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 Both unfortunately very out of date.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]/[group.name].gz
Example:
ftp://ftp.isc.org/pub/usenet/control/alt/alt.books.jack-london.gz
Notes:
- If your link returns a file, then a group by that name
already
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 almost every public newsgroup
control
message sent since 1992 including many that your ISP probably does
not carry.
To validate a potential new newsgroup name, this tool written by Peter
J Ross and now hosted here will check for many common problems.
http://groupsearch.alt-config.net/validator.html
To check propagation of your new group, this handy tool searches
approximately fifty different news service providers at once.
http://groupsearch.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 the first one!
http://pages.swcp.com/~dmckeon/mod-faq.html
http://web.archive.org/web/20060210104745/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: Please 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/