atkins@hpindda.cup.hp.COM (Brian Atkins) (01/10/91)
Who would be in favor of a comp.protocols.iso.x500 group? I know many
companies have development going on.
If there is enough interest, how do we go about getting one created?
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Brian Atkins atkins@hpindqj.HP.COM (408) 447-2057
Hewlett Packard (43LS) 19420 Homestead Rd. Cupertino, CA 95014
[[ Moderator's note - in response to your note, I offer the message
below from news.admin. To the mailing list members: this information
is more or less specific to the USENET group comp.protocols.iso.x400,
which is the USENET counterpart of MHSNews. You will note that it is
generally easier to set up mailing lists than to set up a new USENET
news group.
s/ J. Sweet <mhsnews-request@ics.uci.edu> ]]
------- Forwarded Message
Date: 8 Nov 90 17:49:51 GMT
From: lear@turbo.bio.net
Sender: spaf@cs.purdue.EDU
Reply-To: lear@turbo.bio.net
Newsgroups: news.announce.newusers,news.groups,news.admin
Subject: How to Create a New Newsgroup
Original-from: woods@ncar.ucar.edu (Greg Woods)
[Most recent change: 06 Sep 1990 by lear@turbo.bio.net (Eliot Lear)]
GUIDELINES FOR USENET GROUP CREATION
REQUIREMENTS FOR GROUP CREATION:
These are guidelines that have been generally agreed upon across
USENET as appropriate for following in the creating of new newsgroups in
the "standard" USENET newsgroup hierarchy. They are NOT intended as
guidelines for setting USENET policy other than group creations, and they
are not intended to apply to "alternate" or local news hierarchies. The
part of the namespace affected is comp, news, sci, misc, soc, talk, rec,
which are the most widely-distributed areas of the USENET hierarchy.
Any group creation request which follows these guidelines to a
successful result should be honored, and any request which fails to
follow these procedures or to obtain a successful result from doing so
should be dropped, except under extraordinary circumstances. The
reason these are called guidelines and not absolute rules is that it is
not possible to predict in advance what "extraordinary circumstances"
are or how they might arise.
It should be pointed out here that, as always, the decision whether or not
to create a newsgroup on a given machine rests with the administrator of that
machine. These guidelines are intended merely as an aid in making those
decisions.
The Discussion
1) A call for discussion on creation of a new newsgroup should be posted
to news.announce.newgroups, and also to any other groups or mailing lists
at all related to the proposed topic if desired. This group is moderated,
and The Followup-to: header will be set so that the actual discussion takes
place only in news.groups. Users on sites which have difficulty posting
to moderated groups may mail submissions intended for
news.announce.newgroups to "announce-newgroups@turbo.bio.net".
2) The name and charter of the proposed group and whether it will be moderated
or unmoderated (and if the former, who the moderator(s) will be) should be
determined during the discussion period. If there is no general agreement
on these points among the proponents of a new group at the end of 30 days
of discussion, the discussion should be taken offline (into mail instead of
news.groups) and the proponents should iron out the details among
themselves. Once that is done, a new, more specific proposal may be made,
going back to step 1) above.
The Vote
1) AFTER the discussion period, if it has been determined that a new group is
really desired, a name and charter are agreed upon, and it has been
determined whether the group will be moderated and if so who will
moderate it, a call for votes may be posted to news.announce.newgroups and
any other groups or mailing lists that the original call for discussion
might have been posted to. There should be minimal delay between the
end of the discussion period and the issuing of a call for votes.
The call for votes should include clear instructions for how to cast
a vote. It must be as clearly explained and as easy to do to cast a
vote for creation as against it, and vice versa. It is explicitly
permitted to set up two separate addresses to mail yes and no votes
to provided that they are on the same machine, to set up an address
different than that the article was posted from to mail votes to, or
to just accept replies to the call for votes article, as long as it
is clearly and explicitly stated in the call for votes article how
to cast a vote. If two addresses are used for a vote, the reply
address must process and accept both yes and no votes OR reject
them both.
2) The voting period should last for at least 21 days and no more than 31
days, no matter what the preliminary results of the vote are. The exact
date that the voting period will end should be stated in the call for
votes. Only votes that arrive on the vote-taker's machine prior to this
date may be counted.
3) A couple of repeats of the call for votes may be posted during the vote,
provided that they contain similar clear, unbiased instructions for
casting a vote as the original, and provided that it is really a repeat
of the call for votes on the SAME proposal (see #5 below). Partial vote
results should NOT be included; only a statement of the specific new
group proposal, that a vote is in progress on it, and how to cast a vote.
It is permitted to post a "mass acknowledgement" in which all the names
of those from whom votes have been received are posted, as long as no
indication is made of which way anybody voted until the voting period
is officially over.
4) ONLY votes MAILED to the vote-taker will count. Votes posted to the net
for any reason (including inability to get mail to the vote-taker) and
proxy votes (such as having a mailing list maintainer claim a vote for
each member of the list) may not be counted.
5) Votes may not be transferred to other, similar proposals. A vote shall
count only for the EXACT proposal that it is a response to. In particular,
a vote for or against a newsgroup under one name shall NOT be counted as
a vote for or against a newsgroup with a different name or charter,
a different moderated/unmoderated status or (if moderated) a different
moderator or set of moderators.
6) Votes MUST be explicit; they should be of the form "I vote for the
group foo.bar as proposed" or "I vote against the group foo.bar
as proposed". The wording doesn't have to be exact, it just needs to
be unambiguous. In particular, statements of the form "I would vote
for this group if..." should be considered comments only and not
counted as votes.
The Result
1) At the completion of the voting period, the vote taker must post the
vote tally and the E-mail addresses and (if available) names of the votes
received to news.announce.newgroups and any other groups or mailing lists
to which the original call for votes was posted. The tally should include
a statement of which way each voter voted so that the results can be
verified.
2) AFTER the vote result is posted, there will be a 5 day waiting period,
beginning when the voting results actually appear in
news.announce.newgroups, during which the net will have a chance to
correct any errors in the voter list or the voting procedure.
3) AFTER the waiting period, and if there were no serious objections that might
invalidate the vote, and if 100 more valid YES/create votes are received
than NO/don't create AND at least 2/3 of the total number of valid votes
received are in favor of creation, a newgroup control message may be sent
out. If the 100 vote margin or 2/3 percentage is not met, the group should
not be created.
The newgroup message may be sent by the vote-taker (if able to do so)
or by the system administrator on the vote-taker's machine. If this
option is not available, then the vote-taker should send mail to
"newgroup@ncar.ucar.edu" saying that a successful vote has been run
and requesting that a newgroup message be sent. DO NOT send the vote
results; we can look those up in news.announce.newgroups if we haven't seen
them there already. In any case, please send mail to Gene Spafford
(spaf@purdue.edu) informing him of a successful vote, so he can add the
new group to the official list of groups which he maintains.
------- End Forwarded Messagekehres@touch.COM (Tim Kehres) (01/10/91)
> Who would be in favor of a comp.protocols.iso.x500 group? I know many > companies have development going on. > > If there is enough interest, how do we go about getting one created? > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > Brian Atkins atkins@hpindqj.HP.COM (408) 447-2057 > Hewlett Packard (43LS) 19420 Homestead Rd. Cupertino, CA 95014 > > [[ Moderator's note - in response to your note, I offer the message > below from news.admin. To the mailing list members: this information > is more or less specific to the USENET group comp.protocols.iso.x400, > which is the USENET counterpart of MHSNews. You will note that it is > generally easier to set up mailing lists than to set up a new USENET > news group. The other approach that can be taken is to look at any Internet mailing lists pertaining to X.500 and see if it makes any sense to gateway these to the USENET. This is essentially what happened with the two X.400 newsgroups, as they were Internet mailing lists before the USENET gateway was established. When we set this stuff up a few years back, the approval process was very informal and only took in the order of days to accomplish. If I remember correctly, Erik Fair installed the required changes at Berkeley and we were up and running just as soon as the moderator addresses propogated to all the USENET backbone sites. On the other hand, that was a few years back, and the "rules" may have changed somewhat since then. BTW, one of the reasons we probably got away with not having to go through a vote process is that the distribution of the newsgroup was limited to "inet" (at least officially). Regards, Tim Kehres
atkins@hpindda.cup.hp.COM (Brian Atkins) (01/12/91)
This is a pointer to a note I posted to comp.protocols.iso which continues the discussion of whether to start a comp.protocols.iso.x500. I think would should move this discussion out of the ...x400 notes group ASAP, since according to the number of mail responses I have received, there is at least some interest is this. Will the people who responded to me please also post replies to the new basenote/message in comp.protocols.iso, so we can start a discussion and see how much interest there really is? Thanks Brian Atkins ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Brian Atkins atkins@hpindqj.HP.COM (408) 447-2057 Hewlett Packard (43LS) 19420 Homestead Rd. Cupertino, CA 95014
atkins@hpindda.cup.hp.COM (Brian Atkins) (01/17/91)
I had asked that this discussion be moved to comp.protocols.iso so as not to burden the X.400 group. Unfortunately that doesn't seem to be possible as this group is gatewayed to mailing lists which can't actively select which group to participate in. Thus, it seems necessary that we hold the discussion here (the majority of interest is coming from these mailing lists, it turns out). (For those of you on mailing lists who are now thoroughly confused, I am accessing this discussion via a bulletin board like system spanning a huge world wide population of machines on the Internet. The software system is commonly called "notes" or "news", depending on which user interface one is using. Thus the reason for some of my requests and many of your replies.) My question is: is it a good idea to form a comp.protocols.iso.x500 group, perhaps gatewaying to existing Directory/X.500 mailing lists in the same way as the ...x400 group currently is?? That is, is there enough purely X.500/Directory standards interest to warrant a dedicated notes/news group? Alternatives being, continue to use comp.protocols.iso.x400 and/or comp.protocols.iso itself. There are obvious drawbacks to these solutions w.r.t mailing list participants. It would seem that the answer is yes, given all the feed back I am getting in E-Mail (the mailing lists replies come to me, rather than the notes group). Does anyone know what mailing lists would be candidates for gateways? There seems to be some success in the X.400 group using this kind of notes/mailing list combination. (I want to stress that at no time would I advocate replacing a mailing list with this group, unless all members had access to the group and collectively decided amoung themselves to disband the mailing list.) Alas, my current work load does not allow me to assume moderatorship of such an X.500 notes group. If at all possible, I think this group should be left unmoderated (left without moderation? :-) anyway. Can someone who was involved in the setup of the comp.protocols.iso.x400 notes group/mailing list gateway drop me a line with clues on how to proceed? Thanks Brian ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Brian Atkins atkins@hpindqj.HP.COM (408) 447-2057 Hewlett Packard (43LS) 19420 Homestead Rd. Cupertino, CA 95014
Stef@ICS.UCI.EDU (Einar Stefferud) (01/17/91)
Hello Brian, et al -- I was involved with starting MHSNEWS as an INTERNET mailing list with a Distribution List based at NRTC.NORTHROP.COM, and another based at some host in Norway, designed to minimize over-the-Atlantic traffic. The original impetus for MHSNEWS came from the European community and it has had a strong international flavor ever since. Later, I was the primary organizer and sponsor of the effort by Tim Kehres to gateway MHSNEWS to comp.protocols.iso.x400, when Tim took over the North American DL and moved it to TIS.LLNL.ORG. Later we moved the MHSNEWS mailing list from TIS.LLNL.ORG to ICS.UCI.EDU where Jerry Sweet now does the ADMIN chores. So, to cut to the chase scene, MHSNEWS was first a flourishing INTERNET mailing list, and then it was gatewayed to USENET, with moderation of USENET contributions back into the main MHSNEWS distribution list at ICS.UCI.EDU. The difference between the MHSNEWS case and your X.500 case is that there is no flourishing X.500 group that is clamoring for USENET gateway service. At least I don't see any evidence of this, though I may be missing something. What we do have with X.500 is a collection of focused groups working on various aspects. There is the QUIPU list which is focused on QUIPU pilots and such. The WPP list is for the PSI WhitePages Pilot. The DSSIG is for the NIST OIW DSSIG (Directory Services Special Interest Group of the NIST OSI Implementors Workshop). I think there is something called DS-IMPLEMENTORS, but I am not sure of it. Surely there must be some more, but I don't have any information on them. So, I am not sure how to organize all this into a USENET gateway feed that makes any sense. Perhaps each of these should be fed into its own USENET newsgroup, in some comp.protocols.iso.x500.[x,y,z,...]? I expect that his is an issue for each of the separate X.500 mailing list sponsor/moderators to resolve for them selves. I am not one of them, so I will leave the field to others to resolve. Best...\Stef
atkins@hpindqj.cup.hp.COM (Brian Atkins) (01/18/91)
Much of the "yes" votes I see coming in to me are from people on the mailing lists which are gatewayed from the comp.protocols.iso.x400 group, so I would assume that these people would want to either be a member of a parallel X.500 mailing list, or have their existing mailing list gatewayed to/from a comp.protocols.iso.x500 as well. If this later approach is acceptable, perhaps we can start the group with a single gateway to the mhsnews list and notify other X.500 mailing lists about the group, allowing them to gateway when they choose. Brian
Stef@ICS.UCI.EDU (Einar Stefferud) (01/18/91)
HI Brian -- MHSNEWS is now gatewayed to comp.protocols.iso.x400, soo what is to be gained by feeding the same entire stream to comp.lprootocols.iso.x500 in parralell, for the same people? I suggest that you prooceed in MHSNEWS with your discussion items, and lets see if things should be split when we see how the real discussion goes. One thing we might want to do is to remove the "moderated" status from the current comp.protocols.iso.x4oo gateway to the main list. We originally set it to be moderated for the feed to the intenret mhsnews list because we were unsure of what kind of traffic would come from the newsgroup feed. There has never benn any problem, so we should be able to make the feed automatic. So, with this message, I request anyone who objects to allowing X.500 discsuion in MHSNEWS to comment by reply to theis list. Best...\Stef
kehres@touch.COM (Tim Kehres) (01/18/91)
Stef, > One thing we might want to do is to remove the "moderated" status from > the current comp.protocols.iso.x4oo gateway to the main list. We > originally set it to be moderated for the feed to the intenret mhsnews > list because we were unsure of what kind of traffic would come from the > newsgroup feed. There has never benn any problem, so we should be able > to make the feed automatic. I would like to second this. The moderation aspect of the list takes a fair amount of time, and more importantly, a consistent effort on the part of the moderator to guarantee little to no delays on messages coming from the USENET. In the couple of years that I did this for MHSNEWS, I only had one article that I bounced - some crazy person (I assume) sent a highly political message to every newsgroup that he could find in his active file. For the very occasional message of this type, it probably does not warrant the moderated status. Best Regards, Tim Kehres