Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!twwells!bill
From: bill@twwells.com (T. William Wells)
Newsgroups: news.newusers.questions
Subject: Re: Newsgroup question
Message-ID: <1989Jul31.013858.13497@twwells.com>
Date: 31 Jul 89 01:38:58 GMT
References: <3826@shlump.nac.dec.com>
Organization: None, Ft. Lauderdale, FL
Lines: 23

In article <3826@shlump.nac.dec.com> s_dowman@leaf.dec.com (Steve Dowman) writes:
:      In regard to the formation of new newsgroups: Why do some newsgroups
:      go through a formal voting procedure and some do not? An example is
:      alt.romance. Someone posted that this group would be a good idea and
:      then the next day it was on Usenet and people were posting to it. I
:      don't remember seeing a vote taken for this group.

This has to do with which newsgroup hierarchy the group would be
created in. Certain hierarchies (comp, misc, news, rec, sci, soc,
talk) are part of the "regular Usenet" and go through the "formal"
voting procedure. Alt, on the other hand, is explicitly intended to
be an "anything goes" anarchy; you want a group, go ahead and create
it. Of course, there are drawbacks to that, like since anything goes,
someone can just delete the group you just created.... Other groups
are part of different hierarchies and are controlled by whoever
administers those hierarchies (gnu, biz, pubnet, etc.)

Read the messages posted in news.announce.newusers and news.lists for
more information.

---
Bill                    { uunet | novavax | ankh | sunvice } !twwells!bill
bill@twwells.com