Creating a new newsgroup in the aus.* hierarchy ----------------------------------------------- This document describes a procedure for creating a new newsgroup within the aus hierarchy. It is written for the person who has an idea for a newsgroup and wants to "make it happen" (the proposer). The organisation which oversees this process has documented this and other information about aus.* in the web site: http://aus.news-admin.org/ Procedures exist for creating new newsgroups in other hierarchies. The rules for creating new newsgroups in all other hierarchies except alt are particularly detailed, and can be found in regular postings in the newsgroup news.announce.newusers, news.groups or news.admin.misc. You can also find much relevant information in the USENET FAQ repository at: ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/ USENET group creation policy recommends that before attempting to have a newsgroup created, the proposer should have a firm understanding of the USENET culture and the process of discussing and then voting on a new newsgroup. The preferred way to do this is to read aus.net.news for about 6 months and participate in the discussion and voting processes for other peoples' newsgroups before making your own proposal. 0. Do you really need a new aus newsgroup ? ------------------------------------------- Newsgroups exist primarily as a place for groups of people to discuss things of importance to them. It is therefore important to consider the topic of the newsgroup. Is it something which only a handful of people may wish to discuss - in which case a mailing list may be a more appropriate forum, more personal and has greater potential to keep the subscribers involved. Is your topic something which can only be discussed by certain people, such as the members of an organisation? Again, a newsgroup may not be appropriate in such a circumstance. Newsgroups are not generally created to be mouthpieces for some organisation. There are lots of other techniques available, like web chat rooms where access can be controlled or discussions can be integrated with other facilities. Newsgroups are also not intended to be used only by people who hold some particular opinion. In other words, the topic of the newsgroup is all-important, and not the likely audience. Is your topic related to some current affairs, e.g. the fall of the Berlin Wall, or another Clinton Sex Scandal? A newsgroup on such a topic could be considered to have a limited lifetime. It may flourish for a week or a month but it can be expected to wither and die eventually. An example of such is aus.flame.gareth-powell. It seemed a good idea at the time, in 1995 when Gareth got creamed by Stuart Littlemore on Media Watch, and there was plenty of material with which to flame Gareth. Inevitably though, the newsgroup withered and currently hosts only spam and random crosspostings. Is there another newsgroup which covers your topic? You would need a good reason to create a new place to discuss something where there's already a place available. One appropriate reason may be volume of postings on your subject; very active newsgroups may be split into subgroups - on the other hand, if there's very little discussion going on in your topic, you may not have a good reason to create a new group. Finally, (since this is an aus.* FAQ) consider whether your topic is uniquely Australian or has enough Australian content to justify a regional newsgroup rather than a global one. For example, there's not much point to having an Australian coca-cola newsgroup - you can buy coke around the world and it's much the same wherever it is sold. Ultimately the decision about creating a new newsgroup rests not with yourself or with the aus.* hierarchy maintainer, but with your USENET peers. When they discuss your group they will be applying much the same guidelines as above, and you'll save yourself some effort and possible embarrassment by thinking through the above criteria before proposing a newsgroup in public. 1. Picking a name -------------- This really is amazingly important. A badly chosen name can arouse an astonishing amount of ire in other news users. A really bad name can cause software failures. To avoid annoying too many people, here are some suggestions: Try to be consistent with existing newsgroup names. Use nouns where possible. Always stick to letters and numbers. Letters must be lower case. Don't use dots as word separators, as they are used to delimit sub-hierarchies; use hyphens instead. Try to fit your newsgroup into an existing sub-hierarchy, if appropriate. Don't create a new sub-hierarchy unless it can have at least 2 groups in it. Above all, keep it short, but obvious. Don't exceed 14 characters with any part of the name. Examples: aus.ads.forsale This is an example of a well-chosen name. It fits into a sub-hierarchy (aus.ads), and is specific. aus.personals This is an example of a badly chosen newsgroup name. It has been placed outside the aus.ads.* sub-hierarchy. aus.dancing.morris This is another badly chosen name. The reason is that there is no existing hierarchy aus.dancing, and this proposal would create a sub-hierarchy (aus.dancing.*) for just one group, leaving no place to discuss other forms of dance. You would be better starting with a more general group (i.e. aus.dancing) and proposing a subgroup aus.dancing.morris sometime later, if the traffic on morris dancing becomes sufficient. Unless there is a a compelling reason to do otherwise, ausadmin will refuse to accept proposals for names like aus.dancing.morris where aus.dancing does not already exist and there are no existing groups named aus.dancing.something. In other words, ausadmin prefers more general groups to be created first, and when need arises these general groups can be subdivided into more specific groups. aus.yachting-and-boarding This name exceeds the 14 character limit in one section. The 14 character limit is set by some older computer systems, and is an unfortunate anachronism, but one we have to live with. [ We are looking to see if it is now safe to relax this rule on the assumption that any 14 character limited system wouldn't be able to handle today's traffic. --David] People are going to argue about the name; this is because the name is usually all that people have to go by. Even though you're going to provide a one-line description of the group, many sites won't include it in their newsgroups file, which throws the full weight of defining the group onto a rather cryptic jumble of letters. So take your time on this one. You can E-mail ausadmin@aus.news-admin.org at any time for advice regarding choosing a name for your newsgroup. The aus.* news hierarchy administrator's principal responsibility is ensuring that newsgroup names are chosen wisely. At this point you will also need to look into a description line. The description and the newsgroup name together shouldn't be more than 80 characters long. 2. Moderation and other stuff -------------------------- Some newsgroups are moderated. (See the postings in news.announce.newusers if you don't know what this means.) This is rarely used within the aus hierarchy but that shouldn't stop you from suggesting it, if you think it is appropriate. A moderated newsgroup can be a very useful resource. However it requires the consistent attention of a moderator (who is usually you, as the newsgroup proposer). As the moderator, the success or failure of your newsgroup relies principally on your own shoulders. Unlike FidoNET and some other systems moderation works on an approval system. You are emailed each post to the newsgroup which you reject or approve after reading it. Also note that a moderated newsgroup does not guarantee that only the moderator can post directly. If you appear to be biased in your approval of submissions, people may make posts to your newsgroup which bypass your moderation. In other words, a moderated newsgroup is not an effective tool for censorship. 3. Proposing the new group ----------------------- Post your ideas to aus.net.news first. Pay attention to the suggestions other people make. If your proposal sounds like a goer, fill in a proposal template and email it to ausadmin@aus.news-admin.org. You can get a template for a proposal online at: http://aus.news-admin.org/Faq/RFD-template.txt Ensure that your subject line in email to ausadmin includes the new group's name. Something like this will usually suffice: Subject: RFD: aus.foo Please make sure that your proposal is grammatically correct (at least, it should be spell checked), that it is easy to read, and that it provides enough detail to justify your suggestion, without being too verbose nor too brief. In other words, it should read well. Take a look at previous proposals, as found on http://aus.news-admin.org/ for an example of typical RFD writing style. You should include the following information: 1. The group name. 2. A one-line description. 3. A charter. See 'How to create a newsgroup' in news.answers. 4. An estimate of expected traffic for this group and the current traffic on the net related to this topic. 5. Whether or not it ought to be moderated. 6. Whether or not crossposting is allowed (e.g. crosspost limit). 7. Whether binary and/or HTML postings are allowed (Note there is very strong opposition to both binary newsgroups and HTML posting; if you allow either of these, expect to justify your decision) 8. Cancellation policy for spam and other disallowed postings. 9. Any standard formats for Subject: lines. 10. Any other rules that you think fit (e.g., in some cases, followups may be forbidden). Ausadmin has received a few proposals recently which were little more than the RFD template with a newsgroup name substituted in. It's not ausadmin's role to do your homework - if you don't make a reasonable attempt at addressing all of the above points, ausadmin may well ignore your message. Always read several RFDs from successful groups before you try to write your own. Ausadmin will review your proposal and discuss it with you before accepting or rejecting it. It is most important that you e-mail your RFD to ausadmin@aus.news-admin.org and not post it to USENET because ausadmin posts the approved RFD and also requires it for the link on the website which shows this group is being discussed. You may need to alter your proposal several times to satisfy the concerns raised by ausadmin before your proposal is posted publically. Once your RFD is approved, ausadmin will post it to aus.net.news and any relevant existing newsgroups which you have specified in your proposal's DISTRIBUTION section for public debate. Discussion should take place in aus.net.news, and the ausadmin post will direct followups to that group. 4. Debating the proposal --------------------- People will respond to your proposal in a variety of ways. Expect negative criticism. Some of it will come from people who read like overbearing arseholes; some will come from quite reasonable human beings. The newsgroup name and the expected traffic are two of the most important things that are going to discussed at this point. Ausadmin and the people in aus.net.news are going to be looking for evidence that this newsgroup is going to get enough traffic to be a healthy group. Try to be patient, and listen to what they have to say. You may find that they are making sense. At this point, you might consider better group names (if suggested), moderation or not, changes to the newsgroup's charter, or maybe even whether or not the whole thing was a good idea in the first place. Try to be objective and mature about this, and don't take any of it personally (even if the overbearing arseholes get personal first). Two things have to be taken into account at this point: one is what you think, and the other is what other people think. If you can't be dissuaded from a bad proposal by sound arguments, fine. Go ahead and take it to the next step. In general, however, if few other people are convinced by your arguments in favour of the newsgroup, it won't pass the vote, and you'll end up wasting your time. (See point 7.) If you revise your proposal as a result of the public discussion on aus.net.news, send the revision to ausadmin for updating of the website. If the revision is substantial then ask ausadmin to post a new RFD message and allow a few more days for discussion. 5. Voting for the group ----------------------- The next step is 21 days after the posting of the first RFD to email to ausadmin@aus.news-admin.org and ask them to send out a CFV. [ Alternately you may choose to not go ahead with the group, in which case email ausadmin and tell them you wish to abandon the proposal. ] Voting in the aus.* hierarchy is done through e-mail, and votes are tallied automatically so it is important for voters to follow the instructions which will appear in the posted CFV. A newsgroup request passes the vote if at least 2-thirds of the respondents voted YES and there are at least 20 more YES votes than NO votes. The voting period is 14 days. Votes are collected automatically and the vote-taker program will reject any votes which arrive after the vote end time. It's requested that people refrain from discussing the newsgroup after the CFV has been posted. The newsgroup should have been discussed in the RFD period. You should also not promote your proposal during the voting period, nor advise people only how to vote "YES". When a vote completes the results of the vote are posted by Ausadmin to aus.net.news. There follows a 5-day period for public examination of the vote results. If apparent forged votes become noticed during this 5-day period the vote will be recounted and the recount posted to aus.net.news. After the 5-day period (and any recount), if the vote passed the requirements, ausadmin will issue the appropriate control messages to request USENET news administrators to create the newsgroup. If the vote fails, ausadmin will not accept another proposal for the same newsgroup until 3 months after the close of votes. After the second failure, it's 6 months. While the vote is running, you can ask ausadmin to cancel the vote. If a vote is cancelled, the waiting period mentioned in the previous paragraph may apply. If an ausadmin system failure affects the vote (e.g. lost votes or procedural error) then ausadmin may choose whether to go ahead with the vote or cancel it, or to assume a particular outcome of the vote. 6. Creating the new group ---------------------- Creating a newsgroup successfully requires the newsgroup to be created on a majority of news servers which participate in the aus.* hierarchy. Ausadmin sends a special control message which requests all servers to create the group. Some servers process these messages automatically; others ignore them and groups are created manually by the local news administrator. Ultimately it's the decision of the news administrator on each individual news server whether or not to create a newsgroup on their server; this is beyond the control of ausadmin and so from time to time, "followup action" will be required by the proponent, or ausadmin, or USENET users to ask news admins to create the group locally. The primary method of requesting that a newsgroup be created or removed is the "control message". In particular, "newgroup" and "rmgroup" are used to request group creation and deletion, respectively. Most USENET News software checks the sender address of incoming control messages and the news administrator can decide whether to accept or reject these messages based on the sender's address and other information. Automation can only work if the news administrator trusts some party to act responsibly. One such is David Lawrence (tale@uunet.net, now group-admin@isc.org) who is the person generally trusted to perform newsgroup addition and removal for the international newsgroups. Ausadmin uses a system called PGPverify to digitally sign control messages sent by it. News administrators can, and should, set their systems to trust only control messages posted by ausadmin for activities which affect aus.* newsgroups. The Australian hierarchy has not used PGPverify until the handover of the administrator responsibility to Nick Andrew , rather, two addresses were commonly accepted as being trustworthy issuers of requests: kre@munnari.oz.au and revdoc@uow.edu.au. These two persons are no longer involved in newsgroup creation or deletion; the responsibility is (as of 1998-04-02) generally entrusted to Nick Andrew. For a group creation to be successful, many USENET sites must accept the newgroup message which ausadmin sends, or the news administrator of a site must create the group by hand. Many USENET site administrators accept the ausadmin PGP signature to automatically create a new newsgroup. However, many do not, and if your local newsserver does not know of an ausadmin-created group, this is likely the reason, so please send email to your news administrator or other technical support person and ask them to either create the newsgroup by hand, or process the ausadmin "Checkgroups" file (which lists all aus.* groups at http://aus.news-admin.org/checkgroups.txt) or add ausadmin's PGP key at http://aus.news-admin.org/ausadmin.asc to their configuration for automatically accepting newgroup messages. 7. (chapter deleted) 8. Epilogue -------- Some newsgroups go on to greatness. Others languish in mediocrity. A few fade away. In the latter case, if your newsgroup ends up carrying zero traffic for months on end, you might consider removing it. Discuss this in aus.net.news first, however. 9. An Historical Note ------------------ A few years back, some folks got into a prolonged newgroup/rmgroup war over a newsgroup called aus.bizarre. The result was a colossal waste of time and money, largely due to a couple of people being difficult. This episode shows just how immature some people can be about new newsgroups. Consequently, I would suggest that all parties interested in such things adopt the following as their mantra, to be repeated over and over whenever anyone suggests a new newsgroup: "It isn't important, it's only zeroes and ones." 10. FAQ Availability ---------------- This FAQ is available on the WWW: http://aus.news-admin.org/Faq/aus_faq (Here endeth the FAQ. Suggestions for improvements welcomed.) ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Original FAQ (c) 1995 Phil Herring This version (c) 2000 Nick Andrew . This file may be redistributed without limit but the content is not to be modified in any substantial manner. -------------------------------------------------------------------------