A quick guide to FAQs and other useful links for anyone proposing their first news group.

Start here:

Some commonly-held (mis)assumptions about alt.* and alt.config

http://nylon.net/alt/barb.htm

Full FAQs:

The current favorite amongst alt.config regulars.

http://nylon.net/alt/

Two more excellent FAQs. Both unfortunately out of date.

http://www.faqs.org/faqs/alt-creation-guide/
http://www.gweep.ca/~edmonds/usenet/good-newgroup.html

Tools and special purpose FAQs:

To check if a group already exists, construct a link from this template.

ftp://ftp.isc.org/pub/usenet/control/[hierarchy]/[full.group.name].gz

Examples:
ftp://ftp.isc.org/pub/usenet/control/alt/alt.books.jack-london.gz
ftp://ftp.isc.org/pub/usenet/control/rec/rec.crafts.metalworking.gz

Notes:

If your link returns a file, then a group by that exact name exists.
The charter, if one exists, will be in the original control message.
This template / link will also work with big-8 groups and most public hierarchies. It will not work with groups on private news servers.
The ".gz"extension simply indicates a Unix compressed file; any recent version of WinZip will open it.
ftp.isc.org is an archive of allmost every public newsgroup control message sent since 1992 including many that your ISP probably does not carry.
Groups created before 1992 will not have the original control message archived

To validate a potential new newsgroup name, this tool checks for many common syntax errors

http://pjr.lasnobberia.net/usenet/validator

To check propagation of your new group, this handy tool searches approximately fifty different news service providers at once. And will create links to isc.org for most search terms.

http://groupsearch.alt-config.net/engine.html

A testing version of Groupsearch is now up on this site. Please help test any new features!

http://www.testing.alt-config.net/engine.html

If you are considering proposing a moderated news group, please read this FAQ first.

http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/faqs/mod-pitfalls.html

If you still think you want to go this route read both of these, then
re-read Pitfalls!

http://www.swcp.com/~dmckeon/mod-faq.html
http://www.landfield.com/moderators/

Useful to proponents and a must read for future configers, a former maintainer of the ISC archives David "Tale" Lawrence discusses control messages.

ftp://ftp.isc.org/pub/usenet/CONFIG/README

For proposals that belong in the UK hierarchy: Go bug these dudes.

http://www.usenet.org.uk/

A page similar to this one with a few links I don't have.

http://nntp.aacity.net/