news.groups: A Survival Guide WARNING This document has not been updated in over two years. The links in here should be working, but the facts are another matter. An update is forthcoming, but it seemed better to make even this version available now than to continue waiting. 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. news.groups: A Survival Guide From: "news.groups FAQ" 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.txt Last-modified: 17 June 1997 by Joe Bernstein 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 and Rebecca G. McQuitty 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. Subject: 1. The Purpose of news.groups 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: * To debate a specific proposal of interest to you. * To act as a proponent for a proposal. It is best to read news.groups for a while before making your proposal. * To involve yourself in the group creation process by participating in debates over other people's proposals, discussing the meta-issues of group creation, or volunteering to help. 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. Subject: 2. Table of Contents 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. 1. The Purpose of news.groups 2. Table of Contents 3. The Newsgroup Creation Process 3.1 Welcome to the machine 3.2 The process in gory detail 4. *Dramatis Personae* 4.1 Who *are* all these people? 4.2 So who's writing all the disgusting posts? 4.3 So what's a "news.groups regular"? 5. Debate Tactics: Netiquette in news.groups 5.1 Is it a good idea to follow netiquette? 5.2 But why should I care about netiquette? 5.3 Is there any special netiquette for news.groups? 6. Debate Topics: What's Important in a Proposal? 6.1 What makes a good newsgroup? 6.2 What's the big deal about the name? 6.3 Why do people care about our rationale? 6.4 Why care about an unmoderated group's charter? 6.5 Hey, you skipped moderated groups' charters! 7. Classic Discussions: Topics that WON'T Go Away 7.1 Moderation: Censorship and cesspools 7.2 The great war over .misc 7.3 Discussion only in news.groups? 7.4 In order to form a more perfect process... 8. Advice for news.groups Regulars 8.1 Becoming a news.groupie 8.2 Becoming a proponent 8.3 Volunteering 9. Where To Go For More Information 9.1 How to use these references 9.2 Articles everyone should read 9.3 Web sites to visit first 9.4 Articles for proponents 9.5 Moderation information 9.6 Net abuse 9.7 Usenet history and personalities 9.8 Archives 10. About this FAQ Subject: 3. The Newsgroup Creation Process "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 3.1 Welcome to the machine Technically, anyone can create a newsgroup in any hierarchy by posting a specially formatted "control" message. 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" . 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.*. 3.2 The process in gory detail 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" , 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" , 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. :-) Subject: 4. *Dramatis Personae "There are only a few gods with actual fit-permissions. The rest just send e-mail." -- Kate Wrightson 4.1 Who *are* all these people? 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. 4.2 So who's writing all the disgusting posts? 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. 4.3 So what's a "news.groups regular"? 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. Subject: 5. Debate Tactics: Netiquette in news.groups "Reason, etiquette, accountability, and compromise are strangers in far too many newsgroups these days." -- spaf 5.1 Is it a good idea to follow netiquette? Yes. (What did you think?) If you haven't already, go to news.announce.newusers NOW and read the articles there. 5.2 But why should I care about netiquette? We'll let Bruce Baugh 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. 5.3 Is there any special netiquette for news.groups? 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: * Include the name of the newsgroup you're discussing in your subject so everyone will know which proposal you're discussing. There are usually dozens of proposals current, and you need to make it easy for people to find (or ignore) the posts for each debate. * Check and double-check your attribution lines. The last thing you want is to attribute a quote to a poster who believes the exact opposite. * Snip. Staying focused will keep many more people interested than a huge quote-and-response post. (Be sure to mark or otherwise indicate snipping.) * "Me too" posts (snipped!) are occasionally worthwhile as a means of establishing consensus, but e-mail straw polls are better. * Pick *one* of the posts making a point you disagree with and write a single, well-written followup. If you say the same thing in post after post, you're going to lose readers. * Base your arguments on the merits of the proposal rather than the proponent. The character and motivation of the proponent (and other debate participants) are absolutely irrelevant. The character of the proposed moderator(s) is *extremely* relevant but should be discussed with all the politeness you can muster. * English is the common language of news.groups, and you should at least include an English translation in your posts. If you see someone who needs a translator and you know their language, please help out. * Keep each line in your post shorter than 75 characters. Many common terminals display only 80 characters per line; using fewer leaves room for quote marks ("> ") in responses. * Debates that keep going into the CFV period bore and exhaust most of us. You're warned. The next two are more than just suggestions; disregarding these will result in widespread condemnation, and perhaps accusations of net-abuse: * Follow the instructions in the CFV. Do not redistribute it or pass along voting instructions. If you break this rule, your ballot may be invalidated; in extreme cases, the entire vote may be retaken. * Do not contact voters listed in the public acknowledgment given in each RESULT. This "ack" is posted only to verify votes; it should not be used to determine why people voted as they did or to send out mass mail. But most important: +----------------------------------------------------------------+ | 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 Subject: 6. Debate Topics: What's Important in a Proposal? "I support the creation of well focused newsgroups which are not duplicitous." -- tale 6.1 What makes a good newsgroup? 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. 6.2 What's the big deal about the name? 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. 6.3 Why do people care about our rationale? 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. 6.4 Why care about an unmoderated group's charter? 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 : * The proponents are likely to be among the most influential posters to the group, at least in the beginning. The charter is useful for understanding them and the atmosphere they're likely to project. * The charter is likely to be the nucleus of the first FAQ and may even be quoted there in its entirety. * Posters wanting to get rid of a particular kind of traffic will usually refer to the charter, and sometimes annoying people will go away if you hit them with a charter that says their posts are off-topic. Ideas about moderation and filtering are likely to work from the charter. * Access providers will use the charter to evaluate complaints about inappropriate posts to the group. In short, the charter is the only permanent, universally recognized reference we have about the group's intended purpose. 6.5 Hey, you skipped moderated groups' charters! 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. Subject: 7. Classic Discussions: Topics that WON'T Go Away 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. 7.1 Moderation: Censorship and cesspools 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?) 7.2 The great war over .misc 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. 7.3 Discussion only in news.groups? 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. 7.4 In order to form a more perfect process... 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. [Sometime in 1997. 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] Subject: 8. Advice for news.groups Regulars "Hello, I'd like to have an argument." -- Russ Allbery (after John Cleese) 8.1 Becoming a news.groupie "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. 8.2 Becoming a proponent You've been around news.groups for six months or more and still want to start a group? You can start by asking for help and reading the references we give in subject 9.4 below. Good luck! 8.3 Volunteering 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 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 has more information. If you qualify and want to help, please apply to or . Subject: 9. Where To Go For More Information 9.1 How to use these references All the references here are available in at least one of four ways: * On Usenet. The reference will tell you where the article is regularly posted, who posts it, and what the subject is. * By e-mail. You will be dealing with automated mail servers; send mail with a blank subject and include a message body with only the line specified here. (Leave out your signature!) * On the World Wide Web (WWW). Some of the URLs given here had to be divided across two lines; if you actually type in a URL you should ignore this and type everything between "" as one continuous string, with no returns or blank spaces. * By anonymous FTP. This will work at Web sites whose URLs begin ". 9.2 Articles everyone should read These four articles can also usually be found at the "Web sites to visit first" (Section 9.3). 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: On Usenet - Newsgroups: news.announce.newusers, news.groups, news.admin.misc, news.announce.newgroups, news.answers From: newgroups-request@isc.org (David C Lawrence) Subject: How to Create a New Usenet Newsgroup By Email - To: mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu [body] send usenet/news.groups/How_to_Create_a_New_Usenet_Newsgroup By anonymous FTP or the Web - The "Guidelines for Big Eight Newsgroup Creation" 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. On Usenet - Newsgroups: news.groups From: Russ Allbery Subject: Guidelines for Big Eight Newsgroup Creation By the Web - 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. On Usenet - Newsgroups: news.announce.newusers, news.groups, news.admin.misc, alt.config, alt.answers, news.answers From: David.W.Wright@bnr.co.uk Subject: Guidelines on Usenet Newsgroup Names By Email - To: mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu [body] send usenet/news.groups/Guidelines_on_Usenet_Newsgroup_Names By anonymous FTP or the Web - 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: 9.3 Web sites to visit first 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: 9.4 Articles for proponents "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. On Usenet - Newsgroups: news.announce.newgroups, news.groups From: newgroups-request@isc.org (David C Lawrence) Subject: How to Write a Good Newsgroup Proposal On the Web - Russ Allbery's "How to Format and Submit a New Group Proposal" explains the details of getting an RFD approved. On Usenet - Newsgroups: news.announce.newgroups, news.groups From: newgroups-request@isc.org (David C Lawrence) Subject: How to Format and Submit a New Group Proposal On the Web - 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. On the Web - 9.5 Moderation information A good introduction to how moderated newsgroups work, with further references for proponents and future moderators, is the "Moderated Newsgroups FAQ" by Denis McKeon. On Usenet - Newsgroups: news.groups, news.newusers.questions, news.software.misc,news.admin.net-abuse.usenet, alt.config, alt.answers, news.answers From: Dmckeon@swcp.com (Denis McKeon) Subject: Moderated Newsgroups FAQ By Email - To: mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu [body] send usenet/news.groups/Moderated_Newsgroups_FAQ By anonymous FTP or the Web - Kent Landfield's venerable 'NetNews Moderators Handbook' still contains valuable information. On the Web - 9.6 Net abuse 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: . It gives references to several other FAQs that we don't have room for. [2000/01/02: That appears no longer to be true. It does point to a document that allegedly has those references, but the document in question does not seem to exist at that location any more. For now, I'll simply point you at the HTML FAQ archive's listings for news.admin.net-abuse.usenet, at - JLB.] 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 9.7 Usenet history and personalities 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 Deja, or , 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. 9.8 Archives 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. [2000/01/02. As a result of control message abuse, many hierarchies in this archive now have file lists so long that on a slow connection there is no reasonable way to download them; nor am I sure how fast the ISC's server can provide the file lists, either. For individual groups, the URLs look like this one for news.groups: . Note that for many individual groups, the file for the group is likely to be large too, again because of control message abuse; this is especially likely to be true for moderated groups, because they have longer charters and because they are more frequently targets of abuse. Finally, note that the files are compressed, and you will need something to decompress them that can read files whose names end in .Z. - JLB] 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 DejaNews archive is easier to use for research, but the one at Alta Vista usually makes articles available faster. [2000/01/02. Corrections re Deja: it does not store "everything", because it does not store binary postings like pictures, music, and computer programs, and also, because of the way cancels work, Deja will often have either the cancel or the original post but not both. Separately. It is common on news.* these days to bemoan the current state of the Deja interface, which I agree is a nuisance. I have very queasy feelings about adding or substituting a link to an alternative front end, however. Ultimately if Deja can't make money we will lose that immensely valuable archive, and so I feel obligated to treat them as a corporation; well, corporations in my experience are not happy to have control of the handling of their products, in this case an archive not the posts inside it, taken out of their hands. Comments? - JLB] [2000/01/02. I took out Zippo, since it's changed its name and anyway is no longer a public newsreading server. Is there one out there these days? I looked at an automatically generated list of open servers not too long ago that led me to think otherwise, but I didn't read it through... Or should I point people (gag) at whatever mysterious URL Deja has replaced "browse groups" with? - JLB] The FAQ archives at rtfm.mit.edu are mirrored at several other places, including UUNET. There is now an automatic hypertext conversion, too. It's at [2000/01/02. Well, I had some really nasty insults against Ohio State's archive on the Web for two years, so I won't pretend to be sorry they're gone. I'm not actually sure I ever succeeded in getting a real live FAQ out of Ohio State, anyway. But I hate to leave faqs.org, which I know is not rich, with all the traffic. Suggestions? - JLB] Subject: 10. About this FAQ You can always get the most recent version of this FAQ in these ways: AFTER REVISION, On Usenet (in 2 parts) - Newsgroups: news.groups Subject: news.groups: A Survival Guide [FAQ] On the Web - -- Copyright 1996-2000 by Joe Bernstein and Rebecca G. McQuitty. All rights reserved. Redistribution of any or all of this article on Usenet or in e-mail is hereby freely granted so long as it is redistributed without alteration.