News.Announce.Important Policy (Last modified September 28, 1993)
Mark Horton
The posting will be made to this newsgroup once per year. Please read
this before submitting a posting to this newsgroup. Postings to
news.announce.important are almost always rejected because they are
not consistent with the policy.
The news.announce.important newsgroup is intended to be a VERY LOW
VOLUME newsgroup for general announcements that are SO important that
nearly everyone on Usenet should read them. While announcements about
Usenet, UUCPnet, or the Internet are certainly within the scope of the
newsgroup, in rare cases, announcements about other topics that are of
great interest to the readers of the newsgroup may be accepted. The
target volume of news.announce.important is 2-3 postings per year.
The news.announce.newsgroup is there for the benefit of its readers,
NOT for the benefit of the author of an announcement. No announcement
will be accepted unless reading the announcement will be of primary
benefit to the reader. In particular, this means that commercial
advertisements, announcements of new programs, and other announcements
whose primary purpose is to benefit the poster will be turned down.
Postings to this newsgroup must conform to these rules. Exceptions
to the rules are at the sole discretion of the moderator.
(1) Announcements must be short. The target length is 20 lines, so that
the posting plus headers fits in a single display screen. All extra text,
such as .signature files, should be trimmed before submission. Long
announcements (especially those over 60 lines) will generally be refused,
although if they are posted elsewhere, a short pointer article giving
the newsgroup, date, and Message-ID of the full article might be accepted
if it meets all other criterea.
(2) News.announce.important is a worldwide newsgroup. Postings must be
of worldwide interest. There is no way to make a local posting in this
newsgroup: find a local announcement or general newsgroup for local postings.
(3) Cross-posting is not permitted. If the announcement is to be
accepted for news.announce.important, it must stand alone.
(4) All articles must be approved by the moderator before posting.
In some cases, the moderator may ask the advice of a panel of other
moderators, but the final decision rests with the moderator.
(5) Only article of general interest to most of the readership are
acceptable. Specialized articles should be posted to an appropriate
special interest newsgroup. If there is no appropriate newsgroup,
consider *.misc or misc.misc.
(6) Followups and discussions are not permitted. Second and subsequent
submissions on the same subject will be rejected. If a discussion is
anticipated, include a Followup-To: header line to an appropriate
unmoderated newsgroup.
(7) Postings must be of primary benefit to the readers, not to the poster.
(8) All postings must be in English.
Examples:
(a) "A new type of message will be posted to Usenet that will break any
software older than 3 years, effective in 2 months. Please upgrade your
software by then or disconnect the machine from the net". Approved.
(b) "The Internet is running out of IP addresses, please conserve your
addresses and give any you are not using back to the NIC." Approved.
(c) "Please do not send any more cards to Craig Shergold, he got into
the Guinness Book of Records years ago and no longer needs them, the
cards are causing problems in the Post Office." Approved.
(d) "We have a new wonderful spiffy product for sale." Rejected as being
commercial.
(e) "Call for Papers for the Computers in Astrology Conference".
Rejected: not of general interest - submit to news.announce.conferences.
(f) "The Australian Internet is in trouble - write your legislator".
Of regional interest only - use a regional newsgroup.
(g) "Dinette Set for Sale in Denver". Violates most of the policies.
Submit to co.forsale.
(h) "The Former Soviet Union is announcing the sale of mining and mineral
rights at bargain prices." Rejected as too commercial, ironically enough.
Submit to relcom.* or biz.*.
(i) "There will be a showing of the movie 'The Graduate' at the Student
Union at 7 PM Saturday night." This is of local interest, and should be
posted to a local newsgroup.