Date: Fri, 18 Aug 1995 09:13:53 -0400 USENET NEWSGROUP CREATION COMPANION Archive-name: creating-newsgroups/helper Last-modified: 1994/06/14 Version: 1.08 The Usenet Newsgroup Creation Companion ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted once a month - Comments to rdippold@qualcomm.com welcome! So you want to create a newsgroup... Wallace Sayre said, "Academic politics is the most vicious and bitter form of politics, because the stakes are so low." He didn't know Usenet: welcome to the next level. [ If you're more interested in the voting side than the creation side, a good guide for the interested party or voter is the User's Guide to the Changing USENET, maintained by stanley@skyking.oce.orst.edu (John Stanley). ] 1. What This is All About ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Usenet is a loosely knit anarchy - there is no controlling body which forces any site on the net to choose which newsgroups they can carry. Sites can create or remove groups at will - however, they can't expect that everyone else will honor their decisions. Obviously, this can be rather chaotic, so in time a set of customs has evolved to ease the confusion and keep the creation of new groups to a point just below critical mass. Here's how it works: there is a general agreement among Usenet news administrators that groups in the "big seven" (comp., misc., news., rec., sci., soc., talk.) hierarchies will only be honored at their sites if the group passes the "official" voting procedures defined in the Guidelines. Anyone can create a group if they figure out the correct message format to do so, but it will only be carried on a minuscule number of sites, and anyone posting to the group may be greeted with messages claiming that the group is bogus. The Guidelines, which you should read if you want to create a group, can be found in the periodic posting "How to Create a New Usenet Group" in news.announce.newusers, or ftp to ftp.uu.net, go to the directory usenet/news.announce.newsgroups and get the file "Guidelines". If you don't read this file and the group vote is canceled due to irregularities, you have only yourself to blame. But the Guidelines aren't the whole story. Another set of customs has sprung up around newsgroup votings - mostly because there has been an unfortunate number of sleazy tactics used in past group creation attempts. As with Caesar's wife, a vote must be beyond reproach. If you even accidentally violate one of these customs, you may find yourself with a botched vote, a lot of wasted time, and a massive flamewar. The purpose of this document is to help you through this potential minefield. This is _not_ in any way an official document, it has no force of law - rather it helps you with the informal conventions which have evolved over the years. Quick Glossary --------------------------------------------------------------------- CFV Call for votes. See the Guidelines. FAQ Frequently Asked Questions list - many groups have a FAQ periodically posted to answer common questions. Flame A heated attack in a message. Like fires, they spread. Flamefest A general message war containing lots of flames. News admin News administrator. Someone in charge of keeping Usenet news running at a site. These are the people you have to convince to carry your group. Proponent The person who is the driving force behind the vote. Generally the person who does the RFD and the work involved in setting up the CFV. RFD Request for discussion. See the Guidelines. Votetaker The person who actually posts the CFVs and counts votes. Usually not the proponent. Quick Overview --------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: What's the general voting process? A: There are five main stages. You _really_ should read the Guidelines if you actually decide to go through with it, but this is a quick summary. 1) Discussion of the idea. If your proposal directly effects an existing group you might want to "test the waters" first to see if there is interest. 2) RFD (Request for Discussion). The proponent (you) posts an RFD to all interested groups plus news.announce.newgroups and news.groups. If you don't include n.a.n, it's not an official RFD. 3) Discussion in news.groups. People react to the RFD, express support, express loathing, or perhaps offer suggestions. If you significantly change your RFD based on discussion in this group, you should issue a second (or more) RFD as in step 2. 4) Voting. Contact rdippold@qualcomm.com regarding having do the actual drudgery of voting for you. The vote should usually start around 30 days after the first RFD, and no earlier than 21 days after. The votetaker will handle the official CFVs (Call for Votes). The voting will run 22 to 30 days, usually 22. 5) Results. After the voting has ended, the votetaker compiles the results and posts them to the net. If the group passes it will be newgrouped after five days, though it may take a while to get to some sites. If the group fails, it can't be voted on for six months. General Suggestions --------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: Why so sanctimonious? A: Because the politics can be so vicious. You can ignore all of this, but in a controversial group proposal, say involving politics, culture, or Star Trek, there are people just waiting for you to breathe wrong so they can call for a vote invalidation. You don't have to satisfy me, you have to satisfy them. These "rules" already exist. Read this now and you could save yourself a lot of hassle in the long run. Q: What's the best way to find out how to propose a group and run a vote? A: Read the guidelines as above, read this document, read news.groups for a few months - you're guaranteed at least one enlightening flamefest. You'll also see plenty of RFDs and CFVs, and see the reaction to them. Q: If I don't violate any of the "official" rules, how can my vote be invalidated? A: Remember, this is all by agreement between system administrators. Any news admin can declare that they will not be carrying a group for any reason. If it's a respected admin, others may join. This can snowball to where you have an "official" group that nobody carries. And if the news.announce.newgroups moderator(s) decide you violated the spirit of the rules, you're dead in the water. Q: What's the best policy in order to avoid any minefields? A: Full honesty, full disclosure, adherence to the rule and spirit of the Guidelines. If you're going to do something, such as send the CFV to a mailing list, _say so_ in your CFV! It's amazing how much pain something like this can avoid. Q: This document doesn't tell me what I need to know! A: group-advice@uunet.uu.net is a mailing list of administrators who can help you on the tough questions, if neither this or news.groups helps. Thinking about a Group Vote --------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: Do I really want to do this? A: That depends - it's a lot of effort, even with some help from programs. It's a lot of time - initial discussion, a month for RFD, a month for CFV, some time for results and creation. All told, from two to three months of your time. Q: Is this going to be a lot of work? A: Going through the entire RFD, CFV, and voting process can take quite a bit of time. You've got to meet all your deadlines, face the endless bickering on news.groups, and thrash out some sort of compromise with all the highly opinionated people who have their own ideas about how the group charter should look. Don't go into it lightly. Q: What are some alternatives? A: Consider a mailing list. This can be set up instantly, and has the advantages of being fairly focused and having a smaller number of people out to cause chaos. Q: What about reorganizing existing groups instead of just creating a group for a new subject? A: This is hairy - it's a whole level of magnitude above just creating a new group. There is only one standard reason for splitting or reorganizing an existing set of groups - overwhelming traffic. This usually means about 200 messages a day, which can make it tough even for someone using a good newsreader. Alternative: try getting people to use keywords in subjects, such as U7 for Ultima VII in a games group. If most people are considerate this way, killfiles can easily kill or select desired articles. Not having a newsreader with killfile capability is not generally viewed with sympathy. Who's going to take charge? You really shouldn't take on the responsibilities of a reorganization unless you've fully handled at least one group vote. If you _really_ want to consider splitting, thoroughly discuss the possible split on the affected groups before even thinking about an RFD. Work out what you think the new groups should be. You want enough of a split to divide up the traffic, but you don't want too many new groups, and you don't want the subject matter of groups to overlap. Do you need to remove any existing groups? Because of the complex nature of reorganizations, this should be worked out in advance. Then do the RFD if there's a consensus for it. If one group is especially opposed to the reorganization, or there is lots of opposition to one group, leave it out, unless you want to get a lot of all-NO spite votes. And remember, each group creation or removal is a separate vote, even though they can all be on the same ballot. If some things pass and others don't, weird results can result. Remember, you can always do things in two or more steps (votes). Suggestions on RFDs --------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: What should I know about the group name? A: Check existing groups for hints on appropriate names. Especially check to see if a group already meets your needs! Also, although few systems are affected anymore, each component of the group name should be 14 characters or less. For example, foo.bar.bletch has three components, "foo", "bar", and "bletch", all less than 15 characters, so no problem. sci.physics.particle-accelerators, on the other hand, is out, as the last component is 21 characters. Shorten it down. The naming is very important - it should be hierarchical, with each extension in the hierarchy further subdividing the subject. Don't add a period just as punctuation (for example, foo.bar.don.rippold is bad, use foo.bar.don-rippold)! Most new groups fit in nicely at three levels deep... usually comp.sys.something or rec.arts.something. See if your subject fits nicely under existing hierarchies. New second level hierarchies, such as rec.something, are usually frowned on unless somehow Usenet has managed to overlook a group for a major subject, such as rec.toys. The "big 7" hierarchies covered by these rules are: comp Computer related. misc Anything that doesn't go somewhere else - not used much news Dealing with Usenet itself. rec Recreational. Fun stuff. sci Related to the sciences. soc Social issues - for discussion of such issues, or certain social backgrounds, such as soc.culture.italian. talk Heated debate about controversial issues - politics and religion, for instance. There are also the "other hierarchies" such as bit. and bionet. The most important of these is alt., which operates on different and much looser "rules." Read alt.config for information about this. If you just can't come up with something, group-advice@uunet.uu.net is a mailing list of administrators who can help you. Q: Where should I post the RFD? A: All RFDs _must_ be crossposted to news.announce.newgroups. Any which don't do this are invalid, which can cause problems when you try to start a CFV. You should also crosspost to news.groups and set "Followup-To: news.groups" where discussion should take place. If you don't do it, the moderator has to. Also crosspost to groups which might be interested, but don't go overboard. A good way to avoid confusion here and when you post the CFV is to just list the groups in the body of the RFD. If your site won't let you post to a moderated group, send your RFD to announce-newgroups@uunet.uu.net. Since news.announce.newgroups is moderated, your posting will not appear in _any_ of the groups until the moderator approves the posting. Be patient. Don't go posting it to the other groups yourself; this will irritate people. Also, the moderator may notice problems in your proposal, and can help you correct them before they get posted. Because of such reasons, if you are dealing with a mailing list it is a good idea to not send the RFD to the mailing list until it officially appears on news.announce.newgroups. Even better, just send a pointer message ("There's an RFD for ... on n.a.n.") to the mailing list. Anyone who could read the created group should be able to read n.a.n as well. Q: How long does the RFD discussion go on? A: The minimum period of RFD discussion before you can issue the CFV, even if the consensus of all posters is "good idea, lets do it!" is 21 days by preference of the news.announce.newgroups moderator. If the RFD takes much longer than 30 days, the discussion should be taken offline until a consensus can be reached. Keep in mind that you can work out many of the hairy details in advance before ever posting an RFD - this is what has been done in several tricky reorganizations and has worked rather well. The group(s) can take their time working out all the details, then post the RFD, and all you have to deal with then are suggestions from news.groups readers, which should be possible to do in under 30 days. Q: How many times should I post the RFD? A: Usually just once. Another RFD is used only if there have been significant changes to the proposal since the first RFD and you want to involve those who don't read news.groups / news.announce.newgroups in the discussion again. In other words, not all that often. Suggestions on Moderation ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: Who should moderate a group, if it is moderated? A: It should be someone respected, who has a fast news connection (no leaf nodes), and has the time to do a good job of it. The moderator kills or nurtures the moderated group, so choose wisely. In addition, the moderator should be able to set up a separate account or mailing address just for moderation purposes. Q: What if the moderator needs to go on vacation? A: It's an excellent idea to name a backup moderator at group proposal time. If the moderator ever needs to disappear for an extended period of time, the backup moderator takes over until the moderator returns. Q: How about getting rid of the moderator? A: There is _no_ official way to get rid of a moderator without their consent! Even if they turn out to be a bum who never does anything, you can't easily replace them. Thus, take great care with your moderation guidelines. Suggestions on CFVs ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: Should I take the CFV myself? A: For many reasons, group-advice and the news.announce.newgroups moderator require that you use the services of an experienced neutral votetaker. You can email rdippold@qualcomm.com about having a neutral third-party member of the Usenet Volunteer Votetakers run the vote for you. Also, Jonathan Kamens has a vote server running, which has been used quite successfully in the past for controversial votes. " People who want to use my server to collect votes for a Usenet vote should contact me by sending mail to jik@gza.com. I need to know what the name of the newsgroup(s) being voted on are, when the voting period will start, and when the voting period will end. I will send back voting instructions to include in the CFV, and then the vote organizer should send me back the CFV so that I can check it before it is submitted to news.announce.newgroups. If the vote organizer wants a list of voters during the vote to post a mass ACK, he/she should contact me when he/she wants the list. He/she should also contact me when the vote is over to get a final tally of who voted which way." Q: Which groups should you have the votetaker post the CFV to? A: All CFV's _must_ be crossposted to news.announce.newgroups, and should be crossposted news.groups. Also to other interested groups, but don't go overboard - the groups you posted the RFD to are a good guide. This is in the Guidelines, but is violated so often it is worth repeating. Please post only to groups that are related to the subject of your CFV. Q: What if I forget or don't notice an appropriate group until after the CFV has been posted? A: First, note that it should be an _appropriate_ group. You have two choices. First, if the second CFV has not been posted yet, the group may be added to that CFV, but the votetaker will add a note at the top of the CFV letting the news.announce.newgroups moderator know what's happened. He may overrule the addition. The second choice is to post a note in the group mentioning that the CFV is going on, sorry this group was missed, and please read article "CFV: the.group.name" in news.announce.newgroups if you are interested in voting. Don't just go and post the CFV there. It's effectively the same thing, but appearances are everything. Q: How long should the CFV run and how many times should it be posted? A: Standard length of a vote is 22 days. The vote can run as long as 31 days, but this usually doesn't accomplish anything except delay the group for another week and a half. There are normally two CFVs posted. Once on the initial day, and the second a week after that or halfway into the vote. The votetaker will take care of this. Q: Can the CFV be sent to mailing lists? A: Yes, but the people on the mailing list should be able to read the new group, if created, or else you have people voting on something they'll never see, which may cause some raised eyebrows. And of course the mailing list should be intimately related to the subject of the proposed group. Note that purposely excluding a directly related mailing list from seeing the CFV just because they're likely to vote no may also cause eyebrows to elevate. Q: How should the CFV be sent to a mailing list? A: First, use the full disclosure tactic. Let the votetaker know which mailing lists the CFV should go to, so he can note them in the CFV as required. Either the votetaker or the proponent can do the actual mailing, but make sure it is done _only_ after the official CFV has appeared in news.announce.newgroups, and that the CFV posted to the mailing list is the one which appears in news.announce.newgroups, or the votes received will be invalid. Q: What's the big deal about mailing lists? A: One of the best ways to get your vote canceled is to send the CFV to a mailing list without following the above procedures. Disclose in advance! Q: Can I put the CFV in Mosaic, or any WWW or WAIS-type server and set up a vote dialog? A: It's best not to do this. Many who have access to such services don't have or use Usenet. They wouldn't have access to the created group, and don't even have access to news.announce.newgroups or news.groups to keep track of future developments. Your best bet, if you wish to set up something like this, is to set up a text item telling people that a vote is going on, and that the article titled "CFV: foo.bar.misc" in news.announce.newgroups is what they should read if they care to vote on it. Q: Can I campaign for or against the group(s)? A: The rule is that the votetaker can't do any campaigning. If you're not the votetaker (and you likely will not be), you can campaign. Be aware, however, that this often inspires negative feelings on the part of some, who will immediately begin campaigning against the group. Q: Can I vote on the group? A: You bet. One person, one vote, and even though you're the proponent you're also a voter. Q: Can I find out how the vote is going? A: No. The votetaker, by the Guidelines, may not reveal to _anyone_ how the vote is going, even to the proponent. If they do, the vote is rendered invalid. So don't even ask. Q: Any other hints? A: The votetaker will take care of the mechanics of the CFV presentation. Your job is to come up with the best group charter you can. Suggestions After the Vote ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: The group passed! My job is over, right? A: Wrong. Don't be caught napping. Your new group will be visited by plenty of people who never saw the RFD or CFV and want to know what's up. Even people who know what the group is for may not be familiar with proper etiquette. Q: How about a FAQ? A: Good idea. It's a Good Thing to have a embryonic Frequently Asked Questions list which can be posted as soon as the group is created that explains the nature of the group, including the charter. It will grow, but it's good to have one to start with. In fact, if you create a FAQ before the CFV is posted, and include it in the CFV, it may answer the questions of those who are unsure whether or not they want to vote for the group - it's an indicator that the group may be of similar high quality. Your FAQ should definitely encourage the use of keywords in the subject line, for help with killfiles. For example, in rec.arts.comics, MARVEL, DC, or INDY in the subject, as in "Subject: DC: Sandman #92", are suggested. These will depend on the nature of your group. Q: It's going to be moderated, is there anything special to do? A: Yes. Read the Guidelines, and as soon as the vote passes, follow the instructions on mailing the moderator's addresses to the specified people who maintain the official moderators lists. Whoever is moderating should have another account or mailing address created which is for nothing but postings to the moderated group. This way, there is no possibility of confusion as to personal mail and potential posts, among other advantages. This may take some time to set up, and should be done as soon as possible. Q: The group failed! When can I try again? A: In six months. Consider the results, though, so you don't waste your time again. If it failed miserably, you might try a mailing list instead. If it was a close vote, consider any flaws in the proposal. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Thus Endeth Ye Documente Thanks To: Alan Barrett, Nick Fitzpatrick, Ed McGuire, Andrew Hackard, J Lee Jaap, Jonathan I. Kamens, David Lawrence, Mark Linimon, Emma Pease, Edward Reid, Brenda J. Roder, Chip Rosenthal, Edmund Schweppe, David Seal, Al Sharp, Josh Smith, David W. Tamkin, Coyt D Watters, David Wright