that tale has rejected RFDs that would have created parent and child groups simultaneously, or that would have turned an existing hierarchic node into a group. The process for renaming, however, is the same as the process for group creation: Renaming is proposed in an RFD, discussed, and voted on separately from any other groups in the CFV.
The traditional suffix for renamed groups is .misc, meaning "everything else that belongs in this hierarchy". Many other names are possible; another that's common is .discuss (formerly .d), a suffix that's appropriate for groups accompaying a .announce-like partner.
The precedents on renaming itself are less clear. Some hierarchies do have all their groups at the same hierarchic level, while others have groups scattered across several levels. As a result, debate over each renaming centers heavily on the particulars of the reorg in question. With the flamewars over this issue as hot as they are, we're likely to continue getting more precedents on both sides for the forseeable future.
Probably the most controversial sentence in the Guidelines is this one:
The group [news.announce.newgroups] is moderated, and the Followup-to: header will be set so that the actual discussion takes place only in news.groups.
news.groups exists to make proposals known to the wider Usenet community, including admins who will decide whether to carry the resulting groups. All discussion really should be posted here; the question is whether or not it should be crossposted to affected groups.
A crossposted discussion is almost certain to splinter, resulting in some posts that aren't in news.groups. Many Usenet groups have decided they don't like RFD discussions, and they want it all to move here when the RFD is posted. Even in groups where this isn't the consensus, uninterested readers often want the RFD out. And some RFDs are caused by overwhelming volume in affected groups; crossposting only makes the problem worse. On top of the ambiguous sentence in the Guidelines, all this leads many people to believe that discussion should never be cross-posted.
On the other hand, many people believe some or all discussion should be crossposted in order to ensure that the readership of the affected groups is educated about the proposal. They argue that news.groups is a high-traffic cesspool and that reading the discussion should be as convenient as possible.
However you interpret these arguments, please try to respect complaints from the readership of the affected groups. If you often cross-post beyond the norm established for any given debate, you are likely to lose respect.
The newsgroup creation process developed out of experience, not from first principles. The process is adjusted after problems with it crop up; in the last few years more and more problems have become apparent. If the diverse news.groups population approaches agreement on anything, it is that the current process needs to be improved. Suggestions for improvements range from small adjustments to complete overhauls. At the moment, few are being acted on, in anticipation of tale's own long-promised proposal for sweeping change.
[That last sentence is no longer true. Major changes do appear to remain relatively uninteresting to many people, still waiting for tale's input, but several medium sized changes - a reorganisation of news.groups, most prominently - are being worked on. The section needs revising but your [[former]] FAQ maintainer incompetently put this off. Next time ... JLB]
"Hello, I'd like to have an argument." -- Russ Allbery (after John Cleese)
"What are those people thinking? That name is a Crawling Horror from the Sewers of Hell (TM)." Beware. When you find yourself thinking things like this, you are being assimilated.
Debates in news.groups are often tense, emotional, and acrimonious. Before jumping into a discussion where you're an "outsider", consider what you can add. It could be knowledge of namespace or news software, or how a moderation policy worked out in another group you read. It could be simply a different perspective on what names look understandable.
As an outsider, you have two options if you want to help rather than cause trouble. You can follow the debate from early on, discover what the issues are, and establish yourself as trustworthy. Or you can arrive late and be very polite and careful to make up for it while catching up on what's happening.
Do not begin by insulting the participants or their interests. We're here to make workable newsgroups for all interests, not just the ones we happen to like. As an opening move, an insult is subtracting from credibility that you haven't yet earned, among people who may already be upset. The result is not often pretty.
On a similar note, you should develop some sensitivity for obvious hot buttons and learn to avoid pushing them. In a rec.pets.cats discussion, for example, you can discuss charter provisions about cruelty to animals without starting a debate about animal testing.
The history of the discussion is often an issue even when it shouldn't be. This is something the people involved are going to know more about than you, so you probably don't need to go telling them what they've done. If you simply must, make sure you're right. Misinformation has an infuriating way of surviving all attempts to correct it.
Proposed moderators are the exception. Their actions are relevant to evaluating how well they'll perform as moderators. Still be careful -- any argument about real live people is going to be ugly.
And one last thing before we (finally!) step off this soapbox: Sometimes you're going to be wrong and get criticized. Sometimes you'll get criticized when you're right. You'll need the ability to learn from people you don't like and to concede gracefully.
In this FAQ we've attempted to introduce general principles; we have not even tried to discuss all the precedents, going back for over a decade, that govern decisions in news.groups. You'll just have to learn by watching, participating, and sometimes being wrong.
You've been around news.groups for six months or more and still want to start a group? You can start by asking <group-mentors@acpub.duke.edu> for help and reading the references we give in subject 9.4 below.
Good luck!
All three volunteer organizations that keep the newsgroup creation process running are constantly overloaded. group-mentors and the UVV accept volunteers; group-advice membership is "solely at the discretion of David Lawrence."
Being a group-mentor requires only Usenet access, e-mail access, and substantial familiarity with namespace, RFDs, and the newsgroup creation process. The group-mentors web site at <URL:http://www.duke.edu/ugm/> has more information.
In addition to news.groups experience, votetakers need to know the UNIX operating system well enough to create mail aliases, pipe incoming mail to a program, and install Ron Dippold's UseVote software. Votetakers do not need root access on their machines, but good net access is essential. The UVV's web site at <URL:http://www.uvv.org/> has more information.
If you qualify and want to help, please apply to <group-mentors-request@acpub.duke.edu> or <request@uvv.org>.
These four articles can also usually be found at the "Web sites to visit first".
The Guidelines were originally written by Greg Woods and have subsequently been maintained by Gene Spafford (spaf, tale's predecessor) and by tale.
Here's how to find the hallowed document:
The Draft Revised Guidelines were written afresh by Russ Allbery. Since he is also the day-to-day moderator of news.announce.newgroups these days, while they do not have the ultimate authority of tale's decisions, they are usually more reliable for current information.
The "Guidelines on Usenet Newsgroup Names," by David Wright and Mark Moraes, explains how to name Big 8 groups in a consistent and self-explanatory way.
Another good introduction to the RFD/CFV process is John Stanley's "User's Guide to the Changing Usenet", which provides the elementary information you need in order to decide whether you need to know more:
One excellent site for proponents, newcomers to news.groups, newcomers to Usenet in general, and those interested in alt groups is maintained by Jon Bell:
The Usenet Volunteer Votetakers also maintain a web site with newsgroup creation information, including lots of interesting information about votes and votetaking:
"How to Write a Good Newsgroup Proposal," by David Lawrence and Una Smith, gives examples of strong and weak arguments that may be useful for anyone in a serious debate, not just proponents.
Russ Allbery's "How to Format and Submit a New Group Proposal" explains the details of getting an RFD approved.
Ron Dippold's "Newsgroup Creation Companion", though it hasn't been updated recently, remains a good guide to the nastier side of being a proponent.
A good introduction to how moderated newsgroups work, with further references for proponents and future moderators, is the "Moderated Newsgroups FAQ" by Denis McKeon.
Kent Landfield's venerable 'NetNews Moderators Handbook' still contains valuable information.
tale PGP-signs all his control messages to distinguish them from forgeries in his name. INN patches that will automate PGP verification and instructions for installing them are available here:
news.admin.net-abuse.* is the place to discuss spam and other net abuse. The nan-a "Net Abuse FAQ" is available here:
Find out about trolls from Gandalf's "Dealing with Trolls Crossposting and Flames" FAQ. It's posted occasionally to alt.syntax.tactical and news.admin.net-abuse misc, among other places, and is available at
You can start learning about Usenet history by reading Lee Bumgarner's
FAQ on the Great Renaming (the event resulting in the original Big 7).
[2000/01/02. I currently can find no copies of this on the Web. It changed
over time; a relatively recent copy that I know of can be found at DejaNews,
by searching for its Message-ID, which is <4sudc9$5de@doc.jmu.edu>. Anyone who
has a webbed copy, knows of one, or wants to make one, please let me know!
- JLB]
David DeLaney's net.legends FAQ tells about net.gods, net.kooks, and everything in between.
tale maintains an archive of all posts to news.announce.newgroups since 1989. This is a good place to find vote results and current charters.
tale also maintains an archive of all control messages creating and deleting groups (newgroups and rmgroups) he's received since 1991. This archive includes hierarchies outside the Big 8; newgroups for the Big 8 include charters.
Deja and Alta Vista both maintain archives of Usenet posts -- Deja usually has everything back to March 1995, while Alta Vista keeps three months' worth.
The FAQ archives at rtfm.mit.edu are mirrored at several other places, including UUNET.
You can always get the most recent version of this FAQ in these ways:
--
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