brooks@lclark.UUCP (Thomas Brooks) (01/08/90)
I am wondering if the list of newsgroups that comes up when I type 'rn' and the new groups that I can subscribe to are the only groups available on this net. Is there a total list of what is and isn't available? How can I subscribe to something I've heard of but not seen on the net? And on a side note, what does "skipping unavailable article" tell me? Why is an article "unavailable"?? Thanks. Yup. Uh-huh. ----------------------------------> Funky <--------------------------------- "If at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried." reply: brooks@lclark.UUCP
eps@toaster.SFSU.EDU (Eric P. Scott) (01/08/90)
In article <876@lclark.UUCP> brooks@lclark.UUCP (Thomas Brooks) writes: >I am wondering if the list of newsgroups that comes up when I type >'rn' and the new groups that I can subscribe to are the only groups >available on this net. Is there a total list of what is and isn't >available? How can I subscribe to something I've heard of but not seen >on the net? Probably not. Probably not. Probably difficult. Each site that exchanges news decides how much or how little it wants to carry. There is no mandatory subscription list, other than news.announce.important "by definition." All news transfer is by agreement between pairs of sites. If you can't find someone that has what you want, you can't get it. The flip side of this is that cooperating sites can set up their own newgroup hierarchies. There are many regional/ geographic/institutional distributions, and these are for the most part NOT listed in what you see distributed worldwide. "Everyone knows about" Mainstream usenet: the seven hierarchies comp, misc, news, rec, sci, soc, talk are regularly enumerated in news.admin Alternative newsgroup hierarchies: see the article in news.announce.newusers Someone recently posted a large list of extant newsgroups. He omitted well over a hundred that I consider significant. --> There is *no* official list. <-- I just asked UUNET how many newsgroups it knew about--1227. I won't try and claim that's complete either. >And on a side note, what does "skipping unavailable article" tell me? >Why is an article "unavailable"?? There was an article with that number once, but it no longer exists in the news spool. It may have been canceled by its author, superseded by a newer version, expired on your system, lost to a filesystem glitch, ... "Just ain't there no more." -=EPS=-