Xref: utzoo news.announce.newusers:266 news.groups:4173 news.admin:2392 Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!mailrus!nrl-cmf!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!decwrl!purdue!spaf From: spaf@cs.purdue.EDU (Gene Spafford) Newsgroups: news.announce.newusers,news.groups,news.admin Subject: How to Create a New Newsgroup (Updated: 14 April 1988) Message-ID: <4241@medusa.cs.purdue.edu> Date: 1 Jun 88 06:28:14 GMT Expires: 11 Jul 88 06:28:13 GMT Organization: Dept. of Computer Sciences, Purdue Univ. Lines: 152 Approved: spaf@cs.purdue.EDU Supersedes: <4114@medusa.cs.purdue.edu> Original-from: spaf@cs.purdue.edu (Gene Spafford) [Most recent change: 14 April 1988 by spaf@cs.purdue.edu (Gene Spafford)] How to Establish a New Newsgroup One question that frequently appears on the Usenet has to do with how newsgroups are created. Usually this occurs when someone believes they have identified a topic that deserves a new group and they are not aware of the conventions surrounding newsgroup establishment. The purpose of this article is to help provide some background and guidelines for users interested in establishing new groups. Note that these guidelines are for new groups in the "regular" Usenet -- conventions for new groups in the alternate hierarchies (such as "alt" and "bionet") may be different and you should consult readers and admins in those groups for information specific to those groups. Also note that these are general *guidelines* -- there is no guarantee that any site will ever issue or honor a "newgroup" request for any group, even if all these guidelines are followed. In particular, problems of legality, volume and taste may keep some groups from being created in the regular newsgroup hierarchy at many (or most) sites, no matter what the perceived support; in general, such groups can be created in the alternate distributions without any such trouble. Background ---------- The Usenet is, for the most part, a loosely connected system governed by consensus and momentum. There is no "central authority" that actually runs the the network. In fact, it is not even possible to precisely define what groups and sites consititute the network -- the best we can do is provide a working definition: "The Usenet consists of sites exchanging articles in the news.* groups." This informal definition describes a collection of thousands of machines in over a dozen countries on four continents; total potential readership is in the hundreds of thousands. Total volume of all the newsgroups regularly surpasses two megabytes of information flow per day in almost three hundred newsgroups. A few years ago, the network began to exhibit overload problems. These overload problems include human overload as well as machine. Not only are some machines straining to handle the ever-increasing communication and storage needs of the network, but many (or most!) of the readers of the network find themselves unable to organize and read the incredible amounts of information available to them. Increasingly sophisticated software and organization have helped both problems, but overload of both kinds continues to be a problem. The creation of new newsgroups can sometimes help the problem and but can also sometimes make it worse. To help promote the constructive creation of new newsgroups, the administrators of the Usenet backbone machines have formalized a set of guidelines for the creation of new newsgroups. These are based on historical precedent and perceived limitations. (The "members of the backbone" are a de-facto advisory committee for the Usenet, consisting of current and past administrators of machines whose connectivity and load are seen as critical to the functioning of the Usenet. This group includes authors of the original A and B news software and users of the Usenet since its inception. It includes programmers, researchers, professors, consultants and end-users; their collective experience with Unix and the Usenet can be measured in the hundreds of years.) No one is forced to adhere to these guidelines, but action on Usenet newsgroup creation or deletion that does not follow these guidelines may be ignored by the backbone sites and the majority of Usenet sites that usually follow the examples set by the backbone. It is thus in the best interests of the proposed newsgroup to follow the guidelines. Guidelines ---------- The following guidelines assume you have determined that you want a newsgroup to be created. You may want this newsgroup to address a topic of particular interest, or it might be to help subdivide an existing newsgroup. Once you have decided you want a new newsgroup, you should do the following: 1) Determine if a new newsgroup is actually needed. Look carefully through the lists of active newsgroups and mailing lists to be sure there is currently no existing forum for your topic. If there is such a group or mailing list, try using it before attempting to create a new group -- it might be just what you want. Also determine if there are potential objections to the creation of the group based on common sense, good taste, or possible legal difficulties -- such groups are best left as mailing lists or semi-private hierarchies. 2) Determine an appropriate name for your proposed newsgroup -- a name should be informative, reasonably short, and in an appropriate top-level hierarchy. The name should directly describe the purpose and content of the proposed group, to aid new readers in selecting it. Also determine if you want the newsgroup to be moderated or not. 3) Post an article to the newsgroup "news.groups" describing your proposed new group. Be sure to describe why you think the group is needed and/or interesting, and what you think it should be named. Ask for comments to be posted and discussed. Be sure to cross-post your article to any newsgroups where there might be interest, but set the "Followup-to" header so that responses only go to the "news.groups" group. 4) Consider carefully all comments and objections, whether posted or mailed. Answer objections and questions in a timely fashion. Change the name or nature of the group, if needed, based on the comments of others. Remember that the success of the group is based on the support and participation of the other people on the network, so listen to their advice and concerns. 5) Collect MAILED votes on the issue of the new newsgroup. The threshold currently set as necessary to suggest creating a new group is 100 more "yes" votes than "no" votes in a 30 day period. a) If you get at least 100 more "yes" votes than "no" votes, post an article to the news.groups newsgroup including the totals and the list of account names of people voting. b) If you fail to get at least 100 more "yes" votes than "no" votes, consider starting a mailing list for your topic instead of a new group, or else think about starting the group as an "alt" group. If a group cannot get the support of at least 100 people in one month's time, it does not belong on the Usenet until such time as it gains sufficient support. c) If you are trying to get an exisiting mailing list upgraded to a newsgroup, consider the current subscriber list as a set of "yes" votes of equal number, but only if they have already agreed that they want the list turned into a newsgroup. 6) Send mail to "backbone@rutgers.edu" and ask that the group be created. You can issue the control message yourself, but many sites will ignore the group unless the control message originates from one of the known backbone admins (usually one of: news or spaf@cs.purdue.edu, mark@stargate.com, rick@uunet.uu.net, woods@ncar.ucar.edu or fair@ucbarpa.berkeley.edu). If the group is moderated, be sure to include information about the moderator and submission addresses in your mail message so that the appropriate postings and databases can be updated. The group will likely be created at this time, but if the members of the backbone list perceive that there are serious unanswered questions about the group's creation, it may be postponed until those questions are resolved. Summary ------- That's pretty much all you do to create a new newsgroup. You need to establish that there is sufficient support to create the group, and that there are no serious objections to its creation. If you'd like more information about how to start a mailing list, send mail to "backbone-request@rutgers.edu". -- Gene Spafford NSF/Purdue/U of Florida Software Engineering Research Center, Dept. of Computer Sciences, Purdue University, W. Lafayette IN 47907-2004 Internet: spaf@cs.purdue.edu uucp: ...!{decwrl,gatech,ucbvax}!purdue!spaf