[FAQ] How to add the microsoft.public.* hierarchy to a news server
Julien ÉLIE
Archive-title: [FAQ] How to add the microsoft.* hierarchy to a news server
Last-modified: 2007/08/02
Posting-frequency: near start of every even month
The ￜ microsoft.* ￜ hierarchy is the international Usenet hierarchy
which deals with Microsoft products, technologies and topics in lots
of various languages.
For further information, please refer to
<http://www.microsoft.com/library/gallery/components/wn/3/locales/help/help_en-US.htm#GettingStarted>,
from which the first two answers of this FAQ are extracted.
Information about the ￜￜmicrosoft.*ￜￜ hierarchy can also be found here:
<http://usenet.trigofacile.com/hierarchies/index.py?see=MICROSOFT>.
Note that if you carry that hierarchy, it is better to lighten your
filtering rules for it since lots of articles are posted in HTML.
I, Julien ï¿œLIE <control-...@trigofacile.com>, wrote this FAQ
in the hope of helping news administrators all over the world to
properly configure the ￜ microsoft.* ￜ hierarchy on their news servers.
I will post it every two months to both ￜ news.admin.hierarchies ￜ
and ￜ microsoft.public.news.server ￜ.
If you have any comments or if you find any errors, please do tell me
so that I can improve this FAQ.
What is exactly the ￜ microsoft.* ￜ hierarchy?
----------------------------------------------
Microsoft created Microsoft public discussions covering many Microsoft
products, technologies, and topics because of the value of finding out
what your peers think and getting information from people who use the
same products and technologies you use.
The Microsoft public discussions have been available to anyone on
Usenet for a number of years. Thousands of Microsoft customers at
all levels of expertise post in these groups today, creating the
content, sharing information and contributing ideas. There are
currently over 2,000 public discussion groups dedicated to discussing
Microsoft products.
Is Usenet the only way to have access to the ￜ microsoft.* ￜ hierarchy?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
No, there is also a web-based newsreader which allows you to enter into
discussion groups where people who are passionate about Microsoft
technologies share their thoughts, help, support, and ideas.
The URL is:
<http://www.microsoft.com/communities/newsgroups/list/en-us/default.aspx>.
Please note that I also maintain a more handy web page where you can
find a link for each Microsoft newsgroup to its corresponding web
interface: <http://usenet.trigofacile.com/microsoft-groups.htm>.
Who administers the ￜ microsoft.* ￜ hierarchy?
----------------------------------------------
The hierarchy is administered by Microsoft and their public news server
<news://msnews.microsoft.com/> is available from everywhere and allows
a bidirectional feed of articles within ￜ microsoft.* ￜ.
Besides, their news administrators often add and remove groups from
their news server. However, they do not send control articles to
propagate such changes. In fact, they used to; but it has been years
since they last did that. That is why, I made up my mind in April 2007
and decided to send such control articles myself.
I send a checkgroups control article at the beginning of each month;
And, meanwhile, newgroup and rmgroup control articles when needed (that
is to say when a newsgroup is created or removed, according to the
official list of Microsoft newsgroups which can be found on their news
server. By the way, as I do not continuously watch the active file of
<news://msnews.microsoft.com/>, please allow some time (usually not
more than a couple of days) before control articles are actually sent.
How should I configure my news server to honour these control articles?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
First of all, I want to remind you that is up to you to decide which
newsgroups you carry. However, in order to have a ￜ full feed ￜ, you
should accept the control articles I send for the ￜ microsoft.* ￜ
hierarchy. They will always reflect the current and official Microsoft
newsgroups.
For technical details and a list of public Usenet keys, you can see:
* ftp://ftp.isc.org/pub/pgpcontrol/README.html (English)
* http://www.trigofacile.com/divers/usenet/articles-controle.htm (French)
All control messages for the Microsoft hierarchy are sent from
<control-...@trigofacile.com> and signed with the PGP key
available from
<http://www.trigofacile.com/divers/usenet/clefs/pgpkey-microsoft.asc>:
Type Bits/KeyID Date User ID
pub 2048R/E60E2FAA 2007-03-30 control-...@trigofacile.com
-----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.7 (MingW32)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=IfrI
-----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----
The corresponding entry for the INN ￜ control.ctl ￜ file is:
## MICROSOFT (Microsoft Corporation, USA)
#
# Control articles for that hierarchy are not issued by Microsoft itself
# but by a Usenet active participant in order to improve the quality of
# the propagation of Microsoft newsgroups. Their official URL is:
# http://www.microsoft.com/communities/newsgroups/list/en-us/default.aspx
#
# Contact: control-...@trigofacile.com
# URL: http://www.trigofacile.com/divers/usenet/clefs/index.htm
# Admin group: microsoft.public.news.server
# Key URL: http://www.trigofacile.com/divers/usenet/clefs/pgpkey-microsoft.asc
# Key fingerprint = DF70 5FC9 F615 D52E 02DB A3CB 63A9 8D13 E60E 2FAA
# Syncable server: msnews.microsoft.com
newgroup:*:microsoft.*:drop
rmgroup:*:microsoft.*:drop
checkgroups:control-...@trigofacile.com:microsoft.*:verify-contr...@trigofacile.com
newgroup:control-...@trigofacile.com:microsoft.*:verify-contr...@trigofacile.com
rmgroup:control-...@trigofacile.com:microsoft.*:verify-contr...@trigofacile.com
The C News' ￜￜcontrolpermￜￜ entry is:
microsoft any cnr nq
microsoft control-...@trigofacile.com cnr pv control-...@trigofacile.com
And the DNews' ￜￜcontrol.confￜￜ entry:
newgroup:*:microsoft.*:drop
rmgroup:*:microsoft.*:drop
checkgroups:control-...@trigofacile.com:microsoft.*:doit,pgp
newgroup:control-...@trigofacile.com:microsoft.*:doit,pgp
rmgroup:control-...@trigofacile.com:microsoft.*:doit,pgp
Where can I find the current list of Microsoft newsgroups?
----------------------------------------------------------
The current list of valid Microsoft newsgroups can be found either in
their news server <news://msnews.microsoft.com/> (the only official
and authoritative source) or in the checkgroups file I maintain
<http://usenet.trigofacile.com/microsoft-checkgroups.txt>.
The current list is also monthly posted in ￜￜnews.lists.miscￜￜ.
I generated the descriptions according to the names of the newsgroups.
They were not provided by Microsoft. Anyway, the real topic of each
newsgroup is contained in their self-explanatory names.
--
Julien ï¿œLIE
Web version of this FAQ:
<http://www.trigofacile.com/divers/usenet/clefs/microsoft-faq.txt>.
News Guy
> Archive-name: usenet/microsoft-faq
Julien �LIE is not the maintainer or administrator of the
microsoft.public set of usenet newsgroups.
The reader or NNTP administrator is not advised to follow his list or
his recommendations as to what microsoft.public newsgroups are currently
"valid".
If you follow Julien �LIE's advice and instructions, you will be
assisting Microsoft in it's efforts to remove free and uncontrolled
discourse about it and it's products from usenet. You will also be
assisting those that are anti-Microsoft and wish to see all
communications and conversations about Microsoft and their products to
be removed from usenet.
There is no doubt that Microsoft will cancel or remove a substantial
number of groups from it's own server, but that does not mean that those
groups need to also be removed from other servers around the world (that
would be exactly what Microsoft would want you to do).