help???
Emma Wallace
instructions in making a newsgroup because i need help!
Eugene A. Calame
wrote:
>If there is any one out there who could take me through step by step
>instructions in making a newsgroup because i need help!
>
>
Greetings,
The guides below should answer most, if not all, of your questions about
newsgroup creation. The heart of the guide is the standard FAQ’s and where they
can be found. The guides attempts to fill in spots where the FAQ's are vague.
The alt. And, so called, big eight newsgroups, are international in scope. They
should not be used if the subject is of local interest only. An example would
be a newsgroup about the lakes near Austin, Texas. Such a newsgroup should be
created under the austin.* hierarchy. Alt. newsgroups are simple to create and
require only that you place a proposal in the newsgroup alt.config for critique.
After that, if you have satisfied all valid objections, you can send the
newgroup.control post to create the group. The second guide pasted below covers
the creation of an alt. newsgroup in detail.
A proposed big eight newsgroup must complete a process of review, discussion,
(RFD or Request for Discussion), and voting. (CFV or Call for Votes.) The
process is long. Usually three months or more. The process is started by
sending an outline, of your proposed newsgroup, to
group-...@acpub.duke.edu. A proposed new newsgroup must gather one
hundred yes votes more than no votes and the yes votes must be two thirds, of
the total votes. The process is run by appointed mentors. The process, with
examples, are thoroughly covered in the FAQ's listed in the guide and requires
no further explanation.
The reward for following the more involved big eight process is assured
distribution of your newsgroup worldwide. The alt. newsgroup may, or may not,
be accepted by Usenet news servers.
Local, regional and national newsgroup hierarchies have their own requirements
and must be contacted for those requirements.
Please keep in mind that once the newsgroup is created the group is not yours.
It is in the public domain and you have little, or no, control over it.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Guide for Creating a Big Eight or Local Newsgroup
Revised 16 November 1997
Creating newsgroups for the comp., humanities., misc., news., rec., sci., soc.
or talk. hierarchies, the big eight, is somewhat complicated but has mentors to
guide you through the process.
A proposed big eight newsgroup must complete a process of review, discussion,
(RFD or Request for Discussion), and voting. (CFV or Call for Votes.) The
process is long. Usually three months or more. The process is started by
sending an outline, of your proposed newsgroup, to
group-...@acpub.duke.edu. A proposed new newsgroup must gather one
hundred yes votes more than no votes and the yes votes must be two thirds, of
the total votes. The process is run by appointed mentors. The process, with
examples, are thoroughly covered in the FAQ's listed in the guide and requires
no further explanation.
For information on starting a big eight newsgroup read the following
documents.
http://cs1.presby.edu/~jtbell/usenet/newgroup/how-submit.faq
http://cs1.presby.edu/~jtbell/usenet/newgroup/good-proposal.faq
http://www.faqs.org/usenet/alt/naming.html
For information on starting a moderated newsgroup read the following
documents.
http://www.swcp.com/~dmckeon/mod-faq.html
ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/news/moderated-ng-faq
For information on starting a local, regional or national hierarchy
newsgroup locate that groups config, or general, newsgroup. ( Example:
austin.usenet.config ). I have found that at times you will not be
able to obtain such information from the newsgroups. You should then
contact your Internet Service Provider (ISP) and try to obtain such
information, or advice, from the system administrator.
If all attempts to obtain the procedures for creating a newsgroup, in the
hierarchy, have failed go ahead and sent the newgroup control message. You can
do no harm. The newgroup control message will either be accepted or rejected by
the system administrators.
(You may also then receive the information you were seeking along with other
suggestions :-)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Guide for Creating an alt. newsgroup
Revised 12 November 1998
Index:
First things first:
More useful information:
Information for starting a moderated newsgroup:
An Overview:
Creating your newsgroup:
Newsreaders That Will Send a Newgroup Control Message:
An example, newgroup control post , header and body:
What Comes After:
Follow Up:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
First things first:
Download, print out, make a file, and read the following.
(Very important)
http://www.faqs.org/usenet/alt/naming.html
http://www.gweep.bc.ca/~edmonds/usenet/good-newgroup.html
http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/~barr/alt-creation-guide.html
http://www.faqs.org/usenet/alt/example.html (the template)
More useful information:
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/alt-creation-guide/
Information for starting a moderated newsgroup:
ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/alt.config
http://www.swcp.com/~dmckeon/mod-faq.html
ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/news/moderated-ng-faq
An Overview:
NO ONE can keep you from creating an alt. newsgroup.
NO ONE can make a Internet Service Provider (ISP) put your group on their Usenet
news server.
NO ONE can effectively remove your group, except the Internet service provider,
and then only from his server. Most servers automatically reject rmgroup
messages.
Creating a successful alt. hierarchy newsgroup will take about four-weeks.
Distribution over the usenet system, once created, may take a month or more.
There are no votes needed for alt.* newsgroups. A charter is not required but
you should provide a description of the groups purpose.
A format familiar to system administrators should be used so that they can
quickly determine if it is of interest to their operation. (That is the purpose
of following the template format you downloaded.)
Justification for the group should explain why it is needed. A large mailing
list and frequent discussion of your newsgroup subject in other newsgroups
should be mentioned.
Post supporting your proposal should be sent to your e-mail address. NOT
alt.config. You can summarize the messages of support in the justification
portion of the control message. In your control.newgroup message you should
mention that the newsgroup was proposed and discussed in alt.config, giving the
date (and ideally the Message-ID) of the proposal. This information should
appear early in the message since many news administrators, will ignore any
newgroup messages that don't mention alt.config in the first page. ( I suggest
putting the information in the comments portion, in the body, and the summary
field of the header.)
The biggest obstacle you will have to overcome is getting the Internet service
provider, systems administrator, to allow your newsgroup on their news server.
Good propagation is second, in importance, only to the creation of your
newsgroup and is more difficult to obtain. If your creation is on one or two
news servers, out of several thousand, your creation will fail. That is why
following the documents (FAQ's), while writing the proposal, control and
booster post, is important.
Creating your newsgroup:
The group you want to create may already exist. Download and check
ftp://ftp.uu.net/networking/news/config/ (select newsgroups z) or
ftp://ftp.isc.org/pub/usenet/CONFIG/newsgroups . This will give you a complete
list of alt. newsgroups, and hierarchies, in existence; not necessarily in use.
The list will help you name and place your newsgroup in the proper hierarchy.
(very important)
Creating a newsgroup essentially involves three stages. Writing a proposal which
will be posted to alt.config for discussion. Writing a newgroup control post
which is the same as the proposal except it has control: and approved: fields in
the header. Writing booster post after the newsgroup is created. The booster is
exactly the same as the control post except at the beginning of the message, in
the body, after a blank line, the word "booster" is written. Control and
booster post are cross-posted to alt.config and the newsgroup you are creating.
(alt.config,alt.group-name) (Just a comma, no space, between the two.)
The best source of information, concerning the creation of an alt. Newsgroup,
is contained in a document titled "How To Write a Good Newsgroup Message" by Mr.
Brian Edmonds. It can be found at URL
http://www.gweep.bc.ca/~edmonds/usenet/good-newgroup.html . Pay particular
attention to his "must", "should" and "should not" instructions. The document by
Mr. David Barr is also strongly recommended; especially the part about newsgroup
naming conventions. It can be found at the web URL address
http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/~barr/alt-creation-guide.html
When you prepare your newsgroup proposal try to keep the discussion of the
proposal too one screen if possible. A long proposal may not be read. Use the
comments, charter and justification sections of the template example, below, as
a guide. Let your proposal stay on alt.config, for discussion, about a week.
There may be suggestions for changes. Consider the suggestions carefully. If
there are no suggestions you can assume the proposal is acceptable. Then,
incorporating any changes, you deem necessary, send your control.newgroup post.
Cross post your control.newgroup post to alt.config and the group being
creating. Only a comma between the two; no space. (alt.config,alt.group-name) A
successful control.newgroup post WILL NOT show up in alt.config even though it
was addressed to that group. The CONTROL newsgroup (it may be listed as
control.newgroup on your ISP's server) is where you will find your
control.newgroup message, if the post was successful. Look in the control
newsgroup and see if the group was created. There may be 40,000, or more, post
in control so It may be hard to locate. Use the find tool and If your
newsreader has a filter (kill file) you might filter out the word "cancel" too
get rid of most post that are of no interest too you. Sorting the group by
subject also helps.
Every Internet service provider that accepts control.newgroup post automatically
will create your group on that server immediately when received. The
control.newgroup post will be passed on to the system administrator for action
if not created automatically. Many sites will not add your group unless
requested by one of their customers.
Newsreaders That Will Send a Control.newgroup Message:
What none of the FAQ’s make clear is that your newsreader may not have the
special header fields needed to send a control post or how to get those header
fields. There MUST be "control:" and "approved:" fields IN the header. Free
Agent and Agent newsreaders can produce these header fields for IBM type PC
users. For Macintosh users the MT-Newswatcher can be used. All the suggested
newsreaders are freeware and can be found at the URL's following.....
Windows 95/98
http://tucows.texoma.net/adnload/dlfreeagent.html
Windows 3.x
http://win3x.tucows.com/adnload/win3x/dlfreeagent3x.html
Macintosh
http://tucows.texoma.net/mac/adnload/dlmtnwmac.html
The MT-Newswatcher (Macintosh)
To configure the MT-Newswatcher perform the following.
From the menu
click on FILE
click on PREFERENCES
Scroll down to Extra header lines
Type in control:
Type in approved:
Click OKAY
The Free Agent Newsreader
(Agent is essentially the same)
To obtain the required headers with Free Agent you must find the agent.ini
file ("agent configure" with windows 95 or just agent).
Open the file by clicking on the icon and using notepad or wordpad.
Find the section labeled [message] and then find ShowAllFields=0.
Change ShowAllFields=0 to ShowAllFields=1.
Save and Close the file.
Close and restart Free Agent.
Click Post on the menu.
Click New Usenet Message.
Click message on the menu
Click on All Fields.
The last action will open a new fields box. In this new box you will find the
new control: and approved: headers. You can scroll the fields using the buttons
on the right side of the box. To enter data in the control field highlight the
control field by clicking on it. Below the box you will see another box now
marked as Value for control. In this box enter the control data. Click on the
highlighted control again and the data in the value box will be transferred to
the highlighted control field. Repeat the operation for the approved field and
all fields you wish to change in the box.
An example, contro.newgroup post , header and body.
============ template example below ================
From: {email address of person sending this message}
Newsgroups: alt.config,{name of newsgroup being created}
Control: newgroup {name of newsgroup being created}
Subject: cmsg newgroup {name of newsgroup being created}
Summary: discussed in alt.config, substantial interest, appropriate name
Expires: {this should be left empty, in a newgroup message}
Approved: {email address of person sending this message}
Sender: {email address of person or administrator sending this message}
Follow up-To: poster {follow ups default to emailing you, instead of posting}
Reply-To: {email address of person requesting creation of the group}
Distribution: {this header should be empty except for a single space character;
especially don't use "Distribution: world"}
Organization: {your organization or institution may be named here}
Keywords: {here you may include keywords related to the topic of the group}
Cc: {you may specify email addresses to send a copy of this message to}
(make sure you have a blank line here, between the header, above, and the body,
below)
Comments:
State the dates (e.g. "during 1/96") was discussed in alt.config, and who you
are in relation to the proposal (especially if you aren't the original
proponent). Many news administrators, will ignore any newgroup messages that
don't mention the posting of the proposal to alt.config. )
For your newsgroups file:
newsgroup name A few words describing the newsgroup. One line. Do not run over.
{You must follow the format above exactly; copy the first line verbatim, and on
the second line give the name of the newsgroup, followed by one or more spaces
followed by a few words describing the group. Do not run over the end of the
line!)
Charter:
The purpose of the charter is to define what topics are (or are not) appropriate
for the newsgroup, and to state any applicable policies of the newsgroup (for
example, if the group is "retro-moderated", you should explain the criteria that
will be applied by the moderator or moderation software.
Justification of Readership:
Here you should include numerical evidence that there is substantial online
interest in the topic of the newsgroup. If the topic is covered by an existing
newsgroup, mailing list, or other discussion forum, you should also explain why
the existing forum is no longer adequate for the purpose.
This also applies to creating a specialized subgroup of a more general
newsgroup; you will need to explain why the split is necessary ("we don't want
to use the general group" is not considered an adequate reason-- only a high
volume of traffic in the general group, and/or a high percentage of that traffic
being on this specific sub-topic, is considered a valid justification for a
split).
============template example above ===================
Always remember; You are addressing systems administrators with your proposal,
control and booster post. They must make quick decisions on your newsgroup along
with many others.
What Comes After:
After the control.newgroup post has been sent, and you have confirmed it was
successful, you may get several post similar the one below. They are for system
administrators and you need take no action.
To:
Subject:
From: ne...@duey.c4c.com
Date: Wed, 6 Nov 96 20:17:31 +0000
e.ca...@worldnet.att.net requested that alt.penpals.forty-plus-yrs be created.
To do this, type the following:
/usr/local/news/bin/ctlinnd newgroup alt.penpals.forty-plus-yrs y
e.ca...@worldnet.att.net
Follow Up:
You have done all the above and you still do not see your newsgroup on the
server of your ISP. Check for newgroups or refresh your newsreader newsgroup
list and check again. If it still is not there after a day or two give your
Internet service provider a call, e-mail, and request that it be added.
To get good distribution of the newsgroup encourage all, who may be interested,
to ask their Internet service provider to add the group to their server. (A
polite announcement, of the creation of your newsgroup, to newsgroups with
similar, but specialized interest, would not be out of order.) Send a booster
post after about two weeks; After that, once every six months to a year.
Boosters are important since the Usenet is not static. New ISP's are being
created, failing and changing constantly.
After the new newsgroup has been up and running for a few months, you should
write a review of the group and submit it to news.groups.reviews
Support wi.northeastern.talk . Ask your ISP to add it.
Eugene A. Calame
wrote:
>If there is any one out there who could take me through step by step
>instructions in making a newsgroup because i need help!
>
>
Guide for Writing An alt. Newsgroup Proposal
Eugene A. Calame
Austin, Texas, USA
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Home Page
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This guide is intended to help you write a newgroup proposal in a form that will
provide concise information to system administrators.
The first step in creating an alt.* newsgroup, after reading the FAQ's, is to
write and send a proposal to the newsgroup alt.config. The proposal is
submitted to the newsgroup alt.config for critique by peers and system
administrators so that errors, if any, can be corrected before a
newgroup.control message is sent.
There will, in all likelihood, be several responses to your proposal. Responses
may or may not be from system administrators. Consider the responses carefully
and if they are good ideas incorporate them into you newgroup.control message.
Do not respond to the responses through alt.config but use e-mail. This is
especially true of responses that are insulting. There are a few participants in
the process that seem to have no other purpose in life but to respond in such a
manner. Ignore them.
You have total control over how you present your newgroup proposal. All
responses to your proposal are advisory and not commands. Present it as if you
are selling an idea to Usenet news system administrators. That is what you are
doing. It is in your interest to present the proposal in a form they expect and
appreciate.
Pasted below is a template that will guide you in writing such a proposal. The
template can be found at http://www.faqs.org/usenet/alt/. where it is posted as
a guide in creating and sending a newgroup.contol message.
A quick checklist for you proposal.
Newsgroups are organized in hierarchies. Most general to most specific.
Using alt.penpals.forty-plus-yrs as an example
alt. Is the primary and most general hierarchy.
penpals Is the secondary hierarchy and more specific than alt.
forty-plus-yrs Is the third level hierarchy and most specific.
Try not to start a new second level hierarchy. You can find a list of almost
all newsgroups at ftp://ftp.uu.net/networking/news/config/ (select
newsgroups.z)
Hierarchies are separated by dots.
There can be no more than fourteen characters between dots.
All characters must be made up only of the lower case characters " a-z ",
symbols " . " (dot), " - " (minus), " + " (plus) and Digits 0
through 9.
No hierarchy level should be all digits.
An example of an acceptable newsgroup name is.... alt.penpals.forty-plus-yrs .
In this case penpals is the secondary hierarchy and second most general. The
more specific forty-plus-yrs is the third level hierarchy. Note that to keep
the third level hierarchy to fourteen characters years was abbreviated to yrs.
----------------------------------sample proposal below--------------
Newsgroups: alt.config,
Subject: [PROPOSAL] {name of newsgroup being created}
=======================================================
Comments:
who you are and what the focus of the newsgroup will be.
{Three to four lines describing the purpose of the newsgroup.}
For your newsgroups file:
newsgroup name A few words describing the newsgroup. One line. Do not run over.
{ Follow the format above exactly; copy the first line
verbatim, and on the second line give the name of the newsgroup,
followed by one or more spaces followed by a few words describing the
group. Do not run over the end of the line!)
Charter:
The purpose of the charter is to define what topics are (or are not)
appropriate for the newsgroup, and to state any applicable policies of
the newsgroup (for example, if the group is "retro-moderated", you
should explain the criteria that will be applied by the moderator or
moderation software.
Justification of Readership:
Here you should include numerical evidence that there is substantial
online interest in the topic of the newsgroup. If the topic is covered
by an existing newsgroup, mailing list, or other discussion forum, you
should also explain why the existing forum is no longer adequate for
the purpose.
This also applies to creating a specialized subgroup of a more general
newsgroup; you will need to explain why the split is necessary ("we
don't want to use the general group" is not considered an adequate
reason-- only a high volume of traffic in the general group, and/or a
high percentage of that traffic being on this specific sub-topic, is
considered a valid justification for a split).
------------end of proposal -------------------------
Examples that ignore these conventions are many. However the goal is to get
your newsgroup accepted by all news servers. Because these conventions were not
followed many of the exceptions will never be carried, by some news servers,
because the system administrators will not accept them.
That's it for the proposal. For more information see
http://angelfire.com/tx/calame/create.html .
CLICK HERE If you would like to learn more about Usenet and newsgroups
I would appreciate hearing from you if you have constructive suggestions on
making this document more readable and/or informative.
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Page Produced by
Eugene A. Calame
eaca...@excite.com
Austin, Texas USA
990120
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Sam Blackburn
<AeQ53.116$pl3....@newreader.ukcore.bt.net>...
> If there is any one out there who could take me through step by step
> instructions in making a newsgroup because i need help!
Read some of the faqs, one is posted every four days to alt.config and
read a few back posts in this group (especially posts by Eugene - he
usually posts a faq/link in response to the question).
Just out of interest, what group do you want to create?
--
Sam Blackburn - blac...@nym.alias.net
~~~~~~~~~~ http://www.unmetered.org.uk
PGPkey information in message headers