List of sat.* Newsgroups and Related Information [monthly FAQ posting]
sat.* newsgroups caretaker
News-answers-archive-name: san-antonio-tx/usenet-list
Posting-Frequency: monthly (first of month)
Version: 4.6
Last-modified: 1998/05/05 16:56:00
URL: http://www.endicor.com/~satgroup/sattx-usenet-list
Copyright: (c) 1996-1998 Ty Sarna
Maintainer: Ty Sarna <tsa...@endicor.com>
--------------------
Subject: Introduction
Welcome to the sat.* Usenet, devoted to the San Antonio, Texas area.
This message lists information about the Sat.* hierarchy of newsgroups.
The information is broken into the following sections:
- List of sat.* newsgroups
- List of sat.* moderators
- Charters of sat.* newsgroups
- List of informational postings to sat.* groups
- Some suggestions for sat.* posters
- FAQ: What does "sat" stand for?
- FAQ: I live close to, but not in, San Antonio. Is it OK to post?
- Note to news system administrators at other sites
This message is maintained and posted monthly by Ty Sarna. Your
corrections, additions, and comments are encouraged. Please mail them
to satg...@endicor.com. Thanks to Fletcher Mattox and Chip Rosenthal,
for their similar posting on the austin.* hierarchy, on which this
text is based.
Please examine the date near the top of this message. This message
is updated from time to time, and older versions might be obsolete.
The most up-to-date version of this message may be retrieved from the
following locations:
- The World Wide Web --
http://www.endicor.com/~satgroup/sattx-usenet-list
- Anonymous FTP --
ftp://ftp.endicor.com/pub/satgroup/sattx-usenet-list
- Email Server
Mail to: satgroup+satt...@endicor.com
"Subject:" header and message body do not matter.
--------------------
Subject: List of sat.* newsgroups
Since Usenet is run by cooperative anarchy, it's hard to say there is
such a thing as an "official" or "valid" list of newsgroups. The best
we can do is list those newsgroups that most San Antonio sites agree are
valid. Most sites are also willing to accept the sat.* newsgroup
caretaker's control messages for modifications to this list. The
following list comprises the generally accepted sat.* hierarchy:
sat.announce General announcements of interest in San Antonio, TX. (Moderated)
sat.eff Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Antonio, TX. (Moderated)
sat.food Eating, cooking, and culinary delights in San Antonio, TX.
sat.forsale For Sale and Want Ad postings in San Antonio, TX.
sat.general General interest discussion in San Antonio, TX.
sat.jobs Jobs available, wanted, and discussion in San Antonio, TX.
sat.music Music around San Antonio, TX.
sat.personals Personal Ads in San Antonio, TX.
sat.test USENET Testing in San Antonio, TX.
sat.usenet.config Discussion of USENET in San Antonio, TX.
--------------------
Subject: List of sat.* moderators
Some of the newsgroups in the previous list are marked "(Moderated)".
These groups are special. You cannot post directly to them. Instead,
your message must be emailed to a moderator who will review your message
and post it if appropriate. Most news programs handle these mechanics
invisibly -- just post your message and the software will worry about
routing it to the moderator. Alternately, you may email your submission
directly to the moderator. The list of moderated newsgroups, and their
submission addresses, are listed below:
sat.announce sat-an...@endicor.com
sat.eff bar...@texas.net
--------------------
Subject: Charters for sat.* newsgroups.
Following are the charters for each of the sat.* newsgroups. Where the
charter references another document (such as a periodic posting), that
document also applies.
In addition, the following applies to all sat newsgroups:
All postings should be specificly relevant to San Antonio. While people
in the city are as likely to be interested in, say, national politics or
any other subject as much as residents of any other city, there are
other, national newsgroups better suited to that topic. Unless the
topic has *specific* relevance to San Antonio, it is off-charter.
Example topics: "XYZ for President!" (no specific relevance, off-
charter). "XYZ said if elected he'd close of Randolph AFB!" (specific
relevance to San Antonio, on-charter). The same applies to statewide
topics. If it's relevant to the whole state or any sizeable fraction
thereof, use a tx.* newsgroup instead of cross-posting to multiple Texas
cities' newsgroups. There are rare circumstances where such
cross-postings may be reasonable (for example, discussion of
construction work on IH35 between San Antonio and Austin would be
specificly relevant to both cities, but not to any other cities or the
state at large).
Per Usenet conventions, posting of binaries (uuencoded, MIME, or
otehrwise) or HTML is not allowed except in groups marked for that
purpose. Currently, no such groups exist in the sat hierarchy. Generally
it's much easier and less wasteful of bandwidth to just put the binary
file up on a WWW page or up for anonymous FTP, and post where to find
it.
Violation of the charters is cause for cancellation of posts. In
general, given a little common sense and courtesy, we'll meet you more
than halfway on such things and give you the benefit of the doubt.
However, persistent or egregious abuse will almost certainly result in
cancellation of posts, and notification of your ISP if the incident
warrants.
The charters and rules are flexible and evolving. Your input is
welcome. The goal, as always, is to improve the quality of content and
utlity of these groups, to be a resource for all rather than a dumping
ground for the few.
sat.announce
============
sat.announce is a moderated newsgroup for announcements of general
interest to residents of San Antonio, and in particular those who read
the sat.* newsgroups. Advertisements of products or services of
interest to those in San Antonio will be accepted provided that they are
hype free, of broad interest, and specific to San Antonio and nearby
areas. The moderator is currently satg...@endicor.com, the submission
address is sat-an...@endicor.com.
See also: http://www.endicor.com/~satgroup/sattx-ann
sat.eff
=======
sat.eff is a moderated newsgroup for discussion about the Electronic
Frontier Foundation in San Antonio, TX. The moderator is currently
bar...@texas.net. sat...@endicor.com will also reach the moderator.
sat.food
========
sat.food is a retromoderated newsgroup for discussion of food-related
events, local restaurants and cuisine, and other food-related topics in
San Antonio, TX. Commercial advertisment is discouraged, but
announcements of events, reviews of retaurants, and other topics are
encouraged.
sat.forsale
===========
sat.forsale is a retromoderated newsgroup for posting of for sale and want
ads for items in the San Antonio area, including used cars, computer
equipment, books, etc. This is intended as a forum for private
individuals or companies who are making such transactions incidental to
their regular business. Use of sat.forsale as an advertising forum for
those in the business of buying and selling such items is discouraged.
sat.general
===========
sat.general is a retromoderated newsgroup for general discussion by
residents of the San Antonio area. It should be used where no
more-specific sat.* newgroups exists for discussion of a topic.
sat.jobs
========
sat.jobs is a retromoderated newsgroup for discussion of jobs offered and
wanted, announcements of job fairs, and similar topics in San Antonio,
TX. Jobs offered should be in San Antonio or closely surrounding areas.
While people in San Antonio may be interested in a job in Austin or
elsewhere, they can read austin.jobs or groups for other cities they are
interested in being employed in. If jobs in other cities are posted
here, and jobs here are posted to other cities' newsgroups, they end up
all having the same information, which hugely dimishes the usefulness of
having separate groups for each city.
See also: http://www.endicor.com/~satgroup/sattx-jobs
sat.music
=========
sat.music is a retromoderated newsgroup for discussion of music in San
Antonio, TX. Examples of topics include musical events, local bands,
local performaces by other bands, sources for recorded music and
instruments, and similar topics.
sat.personals
=============
A retromoderated newsgroup for posting of "personals"-style ads in San
Antonio, TX. Or, as houston.personals is described, "How to meet
someone".
sat.test
========
sat.test is a retromoderated newsgroup for posting test messages. It is
intended to be used for testing of posting procedure by new users,
testing of posting software, testing of news propagation in San Antonio,
and similar purposes. It is not a general-purpose conversational forum.
Beware that posting to sat.test may result in receiving email from test
newsgroup autoresponders. Such services exist to let you know that your
post sucessfully reached other systems.
sat.usenet.config
=================
sat.usenet.config is a retromoderated newsgroup for discussion of Usenet
and the sat.* groups in San Antonio. Appropriate topics include finding
feeds in San Antonio, discussion of propagation problems in the area,
and discussion of creating or removing sat.* newsgroups.
--------------------
Subject: List of informational postings to sat.* groups
Some of the "sat" newsgroups have periodic informational postings.
Some of these postings contain guidelines for appropriate use of the
group. It is important that you review these messages before posting
to the groups. Here are the other periodic postings that we know about,
and where you may get a copy if they've already expired off your
system:
Subject: Welcome to sat.announce [monthly FAQ posting]
Newsgroups: sat.announce,sat.usenet.config
From: satg...@endicor.com
Summary: periodic posting of newsgroup guidelines and charter
Archival Information:
WWW: http://www.endicor.com/~satgroup/sattx-ann
FTP: ftp://ftp.endicor.com/pub/satgroup/sattx-ann
Email: satgroup+...@endicor.com
"Subject:" header and message body do not matter.
Subject: Welcome to sat.jobs [monthly posting of newsgroup guidelines]
Newsgroups: sat.jobs,sat.usenet.config
From: satg...@endicor.com
Summary: periodic posting of newsgroup guidelines and charter
Archival Information:
WWW: http://www.endicor.com/~satgroup/sattx-jobs
FTP: ftp://ftp.endicor.com/pub/satgroup/sattx-jobs
Email: satgroup+...@endicor.com
"Subject:" header and message body do not matter.
--------------------
Subject: Some suggestions for sat.* posters
There are some things to consider when posting a message to one (or
more) of the sat.* newsgroups. These suggestions are provided to
help you make your postings more effective, and keep the sat.*
groups readable. You are strongly encouraged to follow them.
- If you haven't already done so, please read the periodic postings
in news.announce.newusers entitled "A Primer on How to Work With
the Usenet Community", "Answers to Frequently Asked Questions about
Usenet" and "Hints on writing style for Usenet".
- If the newsgroup to which you are posting has a written set of
guidelines (c.f. "List of informational postings" and the charters
earlier in this message), please review it before posting your message.
- Use an appropriate newsgroup. The "List of sat.* newsgroups"
(earlier in this message) lists all of the newsgrous in town. If,
for example, you have a question about restaurants, then please
post it to "sat.food" and not "sat.general". Similarly, if
you want talk about local bands, use "sat.music".
- If your posting belongs in more than one newsgroup, do NOT post your
message individually to each group. Instead, use "cross-posting".
Do this by posting just a single message, but listing all of the
groups in the Newsgroups: line, seperated by commas (and no spaces
between the newsgroup names!). When you cross-post, your message
gets transmitted just once (thus conserving our precious natural
resources like electrons and disk space), but appears in all of the
newsgroups that you selected.
- There is a lot of controversy about the use of Usenet for commercial
purposes. Although there is a broad spectrum of opinions, most
people hate inappropriate or repeated advertisements even more than
they hate junk mail and junk fax. Ignore this reality at your peril.
If you do, you'll probably find your emailbox littered with irate
hate-mail, and a substantial number of people boycotting your company
or product.
- These newsgroups are for discussion among people in the San Antonio area,
and about things having to do with San Antonio. Most major cities have
their own news hierarchy for similar purposes. Some people on the
net abuse these regional hierarchies trying to get their message
(often an advertisement) widely read. The sat.general and
sat.forsale groups seem particularly prone to this sort of abuse.
Many people don't like this. If your message should receive world-wide
distribution, then post it to a world-wide Usenet group. Similarly,
rather then posting to lots of regional newsgroups for Texas cities,
post to a statewide tx.* group instead. Do NOT cross-post it to lots
of regional groups.
--------------------
Subject: FAQ: What does "sat" stand for?
It stands for "San Antonio, Texas", and is also the airport code for
San Antonio International Airport.
Why not "san-antonio"? It would be more descriptive, but it'd take
longer to type. Also, when the groups were created by Keith Pickens of
SwRI long ago (sometime in 1983, I think -- a long long long time in
Usenet terms!), they were called that, and it stuck.
Why are the archive names prefixed with "sattx"? Well, the archive names
for the other Texas regional groups, such as Austin and DFW, are based
on the newsgroup hierarchy name plus the state's two letter
abbreviation, resulting in "austintx" and "dfwtx", for example. For San
Antonio, we ended up with "sattx" (literally "San Antonio, Texas,
Texas"). Yes, we know it's redundant. Deal with it :-).
In case you were wondering, the Western Union city code for San Antonio
is "SNT".
--------------------
Subject: FAQ: I live close to, but not in, San Antonio. Is it OK to post?
As long as you're reasonably close, sure! We don't want postings about
Austin-area event for example, but if you're in greater Bexar county or
in a surrounding small town without newsgroups of it's own, you're more
than welcome to post here. You'd don't even have to live here... if
you're a displaced San Antonian living in Timbuktu who just wants to
talk about home, have at it! As long as the message is in some way
relevant to San Antonio or nearby areas, we're happy to have you.
--------------------
Subject: Note to news system administrators at other sites
Starting in August, 1996, control messages for the satgroups will be
securely signed using the "pgpcontrol" system. You can read more about
this system at "ftp://ftp.uu.net/networking/news/misc/pgpcontrol/README".
Using pgpcontrol, you can verify that control messages for adding or
deleting groups, as well as "checkgroups" control messages, are
authentic and really come from me, your lovable sat.* newsgroups
caretaker. You can use the pgpverify program (availible in the same
directory on ftp.uu.net as the README) to test the vailidty or control
messages manually, or for some news software packages such as INN, you
can install pgpverify to automatically authenticate messages.
You will need the sat newsgroup caretaker's PGP public key to
verify messages. You can obtain it from these places:
- The World Wide Web -- http://www.endicor.com/~satgroup/pubkey.asc
- Anonymous FTP -- ftp://ftp.endicor.com/pub/satgroup/pubkey.asc
- Email Archive Server
Mail to: satgrou...@endicor.com
"Subject:" header and message body do not matter.
- MIT Web Keyserver -- http://pgp.ai.mit.edu/
Select "Extract a Key" and enter 0x98690EE9
as the ID.
- MIT Email Keyserver
Mail to: pgp-pub...@pgp.ai.mit.edu
with "Subject: GET 0x98690EE9" header
The fingerprint of the public key should match:
88 9E 81 A7 31 AE 56 65 D3 11 5E EC C8 49 69 F7
With this key and the appropriate software (PGP, pgpverify, and
pgpverify-capable news transport software such as the ISC's INN) you can
enable automated PGP-authenticated management of these groups on your
server. The following are sample control.ctl entries for INN:
## SAT (San Antonio, Texas, USA)
# *PGP* Authentication. Highly recommended.
checkgroups:satg...@endicor.com:sat.*:verify-...@endicor.com
newgroup:satg...@endicor.com:sat.*:verify-...@endicor.com
rmgroup:satg...@endicor.com:sat.*:verify-...@endicor.com
# Use these if you don't have INN and want address-based authentication
# (much less secure)
#checkgroups:satg...@endicor.com:sat.*:doit=checkgroups
#newgroup:satg...@endicor.com:sat.*:doit=newgroup
#rmgroup:satg...@endicor.com:sat.*:doit=rmgroup
-------------------------
[$Id: sattx-usenet-list,v 4.6 1998/05/05 16:56:00 satgroup Rel $]
--
Ty Sarna sat.* newsgroups caretaker
tsa...@endicor.com satg...@endicor.com