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- From: barr@visi-dot-com.invalid (David Barr)
- Newsgroups: alt.config,alt.answers,news.answers
- Subject: So You Want to Create an Alt Newsgroup
- Supersedes: <alt-creation-guide_950371381@visi.com>
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- Message-ID: <alt-creation-guide_997583011@visi.com>
- Summary: This is a guide for anyone interested in creating a newsgroup
- within the alt.* hierarchy. It is posted every 14 days.
- Article-Names: alt.config:intro
- Date: 11 Aug 2001 21:23:31 -0500
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- Version: $Id: alt-creation-guide,v 1.52 2001/04/20 15:54:52 barr Exp barr $
- Archive-Name: alt-creation-guide
-
- This FAQ is Copyright 1995 by David Barr and The Pennsylvania State
- University. This document may be reproduced, so long as it is kept in
- its entirety and in its original format.
-
- There are no Guidelines or Rules for creating alt groups. There is no
- one "in charge" of the alt hierarchy. The key to creating a successful
- alt newsgroup depends only on convincing the thousands of news
- administrators across the globe to carry your newsgroup. Here are some
- tips that will help you achieve this.
-
- This article is based on common-sense and real-life experience. This
- is not an attempt to codify rules or guidelines for alt, but merely a
- guide to help people get the most out of alt, as well as a reflection
- of some established procedures.
-
- This guide is split onto three parts. The first part covers some
- technical background as to why alt is the way it is, and how it fits
- into the larger Usenet.
-
- The second section lists many common reasons proposed alt groups are
- rejected. Some are technical, and some are philosophical.
-
- The third section includes some miscellaneous suggestions on making
- your alt group achieve the widest audience possible.
-
- This guide is also available on the World Wide Web at:
- http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/~barr/alt-creation-guide.html. Note new
- address!!
-
- You can use use the e-mail server at rftm.mit.edu to request the FAQ
- if you do not have access to the web. Send an email message to
- mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu, with the following text in the body of the
- message:
-
- send usenet/alt.config/So_You_Want_to_Create_an_Alt_Newsgroup
-
- 1. Technical background
-
- * What is alt?
- Contrary to popular belief, "alt" is not named because it is for
- "alternative" topics. Back during the dawn of the modern Usenet,
- it was decided that newsgroups should be created by following a
- clearly defined set of "Guidelines", involving formal discussions
- and a voting procedure. There was a significant number of people
- who felt that there should be a provision for a place where people
- could create groups without having to go through any discussion or
- votes. Thus alt was born. It is a hierarchy that is "alternative"
- to the "mainstream" (comp,misc,news, rec,soc,sci,talk) hierarchy.
- "ALT stands for 'Anarchists, Lunatics, and Terrorists'." -
- ziegast@uunet.uu.net (Eric Ziegast)
- * Votes? Did someone say vote?
- Let me repeat. There are no votes in alt. Period. If you want to
- gather an "opinion poll" for your own purposes to see how popular
- the group will be, great. Do not post votes to alt.config. Every
- few months someone says "hey I've got a great idea for a newsgroup
- alt.widget, what do you think?". Someone responds "I vote yes!",
- causing a chain-reaction of posts to alt.config, lasting for days
- or weeks. These serve no purpose but to annoy readers of
- alt.config, and to distribute dozens of messages across the globe
- that should have ended up in someone's mailbox instead. Please,
- use a Followup-To: poster in your header and gather votes by
- e-mail. Then post a summary after a week or two.
- * News Administrators:
- Alt newsgroups are not created everywhere all at once. Each site
- has a news administrator, who ultimately decides whether to carry
- a new newsgroup on that site. Nevertheless, for simplicity, many
- sites automatically honor all requests to create a new group and
- (by default) ignore all requests to remove groups. Newsadmins can
- be very busy people who don't need the hassle of hand-approving
- every group. Thus, alt newsgroups are not necessarily created in a
- way that is fair, or just, or logical. That's life.
- * How do alt groups get created?
- Like any group in Usenet, a group gets created (typically) when
- someone sends out a special "control" message to "newgroup" it.
- This is injected into the news system mostly like any other
- article that you read, except it has special syntax. Different
- sites on the net behave differently when one of these messages
- arrives. The news software has various ways of acting
- automatically on the message based on who sent it, and what
- hierarchy the group to be created is in (alt in our case). With
- respect to alt, some sites will automatically honor any "newgroup"
- control message it sees, and some will mail the message to the
- news admin who will make the decision to carry the group or not.
- Read on on the section "Some Postitive Suggestions." Do not ask me
- how to send a control message, because I won't answer you. I don't
- have the hours it takes to go back and forth finding out what kind
- of news system you have, what kind of access you have to the
- system, and if you've followed the other guidelines as specified
- in this document. For more information, check out
- http://www.gweep.bc.ca/~edmonds/usenet/good-newgroup.html.
- * Newsgroup Name Components:
- A newsgroup name, e.g. alt.foo.bar-bar.baz, is made up of a series
- of dot-separated components, in this case alt, foo, bar-bar, and
- baz. The articles in newsgroups are usually stored in your
- machine's directory hierarchy. Basically, every component of the
- newsgroup name corresponds to a directory or subdirectory of the
- same name, and that subdirectory typically takes up 512 or more
- bytes on the machine all by itself. Also, since accessing any
- group requires eventually reading the contents of the directory,
- if there are lots of subdirectories off of alt access for any
- single article in alt can theoretically suffer a performance hit.
- Also, some newsreaders are hierarchically organized. To read
- alt.folklore.computers, you select alt, then select folklore, then
- computers. If there are lots of needless top-level components
- (e.g. More than four levels deep), then this is more work for the
- person reading news.
- * What is a newsgroup name for?
- A newsgroup is a collection of articles with a common purpose. A
- name for a newsgroup serves several purposes.
- + It tells those who want to read the group that this group is
- for them.
- + It tells those who do not want to read the group that this
- group is not for them.
- + It classifies similar groups together so that:
- o the group name can convey more meaning than just what
- can fit in 14 letters. (e.g. alt.music.monkees vs.
- alt.monkees)
- o similar groups can be placed logically nearer to each
- other in sorted or hierarchical listings.
- o It makes those who are interested in various aspects of
- a more general classification more able to find specific
- groups. (For example, those interested in philosophy can
- search for "philosophy" in the newsgroup name to find
- general groups as well as those about specific
- philosphies like alt.philosophy.zen)
- o The top-level hieararchy is not a jumbled mess of
- thousands of newsgroups, with often ambiguous names.
- o Small sites can more easily choose the kinds of
- newsgroups they want to get fed. (e.g. only alt.tv.*,
- and alt.sex.*, or no alt.binaries.*)
- * Newsgroup Longevity:
- There are some people who insist that once an alt newsgroup is
- created, it can never be destroyed, no matter what. These people
- make sure that whenever someone tries to remove a group, it gets
- re-created. Even if these people were not on the net, occasional
- mistakes (in such situations as people setting up new sites) can
- cause almost-dead newsgroups to get revived everywhere. Thus, alt
- groups are effectively immortal, at least for the foreseeable
- future; they can't be removed or even re-named. Alt groups never
- die, they just fade away. However, some alt groups fade away
- faster than others.
-
- 2. Common Reasons Proposed Groups are Rejected
-
- * "Harmful" newsgroup names:
- Newsgroup names which have components that are composed of the
- characters other than the letters 'a' through 'z', plus the
- characters '-' and '+' are considered non-standard and not
- encouraged. Numbers may be used as long as there are no
- all-numeric components. (e.g. alt.2600 is not valid) Some odd
- characters can tickle bugs in some software, or require news
- admins to make special modifications in order to carry the group.
- Newsgroup components must be non-empty. (like "alt..foo") One joke
- group, ".cabal", was created and lots of software mysteriously
- stopped working in bizarre fashion.
- * Component Too Long:
- Some systems cannot handle a newsgroup name component that is
- longer than 14 characters. Thus alt.fan.bgcrisis (length of
- "bgcrisis" = 8) instead of alt.fan.bubblegum-crisis (length of
- "bubblegum-crisis" = 16). This restriction may be becoming less
- and less critical, as software like INN handles this better. C
- news unfortunately enforces this limit, and makes it hard to
- accommodate exceptions. The author has no immediate plans to
- change this limitation. One proposed revision of RFC 1036 proposed
- to formalize the 14 character limit, and some have started
- removing or not accepting newsgroups which exceed this limit.
- * Useless Components:
- If you take away components at the end of the name, you should not
- be left with a directory name that is unlikely to have any other
- newsgroups in it. Thus alt.fan.bg-crisis instead of
- alt.fan.bubble.gum.crisis (other "alt.fan.bubble" newsgroups?). In
- other words, don't use a dot as a word separator, use a dash.
- * Joke/Revenge/Shock Group:
- Because of newsgroup longevity (see below), newsgroups which are
- started just to get people to laugh at the name, and/or to get
- revenge on some specific person, and/or to shock people, are
- discouraged. They tend to generate a flurry of articles
- (sometimes) for a maybe even a month or two, but quickly die.
- * ".word.word.word" Ending:
- The first group was "alt.swedish.chef.bork.bork.bork". Since then,
- dozens of lookalike groups have been created. This was kind of
- funny at first (5 years ago) but the joke is old.
- * "All-numeric part of newsgroup name:"
- There is a technical reason why this is a bad idea. Most newsgroup
- articles are stored as numbered files in a directory - for
- example, article 119 of group "alt.indianapolis.500" would be
- stored on most Unix systems as
- "/usr/spool/news/alt/indianapolis/500/119". Other systems store
- articles in a similar manner. This creates a problem for some
- systems where "alt.indianapolis" might be a valid newsgroup, since
- "alt/indianapolis/500" would supposedly mean the 500th article in
- alt.indianapolis. While this isn't expressly against the rules of
- newsgroup naming today, there is a proposal in the works that
- intends to make significant changes and more strict specification
- of news, and this restriction is in place in the new proposal. If
- you want your group to survive, you may wish to plan for the
- future. See "Further Reading" at the end of this FAQ for more
- information.
- * Top-Level Mess:
- There are dozens of newsgroups named alt.something, where
- something is a very specialized subject. Wouldn't it be nice if
- there were some classification scheme for them? Well, there is;
- you can name your group alt.food.something, or
- alt.sport.something, or whatever.
- * alt.acronym groups:
- Related to "Top-Level Mess" is the attempt to name the newsgroup
- based on some acronym. (alt.acm, alt.aclu) This is extremely
- unwise. First off, an acronym is not a good identifier of what a
- newsgroup is about. Groups like these tend to have a significant
- amount of traffic devoted to answering "hey, I just found this
- group alt.abd, what's this group about?" Weekly FAQ postings don't
- help. Remember alt is a worldwide hierarchy. Just because an
- acronym is popular in the US, doesn't make it recognizable to most
- people in the rest of the world. Second, acronyms are not unique.
- You'd be surprised how many trade acronyms there are, especially
- in the chemical and medical professions. One person's organization
- is another person's chemical or disease. Third, alt.acronym groups
- are hard to find when you're just browsing around. If they're
- interested in chemistry, people will search for 'chem' in the
- newsgroup name, not 'acs'. (American Chemical Society) See below
- for suggestions.
- * Big 8 Move Threat:
- Because of newsgroup longevity, many newsadmins will actually
- oppose creation of a group if you suggest you may want to move it
- to the "big-8" hierarchy (rec, soc, talk etc.) sometime in the
- future. Try to create it there first. On the other hand, some
- newsadmins will then suggest you try out an alt group before
- trying to create a "big-8" group.
- * Extremely Limited Interest:
- Yes, alt groups can be created for subjects that the "big-8"
- hierarchy wouldn't touch, but if the discussion you propose is
- extremely faddish, or silly, or of extremely limited or regional
- interest, some newsadmins may oppose it.
- More on "local" or "regional" groups in alt. Usually they are a
- bad idea. Remember that your articles will be traveling across the
- globe, on the disks of hundreds of thousands of machines. People
- in Saudi Arabia generally don't care much about great places to
- eat in Houston, Texas, USA.
- * Not Proposed in alt.config:
- Some newsadmins will not create any groups that haven't been
- discussed in alt.config (and after waiting several days for the
- responses). Posting your idea for a new group to alt.config is a
- very good idea anyway. Someone may have already created the group
- you proposed, or something similar. They may also point you to a
- mailing list that you might not have known about. They also will
- probably tell you if your group is poorly named.
- Eric Ziegast has this to say about alt.config:
-
- "You don't have to take their advice, but then again, who wants to
- start a fight? At least when people discuss a group first in
- alt.config, news admins throughout the world can decide whether or
- not to accept/feed your group if/when it's created. If people like
- your group suggestion, you will be considered a net.hero, and your
- group will likely exist until the end of time (which is currently
- January 2038 for Unix)."
- * "If Other Silly Newsgroup Deserves To Exist, Then So Does Mine"
- Since anyone can create a newsgroup in alt without fanfare,
- frequently anyone does. It's not a question of whether either
- newsgroup "deserves" existence. Think carefully about this point:
- you're willfully likening your proposal to all the silly and
- ridiculous newsgroups that already exist in the alt hierarchy. If
- you really want people to take you seriously, don't you think you
- can find a better argument?
- * "But No One's Forced To Accept It" Considered Irrelevant:
- Sure, no newsadmin has to accept your group if they don't want to;
- but the newsadmins are going to curse you for the hassle of having
- to decide on it -- when it gets created and every time it gets
- re-created. Also consider the consequence on the readers of the
- newsgroup. If their articles are only getting to a small minority
- of sites, is it even worth it?
- * "But All These People Agree" Considered Irrelevant:
- You might get 20 people who haven't read this FAQ to agree that
- your newsgroup is a good idea. This isn't likely to convince
- anyone either, if any of the reasons above apply.
-
- 3. Some Positive Suggestions
-
- * Propose your group in alt.config. Be sure to include the proposed
- newsgroup name or topic for the group in the Subject line. Listen
- to constructive criticisms. Wait at week or so before acting on
- it. News propagation is not instantaneous, it sometimes takes as
- long as a week just for an article to be sent out and a followup
- to be sent back. Beware, the "discussions" in alt.config can seem
- very petty, vindictive, and altogether unpleasant at times.
- Alt.config is frequented by news admins, news.wannabes, net.gods,
- and net.idiots. Sometimes it's a wonder that anything useful comes
- out of it, but the alternative is total anarchy and mob ethics.
- Look past the ad hominem attacks, the finger pointing, the name
- calling, and political posturing. There are actually a few people
- in alt.config with good ideas on creating groups.
- * Look for an appropriate place in existing alt hierarchies.
- alt.binaries, .books, .comp, .culture, .fan, .games, .lang,
- .music, .politics, .religion, .sex, .society, and .tv are all
- fairly well accepted. Keep top-level hierarchies as broad as
- possible.
- * If the group your proposing is specific to the United States, then
- consider using the growing us.* hierarchy. Post your idea to
- us.config.
- * Put groups about sports under alt.sport. Put groups about
- individual sports teams under alt.sports (plural).
- * Spell the newsgroup name correctly. (or at least choose the most
- popular spelling :-) )
- * And please, try using existing Big 8 newsgroups, existing alt
- newsgroups, or mailing lists before insisting on creating another
- alt group. For example, don't create alt.drink.recipes when
- there's a perfectly good group already, rec.food.drink, with wider
- (and probably more well-informed) readership.
- * If you are trying to create a sub-topic of a high-traffic Big 8
- group, try to attempt to get the Big 8 group split first before
- attempting an alt group. For example, if you're tired of wading
- through rec.sport.golf for college golfing, don't try to create
- alt.sport.golf.college, try to create rec.sport.golf.college
- first. If the group is high-traffic, most likely readers will
- welcome a legitimate split.
- * If you want to create a group about something that has an acronym,
- try one of the following instead: don't use the acronym, but
- rather a generalized name of what the acronym is about
- (alt.society.civil-liberty instead of alt.aclu; spell out the
- acronym ; or put the acronym inside of a sub-hierarchy that
- clearly identifies what the group is about. (alt.autos.bmw instead
- of alt.bmw)
- * If your group is related to current events, then create the group
- under alt.current-events.*. Note that alt.current-events.* is for
- short-lived current events, not extended discussions about some
- ongoing topic that just happens to be in the news today. Remember
- that there's already an existing group for current events:
- misc.headlines.
- * If you intend people to post binaries, pictures, or other large
- files to your group, create or use an existing group under
- alt.binaries.*. You can create a group for discussion of a topic,
- just use another group under alt.binaries.* for posting of large
- files. (Example: You'd discuss a comic strip under alt.comics.*,
- but post pictures of comics under alt.binaries.pictures.comics.*.
- Newsadmins will thank you for this, as they typically expire these
- groups more quickly to compensate for their large size. It also
- allows small sites to participate in discussions about a topic,
- yet not get deluged with large files. It is generally considered
- rude to post large files to a discussion group.
- * Once you decide that it's time to create your newsgroup, contact
- your local news administrator, not me. If you are a news
- administrator, the consult your news software documentation on how
- to issue a "newgroup" control message. The format of Usenet
- messages is defined in RFC 1036, which you may want to refer to.
- Alternatively you can modify someone else's control message if you
- forget all the syntax. Just look in the "control" newsgroup. It
- would be too hard to give a cookbook recipie for sending out a
- newgroup message, given the dozens of operating systems and news
- software programs out there. Contact a knowledgeable person at
- your own site - not me. If you don't know how to reach any
- knowledgeable people at your site, (or you are the knowledgeable
- person at your site) I feel sorry for you. Try sending mail to
- "usenet" or "news". Failing that, try "postmaster" or "root".
- One thing that is nice is to include a "For your newsgroups file:"
- line in the body of the message, to automatically have news
- software enter a description for the newsgroup. Many newsreaders
- use this description. The format is:
- For your newsgroups file:
- alt.group.name.here A one-line description
- Make sure that those two lines above are each on the beginning of
- a line, and that the first line appears exactly as you see here.
- Do not include any spaces between the lines, and do not try to
- make a description which spans a line.
- * Also, many sites do NOT automatically honor "newgroup" messages;
- the news software at these sites will send mail to the news
- administrator, who will who will evaluate your request and decide
- whether or not to create the group. It is an extremely good idea
- to include a paragraph or two in the body of your control message
- explaining the purpose of the group, and if you have followed
- these guidelines. Remember that above all, for good or bad, you
- have to convince news admins to carry your group. Spending a
- little bit of extra effort will pay off. Also, it may take a
- couple of days for the control message to propagate and be acted
- upon, so don't expect instant availability of the new group,
- particularly if you post the control message on a Friday night.
-
- Epilogue by Mark Weber:
-
- Here ends the lesson.
-
- This may sound like a lot of rigamarole, and it is. The purpose is
- to discourage creation of alt groups that might be better off as
- mainstream groups, or that might be better off left uncreated.
-
- Don't take this all too seriously, though. The "alt" net is the
- last remaining refuge away from the control freaks, namespace
- purists and net.cops (like myself) that maintain and enforce the
- mainstream newsgroup guidelines.
-
- There is still some room for spontaneity out here on the "alt"
- frontier. Successful groups have been created without following
- these suggestions. Almost any non-forged, serious newgroup message
- will at least be considered by most news admins. Some groups have
- been created just on a whim. The concept behind the group better be
- good (or a least entertaining), though!
-
- For Further Reading:
-
- * There's a good guide of how to decide on a good name for your
- newsgroup, from David.W.Wright@bnr.co.uk. See "Guidelines on
- Usenet Newsgroup Names", crossposted to many newsgroups including
- alt.config, news.groups, and news.answers.
- * There exist several RFC (Request for Comments) documents that
- pertain to Usenet news. The draft proposal for the restructuring
- of Usenet news articles is also publicly available. These
- documents are not for the faint of heart, however, and are quite
- technical in nature, but if you are truly interested in how Usenet
- works then they should be a fasinating read. For more information
- on these subjects, look for the following documents. RFC documents
- are available on a number of sites, most notably
- rs.internic.net:/rfc and nic.ddn.mil:/rfc.
- * There's also "How to Write a Good Newsgroup Proposal" by
- newgroups-request@uunet.uu.net (David C Lawrence). It is posted
- regularly to news.announce.newgroups. While it is written to
- address formal RFD submissions for the so-called "Big 8"
- newsgroups, most all of the arguments contained therein apply
- equally well to alt. It's worth reading.
- * To generate a newgroup, check out "How to Write a Good Newgroup
- Message" by Brian Edmonds.
- http://www.cs.ubc.ca/spider/edmonds/usenet/good-newgroup.html.
- Credits: Based on previous work by:
- + jamie at cs.NOSPAMsfu.ca (Jamie Andrews)
- "Common Reasons Why People Oppose Proposed Alt Newsgroups"
- + ccs@aber.ac.uk (Christopher Samuel)
- "Creating a new "alt" group -- guidelines" originally by
- markw@gvlf8.gvl.unisys.com (Mark H. Weber)
- + ziegast@uunet.uu.net (Eric Ziegast)
- "Welcome to ALT"
- With submissions from:
- + twpierce@unix.amherst.edu (Tim Pierce)
- + jgeorge@nbi.com (Joe George)
-