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From: spaf@cs.purdue.EDU (Gene Spafford)
Newsgroups: news.announce.newusers,news.groups,news.admin
Subject: How to Create a New Newsgroup (Updated: 14 May 1989)
Message-ID: <6955@medusa.cs.purdue.edu>
Date: 20 Jun 89 04:27:18 GMT
Expires: 18 Sep 89 04:27:17 GMT
Followup-To: news.announce.newusers
Organization: Dept. of Computer Sciences, Purdue Univ.
Lines: 126
Approved: spaf@cs.purdue.EDU
Supersedes: <6770@medusa.cs.purdue.edu>

Original-from: woods@ncar.ucar.edu (Greg Woods)
[Most recent change: 14 May 1989 by Greg Woods]


      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 heirarchy. 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 heirarchies. The 
part of the namespace affected is comp, news, sci, misc, soc, talk, rec,
which are the most widely-distributed areas of the USENET heirarchy.
   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

1) A call for discussion on creation of a new newsgroup should be posted
   to news.groups, and also to any other groups or mailing lists at all 
   related to the proposed topic if desired. The Followup-to: header should be 
   set so that the actual discussion takes place only in news.groups

2) The discussion period should last for at least two weeks (14 days),
   and no more than 30 days.

3) The name and charter of the proposed group and whether it will be moderated
   or unmoderated (and if the former, who the moderator will be) should be 
   determined during the discussion period. If there is no general consensus
   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.

The Vote

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.groups and any
   other groups or mailing lists that the original call 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.

2) The voting period should last for at least 30 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 may 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.

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) may 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.

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.

The Result

1) At the completion of the 30 day voting period, the vote taker must post
   the vote tally and the E-mail addresses and (if available) names of the 
   votes received to news.groups and any other groups or mailing lists to 
   which the original call for votes was posted. 

2) AFTER the vote result is posted, there will be a 5 day waiting period
   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 YES/create votes are received
   than NO/don't create, a newgroup control message may be sent out.
   If the 100 vote margin is not met, the group should not be created.
   The newgroup message may be sent by the vote-taker (if able to do so)
   or by the system administrator on the vote-taker's machine. If this
   option is not available, then the vote-taker may send mail to
   "newgroup@ncar.ucar.edu" saying that a successful vote has been run
   and requesting that a newgroup message be sent. DO NOT send the vote
   results; we can look those up in news.groups if we haven't seen them
   there already. In any case, please send mail to Gene Spafford 
   (spaf@purdue.edu) informing him of a successful vote, so he can add the
   new group to the official list of groups which he maintains.
-- 
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