aus Newsgroup Administration

Overview

The aus.* newsgroup administration is a volunteer effort to maintain and develop the aus.* USENET newsgroup hierarchy. We will achieve this by setting a clear policy for the growth of Australian newsgroups, managing the creation and deletion of newsgroups according to this policy, and providing online information to support the development of Australian newsgroups as a national resource.

The aus.* administrator is currently Nick Andrew (www.nick-andrew.net), and operational staff and facilities are provided by Tullnet Pty Ltd.

We wish to automate the administration task as much as possible. Before sending any questions by email make sure you have read the relevant FAQs and are aware of our current policy. This web site should cover most, if not all, queries you may have. If something seems important to you and it's not available here then please send some email.

ausadmin Role

• Determine a good long-term structure for the aus.* hierarchy
• Accept newsgroup proposals which fit the policy and structure
• Final decision on newsgroup creation by voting
• Slowly purge obsolete groups
• Encourage news admins to respond to ausadmin newgroup and rmgroup messages

aus structure planning

In other words, what extensions to the structure does ausadmin consider good or bad?

Encouraged:

• aus.books extended by genre, or purpose (e.g. reviews)
• aus.cars extended by manufacturer (not model)
• aus.net.access extended by access technology name (e.g. adsl)
• aus.politics extended by major philosophy (e.g. socialism -- but no crossposting)
• aus.sport extensions include competitive activities
• aus.rec extended by recreational non-competitive activies
• aus.tv extended by genre or technology

Discouraged:

• Forsale groups outside the aus.ads hierarchy
• All binary groups are discouraged (post a URL instead)
• Regional subgroups, e.g. aus.motorcycles.wa (see wa.* and other regional hierarchies)
• aus.org subgroups
• aus.tv subgroups for particular shows

In general, be aware if the topic you are proposing can be discussed from another perspective within an existing aus.* group, for example aus.books.sf may be discussed in aus.sf already.

ausadmin Policy

• Newsgroup creation only (no newsgroup deletions yet)
• Unmoderated newsgroup creation only
• Proposals considered by ausadmin to be frivolous or intended to "work the system" will be rejected
• No change of newsgroups from unmoderated to moderated (it caused a terrible storm last time)
• 2-level newsgroups (aus.X) accepted only for major categories (e.g. science, arts, sport, humanities -- most of which exist already)
• 3-level newsgroups (aus.X.Y) accepted only when parent exists (aus.X) or a sibling group already exists (aus.X.Z)
• The effect of the above two rules is that if you want a new group e.g. aus.language.strine with no existing parent and no siblings, then you need to first work on getting aus.language created, and that group will have to make do for strine discussions as well as other language discussions. You would then wait 1-2 years before proposing aus.language.strine.
• No change of charter yet, but if you wish to propose a charter for an existing group which does not already have a charter, email it in and ausadmin will consider accepting it directly as the new charter.

Links

aus.* FAQs on rtfm.mit.edu
aus.* FAQs on mirror.aarnet.edu.au (local mirror of rtfm)
www.newsreaders.com (very comprehensive USENET resource)

Newsgroup Creation Proposals

Six Simple Steps to creation of a new newsgroup:

1. Make sure you really need a new newsgroup, and not a mailing list or a website or an existing newsgroup
2. Define the Topic and choose a group name which meets the ausadmin policy (above)
3. Discuss your idea on aus.net.news
4. Submit a formal proposal to ausadmin
5. Participate in the Request For Discussion (RFD) process
6. Ask ausadmin to put your proposal to the vote.

Further detail on the process is in the Group creation FAQ.

You will also need this template: Template for writing an RFD (Request For Discussion)