taylor@hplabsc.UUCP (Dave Taylor) (08/04/86)
The following is a draft for feedback from the Usenet community. The
real document will be released soon after the transition to the new
naming scheme...
--- Dave
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Proceedures for Creating New Newsgroups
A Tutorial Introduction for Usenet Readers
Dave Taylor
(taylor@hplabs.HP.COM)
Introduction
One of the most commonly asked questions on the Usenet
system is "how do I create a new newsgroup?". While the
actual mechanism of creating a new group is rather simple
the network isn't a total anarchy. As a consequence, there
is a defined protocol that one must go through to achieve a
valid group.
A common misconception with people who want to create a new
group is that the existence of a group will justify the need
for a group. This is also commonly known as the "we can't
prove we need it because no-one knows it's there, therefore
there are no relevent postings!". This is NOT a good argu-
ment!
Successful groups that are well read, and willingly
passed about the network at a cost to the backbones are
those that fill a perceived need in the Unix community.
(Note that most people view the network as a free entity.
In fact it isn't. Backbone sites have phone bills in the
thousands of dollars a month to transport news about!)
Therefore, a group should meet a perceived need and be
viewed with those points in mind.
Without further ado, then, the steps needed to create a new
newsgroup;
1. Find a Niche
The first step towards creating a new group is to iden-
tify a topic of interest to a reasonable subset of the Unix
community (NOTHING is of interest to all, but by the same
token groups shouldn't be created so that you and a few of
your friends can play with the news system* or with a very
limited readership of any sort).
There are two ways to tell if you have a good niche -
the first is if there are enough postings about the topic in
inappropriate groups (like a car-for-sale article in
``net.general''), or articles about the topic tend to be
cross-posted to a number of different groups
(``net.singles'' versus ``net.social'' and ``net.abortion''
versus ``net.women'' are fine examples).
It is rare to find a topic that no-one is posting about
simply because an appropriate forum isn't available . If
there are no postings somewhere it usually implies that
there are not enough people interested enough to post arti-
cles on the subject.
2. Start a Mailing List
Once a topic is found that seems likely, Start a Mail-
ing List. People who run mailing lists can relate any
number of stories of good ideas that didn't catch on, and
creating newsgroups to accomodate them would have been a
poor idea. Also, sometimes the number of active readers
(e.g. people who submit articles to the group) is a LOT less
than the number of readers (this is also known as the "no-
one posts!" lament). A mailing list with very little
traffic can be gracefully and easily retired, but a news
group tends to be much more of an administrative hassle, and
therefore is view more askance by administrators (especially
backbone administrators).
To create a mailing list, write a paragraph or two
about what the list is to cover, post a copy to
``net.news.group'' and mail (email) a copy to the maintainer
__________
* Actually, it would be okay to do this if the group
wasn't sent to sites other than those willing to accept
the group, but we'll get back to that in a bit...
__________
of the List of Publicly Accessible Mailing Lists (this list
is available through the ``mod.announce.newusers'' news-
group) and wait for the flood of mail.
If you only get a few responses, don't despair - just
start the mailing list anyway. If it's good and you get
good people to write for it, it'll catch on and the transi-
tion to a `real' newsgroup will be easy. If it does catch
on and you get over 75 or so requests to be put on the list,
then summarize them (tally them) and post a response to your
original article in ``net.news.group'' proposing that a
newsgroup be created.
If at any point after about 60 days or so the mailing
list starts to become unwieldy, post an article to
``net.news.group'' proposing that a newsgroup be created.
Present REAL NUMBERS of readers and such, too - it helps
justify the need.
3. Temporary Newsgroups
One of the problems with the current system is that
there is no easy mechanism for creating new newsgroups with
a temporary lifespan. Nonetheless, it is recommended that
if a discussion `explodes' (like the discussion of old
(classic) versus new coke did a couple of years ago) that a
newsgroup for the discussion be created. The name should
contain the string ``misc'' or ``temp'' and should otherwise
be similar to the groupname that spawned the discussion
(e.g. ``net.misc'' spawned off ``net.misc.coke'' for a
while, and ``net.movies'' spawned ``net.movies.sw'' [Star
Wars]). When the traffic dies down, the group is then
removed and the integrity of the network is preserved.
Hopefully in the future this will become easier to do.
4. Transitioning from Mail to News
If a mailing list is sufficiently popular, as discussed
above, a suggestion that it be transitioned into a newsgroup
should be posted to ``net.news.group''.
5. People with More Say in the Creation Process
Since the backbone sites (ihnp4, hplabs, seismo, utzoo,
gatech, ucbvax, etc) pay real money for newsgroups, the
administrators of those sites have more say in the creation
of groups that pass through their machines. There is a fine
line here - a group can still be created without the appro-
val of the backbone administrators, but they may choose to
stop accepting and/or forwarding the new group. The
appropriate recourse if this happens is not to publicly or
privately attack those administrators who have simply exer-
cised their options on their own machines, but rather to set
up a list of alternative feeds.
Most typically, backbone sites are more willing to dis-
tribute groups locally, or to machines that poll them, than
they are to machines they call long-distance daily. It's a
simple matter of economics, really.
To consider an example, someone proposed the creation
of a group called ``net.rec.drugs'' for discussion of vari-
ous aspects of so-called recreational drugs. A number of
backbone site admins stated that they were not willing to
allow the group on their machine due to repercussions, and
the person wanting the group then responded by creating his
own 'side' network connectivity group (essentially a paral-
lel backbone). This is the appropriate solution.
To wax philosophical for a moment, it is anticipated by
a number of members of Usenet that a set of discrete, over-
lapping networks will transport all the news in the future,
and machines will `sign up' for those groups that they're
interested in only. This is further down the road, though.
6. Actually Creating the New Group
Once it's decided that a group will be created, and the
name and such have been settled, and the backbone adminis-
trators have either agreed to carry the information or have
stated that they'd rather not, the next, and final step, is
to issue a 'newgroup' command.
To accomplish this, mail a request to Gene Spafford at
Georgia Tech (spaf@gatech.edu) with the proposed name of the
group and such. He will process your request with all due
speed and send you some sort of indication of completion.
Gene will also be able to confirm that the steps documented
herein have been followed.
It is also recommended that a copy of your request
(incidentally, this request should also contain a short
paragraph on the intended audience of the new group) be sent
to Mark Horton of AT&T (cbosgd!mark).
7. Moderation
It is VERY HIGHLY recommended that all new groups be
created as moderated groups. This reduces the occurances of
inapropriate postings and duplicate postings, and generally
makes the net less painful to read.
Also, moderated groups are much more likely to be fol-
lowed by backbone sites....
8. Moving from Moderation to Not
Some groups are intrinsicly very high volume, and are
most appropriate as non-moderated groups. Much care should
be taken before this is changed, though.
9. A Few Other Comments...
There are a number of myths about creating and managing
groups that I'd like to explicitly debunk once and for all;
First off, having a lot of people read a group does not
equate to having a lot of postings for them to read! This
is a very common misconception and is about as far from the
truth as is possible. There are any number of causes for
this, including lack of writing skills, lack of interest,
lack of time, etc. etc., ad infinitum.
Secondly, there is also what Henry Spencer refers to as the
``flash-in-the- pan phenomenon'', where a group starts out
fantastically popular, but in the course of a few weeks or
so dies out completely. Be on the lookout for this and try
to only propose groups that are of lasting interest to the
community that will be sending it out. Discussions on
topics that will be either resolved or deadlocked in a short
period of time can be worse than annoying. Consider a group
that was to discuss the relative merits of one religion over
another...it would very rapidly collapse into a shouting
match and no useful discussion would ensue at all. Please
try to avoid this trap!
Next, moderation isn't that much of a hassle. For the most
part, accepting the role simply means that you'll briefly
peruse the articles to ensure that they are appropriate for
the group before posting. It is suggested that you also
check for typographical, spelling and gramatical errors
(don't change the meaning of the posting, though, or you'll
get into trouble mighty quick!). Also recommended is to
remove extraneous data, including multiple copies of ".sig-
nature" file entries and so on. The best policy is to start
the group (or mailing list, for that matter) with a note
outlining the major topics of interest and also indicating
the `editorial policy'. The role of moderator can be any-
thing from simply content checking to emulating a major
magazine publisher - the quaility of the group is commen-
surate to this too, usually.
While we're on the subject, don't hesitate to refuse post-
ings if they are wandering too far off the topic of the
group or if they are simply treading on well-trod ground
(one advantage of a moderated group is that you can avoid
constantly discussing the cyclic topics that most unmo-
derated Usenet newsgroups seem to go through all too often)
Finally, I hope this hasn't soured you of the idea of creat-
ing the group you're thinking of that will fill that one
vital niche that is empty in the current system. By all
means make the effort! You might be suprised at how popular
topics can become!
Finally
This article was generated with helpful input from Tony
Birnseth and Chris Andersen of Tektronix, Rob Horn of
Infinet, Chuq Von Rospach of Sun, Henry Spencer of the
University of Toronto, and Gene Spafford of Georgia Tech.