Xref: utzoo news.announce.newusers:450 news.groups:12032 news.admin:6716 Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ukma!gatech!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: 3 Sep 1989) Message-ID: <7841@medusa.cs.purdue.edu> Date: 3 Sep 89 22:24:31 GMT Expires: 2 Dec 89 22:24:30 GMT Followup-To: news.announce.newusers Organization: Dept. of Computer Sciences, Purdue Univ. Lines: 134 Approved: spaf@cs.purdue.EDU Supersedes: <7410@medusa.cs.purdue.edu> Original-from: woods@ncar.ucar.edu (Greg Woods) [Most recent change: 3 Sep 1989 by woods@ncar.ucar.edu (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.announce.newgroups, and also to any other groups or mailing lists at all related to the proposed topic if desired. This group 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 "announce-newgroups@ncar.ucar.edu". 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(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. 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.announce.newgroups 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. 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) 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 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. 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.announce.newgroups 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 should 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.announce.newgroups 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 Brought to you by Super Global Mega Corp .com