*** 19970131.txt Sat Feb 16 10:34:32 2002 --- 19980629.txt Sat Feb 16 10:34:38 2002 *************** *** 1,205 **** ! From: newgroups-request@isc.org (David C Lawrence) ! Subject: How to Create a New Usenet Newsgroup ! Date: 1997/02/11 ! Message-ID: ! expires: 20 Mar 1997 00:00:00 GMT ! supersedes: ! followup-to: news.newusers.questions ! newsgroups: news.announce.newgroups,news.groups,news.announce.newusers,news.admin.misc,news.answers ! ! ! ! Archive-name: usenet/creating-newsgroups/part1 ! Original-author: woods@ncar.ucar.edu (Greg Woods) ! Comment: enhanced & edited until 5/93 by spaf@cs.purdue.edu (Gene Spafford) ! Last-change: 31 Jan 1997 by newgroups-request@isc.org (David C Lawrence) ! ! GUIDELINES FOR USENET GROUP CREATION ! ! REQUIREMENTS FOR GROUP CREATION: ! ! These are guidelines that have been generally agreed upon across ! Usenet as appropriate for following in the creating of new newsgroups ! in the "standard" Usenet newsgroup hierarchy. They are NOT intended as ! guidelines for setting Usenet policy other than group creations, and ! they are not intended to apply to "alternate" or local news ! hierarchies. The part of the namespace affected is comp, humanities, ! misc, news, rec, sci, soc, talk, which are the most widely-distributed ! areas of the Usenet hierarchy. ! ! Any group creation request which follows these guidelines to a ! successful result should be honored, and any request which fails to ! follow these procedures or to obtain a successful result from doing so ! should be dropped, except under extraordinary circumstances. The ! reason these are called guidelines and not absolute rules is that it ! is not possible to predict in advance what "extraordinary ! circumstances" are or how they might arise. ! ! It should be pointed out here that, as always, the decision whether or ! not to create a newsgroup on a given machine rests with the ! administrator of that machine. These guidelines are intended merely as ! an aid in making those decisions. ! ! The Discussion ! ! group-mentors@acpub.duke.edu is a body of volunteers experienced with ! the newsgroup creation process. They assist people who want to ! propose new groups with the formation and submission of a good ! proposal. It is strongly encouraged, though not required, that they ! be contacted with an outline of the basic idea for a proposal, and a ! mentor will work with the proponents to submit a formal proposal. ! People who have experience with the process and wish to help others ! should contact group-mentors-request@acpub.duke.edu to join. ! ! 1) A request for discussion on creation of a new newsgroup should be ! posted to news.announce.newgroups, news.groups, and any other ! groups or mailing lists at all related to the proposed topic if ! desired. news.announce.newgroups is moderated, and the ! Followup-to: header will be set so that the actual discussion takes ! place only in news.groups. Users on sites which have difficulty ! posting to moderated groups may mail submissions intended for ! news.announce.newgroups to newgroups@isc.org. The proposal ! must be in the format defined in "How to Format and Submit a ! New Group Proposal", a pointer to which is at the end of this message. ! ! The article should be cross-posted among the newsgroups, including ! news.announce.newgroups, rather than posted as separate articles. ! Note that standard behaviour for posting software is to not present ! the articles in any groups when cross-posted to a moderated group; ! the moderator will handle that for you. ! ! 2) The name and charter of the proposed group and whether it will be ! moderated or unmoderated (and if the former, who the moderator(s) ! will be) should be determined during the discussion period. If ! there is no general agreement on these points among the proponents ! of a new group at the end of 30 days of discussion, the discussion ! should be taken offline (into mail instead of news.groups) and the ! proponents should iron out the details among themselves. Once that ! is done, a new, more specific proposal may be made, going back to ! step 1) above. ! ! 3) Group advocates seeking help in choosing a name to suit the ! proposed charter, or looking for any other guidance in the creation ! procedure, can send a message to group-advice@isc.org; a few ! seasoned news administrators are available through this address. ! ! The Vote ! ! The Usenet Volunteer Votetakers (UVV) are a group of neutral ! third-party vote-takers who currently handle vote gathering and ! counting for all newsgroup proposals. The coordinators of the group ! can be reached at uvv-contact@uvv.org; contact them to arrange the ! handling of the vote. The mechanics of vote will be handled in accord ! with the paragraphs below. ! ! 1) AFTER the discussion period, if it has been determined that a new ! group is really desired, a name and charter are agreed upon, and it ! has been determined whether the group will be moderated and if so ! who will moderate it, a call for votes may be posted to ! news.announce.newgroups and any other groups or mailing lists that ! the original request for discussion might have been posted ! to. There should be minimal delay between the end of the discussion ! period and the issuing of a call for votes. The call for votes ! should include clear instructions for how to cast a vote. It must ! be as clearly explained and as easy to do to cast a vote for ! creation as against it, and vice versa. It is explicitly permitted ! to set up two separate addresses to mail yes and no votes to ! provided that they are on the same machine, to set up an address ! different than that the article was posted from to mail votes to, ! or to just accept replies to the call for votes article, as long as ! it is clearly and explicitly stated in the call for votes article ! how to cast a vote. If two addresses are used for a vote, the ! reply address must process and accept both yes and no votes OR ! reject them both. ! ! 2) The voting period should last for at least 21 days and no more than ! 31 days, no matter what the preliminary results of the vote ! are. The exact date that the voting period will end should be ! stated in the call for votes. Only votes that arrive on the ! vote-taker's machine prior to this date will be counted. ! ! 3) A couple of repeats of the call for votes may be posted during the ! vote, provided that they contain similar clear, unbiased ! instructions for casting a vote as the original, and provided that ! it is really a repeat of the call for votes on the SAME proposal ! (see #5 below). Partial vote results should NOT be included; only a ! statement of the specific new group proposal, that a vote is in ! progress on it, and how to cast a vote. It is permitted to post a ! "mass acknowledgement" in which all the names of those from whom ! votes have been received are posted, as long as no indication is ! made of which way anybody voted until the voting period is ! officially over. ! ! 4) ONLY votes MAILED to the vote-taker will count. Votes posted to the ! net for any reason (including inability to get mail to the ! vote-taker) and proxy votes (such as having a mailing list ! maintainer claim a vote for each member of the list) will not be ! counted. ! ! 5) Votes may not be transferred to other, similar proposals. A vote ! shall count only for the EXACT proposal that it is a response ! to. In particular, a vote for or against a newsgroup under one name ! shall NOT be counted as a vote for or against a newsgroup with a ! different name or charter, a different moderated/unmoderated status ! or (if moderated) a different moderator or set of moderators. ! ! 6) Votes MUST be explicit; they should be of the form "I vote for the ! group foo.bar as proposed" or "I vote against the group foo.bar as ! proposed". The wording doesn't have to be exact, it just needs to ! be unambiguous. In particular, statements of the form "I would vote ! for this group if..." should be considered comments only and not ! counted as votes. ! ! 7) A vote should be run only for a single group proposal. Attempts to ! create multiple groups should be handled by running multiple ! parallel votes rather than one vote to create all of the groups. ! ! The Result ! ! 1) At the completion of the voting period, the vote taker must post ! the vote tally and the E-mail addresses and (if available) names of ! the voters received to news.announce.newgroups and any other groups ! or mailing lists to which the original call for votes was ! posted. The tally should include a statement of which way each ! voter voted so that the results can be verified. ! ! 2) AFTER the vote result is posted, there will be a 5 day waiting ! period, beginning when the voting results actually appear in ! news.announce.newgroups, during which the net will have a chance to ! correct any errors in the voter list or the voting procedure. ! ! 3) AFTER the waiting period, and if there were no serious objections ! that might invalidate the vote, and if 100 more valid YES/create ! votes are received than NO/don't create AND at least 2/3 of the ! total number of valid votes received are in favor of creation, a ! newgroup control message may be sent out. If the 100 vote margin ! or 2/3 percentage is not met, the group should not be created. ! ! 4) The newgroup message will be sent by the news.announce.newgroups ! moderator at the end of the waiting period of a successful vote. ! ! 5) A proposal which has failed under point (3) above should not again ! be brought up for discussion until at least six months have passed ! from the close of the vote. This limitation does not apply to ! proposals which never went to vote or polls that were cancelled or ! invalidated. ! ! ADDITIONAL REFERENCES: ! ! If you want to create a new group, the following additional documents ! should be read before you begin the process. ! ! Subject: How to Format and Submit a New Group Proposal ! Newsgroups: news.announce.newgroups,news.groups ! Subject: How to Write a Good Newsgroup Proposal ! Newsgroups: news.announce.newgroups,news.groups ! ! Subject: Usenet Newsgroup Creation Companion ! Newsgroups: news.groups,news.announce.newusers,news.answers ! ! Subject: What is Usenet? ! Newsgroups: news.announce.newusers,news.admin.misc,news.answers --- 1,215 ---- ! From: Russ Allbery ! Subject: [DRAFT] Guidelines: Big Eight Newsgroup Creation ! Date: 1998/06/29 ! Message-ID: ! Sender: eagle@windlord.Stanford.EDU ! Organization: The Eyrie ! Newsgroups: news.groups ! ! ! ! [[ TODO: Get clarifications and exact policy on points 9 and 10, check ! on the status of RIP proposals, wait for completion of Companion. ]] ! ! Archive-name: usenet/creating-newsgroups/big-eight ! Original-author: rra@stanford.edu (Russ Allbery) ! Last-change: 29 Jun 1998 by rra@stanford.edu (Russ Allbery) ! ! THE BIG EIGHT NEWSGROUP CREATION PROCESS ! ! The following documents the process to create, rename, remove, or change ! the moderation status of newsgroups in the Big Eight hierarchies (comp.*, ! humanities.*, misc.*, news.*, rec.*, sci.*, soc.*, and talk.*). For the ! process for other hierarchies, please see the appropriate groups within ! those hierarchies. For information on how to submit a proposal and advice ! on working within this process, please see the FAQs posted to news.groups ! and news.announce.newgroups. ! ! The following documents existing practice, no more and no less. When the ! process changes, this document will change to reflect the new practice. ! ! Most of this procedure is at the discretion of the news.announce.newgroups ! moderator (hereafter referred to as the n.a.n moderator), who can be ! reached at newgroups-request@isc.org. All subjective determinations, ! particularly in points 5-10, 12, 13, and 26 below, will be made by the ! n.a.n moderator. ! ! GENERAL RULE ! ! 1. Only postings to news.announce.newgroups authorized by the n.a.n ! moderator are considered official in this process. All time limits ! and deadlines will be based on the Date headers of those posts. ! ! THE DISCUSSION ! ! 2. A proposal officially begins with the posting of a Request for ! Discussion (RFD) in news.announce.newgroups. A valid RFD must contain ! a rationale for the proposal, charters for all newsgroups which would ! be created or changed, and moderator information sections for all ! created or changed groups that are proposed to be moderated. The RFD ! must be crossposted to news.groups, should be crossposted to groups ! likely to be affected by the proposal, and may be crossposted to other ! related newsgroups. Crossposts to poorly propagated or regional ! newsgroups may be disallowed at the discretion of the n.a.n moderator. ! Proposals will only be posted or crossposted to moderated groups with ! the explicit permission of the moderators of those groups. The total ! length of the Newsgroups header in the RFD (and CFV) must not exceed ! 200 characters, including "Newsgroups: ". Followups will be set to ! news.groups only. The RFD, after it has been posted, may be ! redistributed freely. ! ! 3. A proposal must consist of one or more of the following changes to Big ! Eight newsgroups: Creation of a new newsgroup, removal of a newsgroup ! (by subsumption into an existing group), change in the moderation ! status of a newsgroup, or renaming of a newsgroup. No other types of ! proposals will be accepted, nor will proposals whose intent is to ! create, change, or remove newsgroups outside the Big Eight. ! ! 4. All proposed group names must be within the Big Eight hierarchies. A ! group name is made up of name components separated by '.'; each ! component must consist solely of lowercase letters, digits, '+', and ! '-', must contain at least one non-digit, and must be no more than ! fourteen characters long. ! ! 5. A proposal may include multiple changes if they are closely related, ! but each individual change (as defined in point 3) will be voted on ! separately. The n.a.n moderator may require closely-related proposals ! to be combined or a bundling of unrelated proposals to be separated. ! ! 6. A proposal that is substantially similar to a previous failed proposal ! may not be made until at least six months after the close of vote on ! the last such failed proposal. ! ! 7. A proposal that significantly affects the same groups as a previous ! successful proposal may not be made until at least three months after ! the implementation (point 27) of the last such successful proposal. ! ! 8. Two proposals with overlapping purposes, newsgroup names, or effects ! may not proceed at the same time. Precedence is normally given to the ! first group to present a formal proposal, but repeat proposals under ! point 6 above may be handled differently at the discretion of the ! n.a.n moderator (to prevent monopolization of a proposal). ! ! 9. Proposals that unmoderate or change the moderators of an actively ! moderated group against the desires of the moderators will be ! rejected. ! ! 10. Proposals may be rejected by the n.a.n moderator in the extremely rare ! circumstance that the proposal would be opposed by the vast majority ! of news administrators or have a sufficiently deleterious effect on ! the Big Eight as a whole as to make it dangerously unworkable or ! extremely ill-advised (for example, a proposal for a newsgroup where ! the the act of posting on charter would be nigh universally illegal). ! ! 11. All discussion of active proposals should be posted to news.groups. ! If desired by the readership of closely affected groups, it may be ! crossposted to those groups, but care must be taken to ensure that all ! discussion appears in news.groups. ! ! 12. Additional RFDs for a proposal may be posted as needed, as the ! proposal changes in response to discussion. An additional RFD is ! needed if there have been major changes to the proposal or if 60 days ! have passed since the previous RFD. Examples of major changes include ! any change to a group's name or moderation status or a significant ! alteration to the charter. Examples of minor changes not requiring an ! additional RFD include the addition or removal of a proponent or ! tidying up some wording in the rationale or charter. ! ! 13. The discussion period must be a minimum of 21 days. If a proposal ! remains in the RFD phase for more than four months, the proposal may ! be suspended and a competing proposal allowed to go forward. ! ! THE VOTE ! ! 14. Success or failure of a proposal will be determined by the results ! of a general interest poll conducted by a member of the Usenet ! Volunteer Votetakers (UVV). Before the poll begins, the proponent ! must submit a Proponent Questionnaire (PQ) to the UVV. The votetaker ! will post a CFV (Call for Votes) based on the PQ, generally to the ! same newsgroups to which the RFD was posted. Every proposed change ! from the list in point 3 above will be voted on separately and will ! pass or fail independently. ! ! 15. The first CFV may be posted between 10 and 60 days after the latest ! RFD for the proposal. At least 21 days must have elapsed between the ! first RFD and the first CFV. ! ! 16. The voting period will last 21 days. The votetaker will post a second ! CFV near the middle of that period. Only votes that arrive at the ! votetaker's machine prior to the close of voting will be considered ! valid. ! ! 17. The votetaker may reject votes not cast precisely according to the ! instructions in the CFV. ! ! 18. Only one vote per person is permitted. If multiple votes are received ! from a single account, only the last vote will be counted, even if the ! account is used by more than one person. Multiple votes which are, in ! the judgement of the votetaker, attempts to bypass these restrictions ! may all be rejected. ! ! 19. Anonymous, forwarded, or proxy votes are not valid. Votes from ! nonexistent accounts are not valid. Votes mailed by WWW/HTML/CGI ! forms are considered proxy votes and are not valid. The precise ! definition of anonymous is at the discretion of the votetaker but ! should not be interpreted as requiring all voters to use their real ! name; votes from well-established pseudonyms should be accepted. ! ! 20. The explicit voting instructions in the CFV may not be distributed, in ! whole or in part, to any forum, by anyone except the votetaker. ! People wishing to vote should be referred to the CFV posted in ! news.announce.newgroups or told to contact the votetaker for a copy. ! Violations may result in invalidation of votes by the votetaker or ! long-term suspension of the proposal by the n.a.n moderator. ! ! 21. Whether or not the CFV may be sent to mailing lists is at the ! discretion of the votetaker, and if done should only be done by the ! votetaker directly. ! ! 22. The validity of any given vote is determined by the votetaker. Votes ! may be disqualified for violation of the above points or for any other ! actions seriously detrimental to the integrity of the vote, at the ! discretion of the votetaker. The decision of the votetaker may be ! appealed to the n.a.n moderator. The decision of the n.a.n moderator ! is final. ! ! THE RESULT ! ! 23. After the completion of the vote, the votetaker will tally the result ! and post it to the same newsgroups to which the votetaker posted the ! CFV. The posted result will contain the name, a form of the e-mail ! address, and the vote of everyone who voted except for those people ! who subsequently cancelled their vote. ! ! 24. For every separate vote in the proposal, the vote will be considered ! to have passed if and only if it received at least 100 more YES than ! NO votes and received at least twice as many YES as NO votes. ! ! 25. After the result posting, there will be a five day period when any ! objections to the vote may be raised in news.groups. The n.a.n ! moderator should also be informed (at newgroups-request@isc.org) of ! any objections or inaccuracies that could change the outcome. ! ! 26. At the conclusion of this waiting period, the n.a.n moderator will ! either validate the results or will put the proposal on hold while ! objections are considered. The final determination of whether a vote ! has passed or failed will be made by the n.a.n moderator; the n.a.n ! moderator may also call for a revote or take other appropriate action ! to deal with severely flawed votes. ! ! 27. All portions of the proposal that passed will be implemented by ! control messages issued by the n.a.n moderator. Control messages are ! sent at 10:30am US Eastern time, Monday through Thursday. Ordinarily, ! control messages implementing the portions of a proposal which passed ! will be sent at the first such time at least five days (120 hours) ! after the posting of the result. Delays may be caused by unresolved ! objections from point 25, major holidays, to allow initial setup of ! moderation, or for transition periods (for example, removal of an ! existing group may be delayed until creation of its replacement has ! had time to propagate). ! -- ! Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu)