Xref: utzoo news.groups:8385 news.admin:5249 Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!pacbell!att!cuuxb!dlm From: dlm@cuuxb.ATT.COM (Dennis L. Mumaugh) Newsgroups: news.groups,news.admin Subject: Re: Proposed OFFICIAL Newsgroup Creation/Deletion Guidelines Message-ID: <2649@cuuxb.ATT.COM> Date: 24 Mar 89 18:36:58 GMT References: <1634@ncar.ucar.edu> Reply-To: dlm@cuuxb.UUCP (Dennis L. Mumaugh) Followup-To: news.groups Organization: ATT Data Systems Group, Lisle, Ill. Lines: 156 In article <1634@ncar.ucar.edu> woods@ncar.UCAR.EDU (Greg Woods) writes: I have been informed by Spaf that he no longer maintains the official guidelines for creation of newsgroups. I would like to take over that duty (Why me? Because I'm relatively well-known to the net, I'm willing to put in the time required and deal with the inevitable flames that will result, and I volunteered first :-) ... These guidelines should be followed when you think a new newsgroup should be created. 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. Exceptional conditions are those that are caused by events such that a reasonable person (Aunt Martha) would predict will cause enough net traffic and discusssion to require a private news group: for example, comp.sys.next, or sci.space.shuttle. Sometimes the major need is to focus discussions in various other news groups and/or agree on the name. 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 The call for discussion should show that there is a need for the group by citing traffic in other groups that would justify it. Unless there is already traffic one shouldn't propose a new group just for the sake of completeness of the name space. 2) The discussion period should last for at least two weeks (14 days). Or longer as net propogation and weekends tend to make it possible for a person to not see a call for discussion. Also not all people are news addicts and some people have vactions. 3) The name of the proposed group must be agreed upon during the discussion period, which may last up to 30 days if needed. And if it isn't? 2) The voting period must last for exactly 30 days, no matter what the preliminary results of the vote are. I object to exactly 30 days. At least 30 days and not more than 37 days. Allow for email propagation, bounced mailers and mail hops that go down because of facilities failure (att-ih went down for a couple of days recently and I got no feed until it was fixed.). Also allow for news being expired and a person not knowing until the last of the voting period. 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) are NOT ALLOWED. Can we have more than one vote taker (with the various takers cooperating). Could somebody like uunet offer as a net service a automatic vote taking service for each vote? 1) At the completion of the 30 day voting period, the vote taker must post the vote tally and the names and/or E-mail addresses of the votes received to news.groups and any other groups or mailing lists to which the original call for votes was posted. Posting of results should be done on a Monday (see below). 2) AFTER the vote result is posted, there will be a 3 day waiting period during which the net will have a chance to correct any errors in the voter list or the voting procedure. See above about propagation and email problems. Suggest 5 days or 3 working days with announcements on a Monday. 3) AFTER the waiting period, if 100 more YES/create votes were 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 and discussion of it on the net should cease. Suggest that the results be announced on a Monday and the group creation be on the next Monday. This can be reduced or eliminated iff the vote is lopsided -- e.g. 400 to 3. RULES FOR DELETING A USENET GROUP [Since there has obviously been no consensus ever reached on this, this statement cannot be construed as anything other than my personal opinion] I propose that the procedure be the same as for group creation, with 100 more keep than delete votes required to save the group, with the exception that all calls for votes and discussions MUST be cross-posted to both news.groups and the group in question. This will obviously only work for unmoderated groups; I am open to discussion on procedures for deleting moderated groups, but I would prefer to wait for a final resolution on the rec.humor.funny/Brad Templeton controversy before trying to formalize them, because it will be IMPOSSIBLE to keep the flames down until then. I recommend different. A group is subject to deletion if it has been inactive for more than 3 months (unless it is deemed a "permanent group" as is news.announce.all). Inactive is determined by the following "central" locations not seeing traffic: decwrl, uunet, and rutgers. Or, any other diverse sites. The group is proposed as a candidate for deletion in news.groups and the group itself. A cross post to the next highest .misc group (if such exists) is also done. [Followup to news.groups only]. There is another wait for 30 days before a vote is taken. If articles other than chatter on why the group exists or other such meta-discusions appear on the group in question the proposal should be aborted, OR the group be diverted into the next higher level .misc group via aliases. Then the vote to be taken must have a minimum of 100 votes for retention and need not obtain any votes for execution. It is executed iff there aren't enough votes to sustain its quiet non-existence. Traffic in the group is sufficient to stop the vote [I'll beg to question on people making traffic to justify the group]. I suggest adding a new section on the mechanics of group creation or deletion: 1). When a new group is created, the newgroup control message will contain a copy of the (corrected) vote. One day after the creation, an article will be posted with the welcome message and a (re)statement of the groups charter. 2). A rmgroup control message will contain a justification for the removal and an enumeration of the steps to verify the need for removal. -- =Dennis L. Mumaugh Lisle, IL ...!{att,lll-crg,attunix}!cuuxb!dlm OR dlm@cuuxb.att.com