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From: spaf@cs.purdue.EDU (Gene Spafford)
Newsgroups: news.lists,news.groups,news.announce.newusers
Subject: Alternative Newsgroup Hierarchies (Last changed: 20 November 1987)
Message-ID: <116@uther.cs.purdue.edu>
Date: Wed, 2-Dec-87 12:39:29 EST
Article-I.D.: uther.116
Posted: Wed Dec  2 12:39:29 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 6-Dec-87 04:05:00 EST
Expires: Wed, 23-Dec-87 12:39:28 EST
Organization: Dept. of Computer Sciences, Purdue Univ.
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Original-from: hoptoad!gnu (John Gilmore) and spaf@purdue.edu (Gene Spafford)
[Most recent change: 20 November 1987 by spaf@purdue.edu (Gene Spafford)]

Introduction
------------
The Usenet software allows the support and transport of hierarchies of
newsgroups not part of the "traditional" Usenet through use of the
distribution mechanism. These hierarchies of groups are available to
sites wishing to support them and finding a feed.  In general, these
groups are not carried by the entire network due to their volume, a
restricted sphere of interest, or a different set of administrative
rules and concerns.

In general it is a bad idea to forward these newsgroups to your
neighbors without asking them first; they should only be received at a
site by choice.  Not only is this generally-accepted net etiquette, it
helps to preserve the freedom to do and say as the posters please in
these newsgroups, since the only people who get them are those who
asked to get them.  This freedom is more restricted in the Usenet as a
whole, since every mainstream posting and every mainstream newsgroup
name must be acceptable to a much wider audience than is present in
these hierarchies.   Due to the sheer size of the mainstream Usenet,
extra-long or controversial postings are more likely to cause problems
when posted to the Usenet; however, these alternative hierarchies exist
precisely to support those kinds of postings (if germane to the
hierarchy).

In general, there is is no restriction on getting these groups as long
as you have the capacity to receive, store, and forward the groups;
2.10.3 or 2.11 news is required to make the distribution mechanism
work properly for these groups.  How to join each distribution is
described below.

Note that the "uunet" service carries all of these hierarchies.  Contact
uunet!postmaster for subscription details.

Alt
---
"alt" is a small collection of newsgroups which are being distributed
by a collection of sites that choose to carry them.  Many Usenet sites
are not interested in these groups, often including the backbone,
although some backbone sites do carry them.  Here is a recent list
of the 'alt" newsgroups:

alt.aquaria		The aquarium & related as a hobby.
alt.config		Alternative subnet discussions and connectivity.
alt.cyberpunk		Alternative interactions among computers and people.
alt.drugs		Alternative discussions about drugs, man.
alt.flame		Alternative, literate, pithy, succinct screaming.
alt.gourmand		Alternative recipes, moderated by Brian Reid.
alt.hypertext		Discussion of hypertext -- uses, transport, etc.
alt.sources		Alternative source code, unmoderated.
alt.test		Alternative subnetwork testing.

Submissions to the moderated alt.gourmand group should be mailed to
recipes@decwrl.dec.com (Brian Reid).

You can join the "alt subnet" by finding a site in your area that
carries the groups.  Either send mail to the administrators of the
sites you connect to, or post something to a local "general" or
"wanted" newsgroup for your area (e.g., in the San Francisco Bay Area,
it's "ba.wanted").  If no sites nearby are getting them, you can get
them from uunet.

Bionet
------
There is a newsgroup heirarchy for molecular biology called "bionet"
originating from BIONET-20.ARPA and carried on a limited number of
machines including rutgers, mit-eddie, ukma, and all of the machines at
UCSD.  Contact Rob Liebschutz  for more details.
The current newsgroup list looks like this:

bionet.general			General BIONET announcements.
bionet.politics			Political issues relevant to science.
bionet.jobs			Scientific Job opportunities.
bionet.molbio.news		Research news of interest to the community.
bionet.molbio.methds-reagnts	Requests for information and lab reagents.
bionet.molbio.genbank		Info about the GenBank Nucleic acid database.
bionet.molbio.evolution		How genes and proteins have evolved. 
bionet.molbio.gene-express	How genes are regulated in cells.
bionet.molbio.gene-org		How genes are organized on chromosomes. 
bionet.molbio.oncogenes		Genes that cause cancer.
bionet.molbio.plant		Molecular biology of plants.
bionet.molbio.proteins		Research on proteins and protein databases.
bionet.molbio.yeast		Molecular biology of yeast.
bionet.software.pc		Info on PC software for scientists.
bionet.software.pc.comm		Info on PC communications software.
bionet.software.contrib		Info on programs contributed to BIONET.

Inet/DDN
--------
Another alternative hierarchy is the "inet/ddn" distribution.  This
consists of many newsgroups bearing names similar to traditional Usenet
groups and corresponding to Arpa discussion lists.  These groups are
circulated using the NNTP transport mechanism amongst sites on the
Internet in an attempt to reduce the number of copies of these groups
flowing through the mail (some sites get these groups via UUCP and
other tranpost mechanisms, but the volume can be substantial and load
may be significant without a high-speed link).  Further details may be
obtained by writing to Erik Fair (fair@ucbarpa.berkeley.edu).

Unix-PC
-------
Another such hierarchy is the "unix-pc" distribution.  This consists of
groups devoted to users of the AT&T Unix-PC.  These groups were
originated as a mailing list started by three owners of AT&T Unix PCs:
Gary Smith, David Dalton and Kathy Vincent.  As the list expanded, it
turned into a newsgroup hierarchy, and more and more sites began to
carry the groups; hundreds of sites now carry these groups.  To recieve
them, you need to contact a site already getting them; ihnp4, gatech,
mit-eddie, psuvax1, sdcsvax and ukma are well-known sites getting these
groups and the admins there may be willing to help find a feed should
you desire (and ask nicely); uunet also carries these groups. The
unix-pc groups circulated include:

unix-pc.general 	General information and discussion.
unix-pc.sources 	Source code to various programs.
unix-pc.uucp 		Configuration and management of uucp on Unix-PCs.
unix-pc.test 		Test group.

-- 
Gene Spafford
Dept. of Computer Sciences, Purdue University, W. Lafayette IN 47907-2004
Internet:  spaf@cs.purdue.edu	uucp:	...!{decwrl,gatech,ucbvax}!purdue!spaf