Meeting Pearls 1/Meeting Pearls Vol 1 (1994).iso/installed_progs/text/faqs/news-answers.introduction

Internet Message Format | 1994-04-29 | 13.1 KB

Subject: Introduction to the *.answers newsgroups
Newsgroups: news.announce.newusers,news.answers,alt.answers,comp.answers,misc.answers,rec.answers,sci.answers,soc.answers,talk.answers
From: [e-mail] (Jonathan I. Kamens)
Date: 28 Apr 1994 17:35:38 GMT

Archive-name: news-answers/introduction
Version: $Id: Introduction,v 1.71 1994/04/26 18:55:36 tkoenig Exp $



                 Introduction

  This is the monthly introductory article for the moderated newsgroups
alt.answers, de.answers, comp.answers, misc.answers, news.answers,
rec.answers, sci.answers, soc.answers, and talk.answers (hereafter
collectively referred to as "*.answers").  It explains the purpose of
the newsgroups, what kinds of articles should be submitted to them, how
to submit, how to participate in the mailing list for periodic posting
maintainers, and where to find archives of *.answers postings.

  Comments about, suggestions about or corrections to this posting are
welcomed.  If you would like to ask us to change this posting in some
way, the method we appreciate most is for you to actually make the
desired modifications to a copy of the posting, and then to send us
the modified posting, or a context diff between the posted version and
your modified version (if you do the latter, make sure to include in
your mail the "Version:" line from the posted version).  Submitting
changes in this way makes dealing with them easier for us and helps to
avoid misunderstandings about what you are suggesting.



            What is news.answers?

  The news.answers newsgroup is a repository for periodic
informational postings (also called "Frequently Asked Questions"
postings, or "FAQs") from other newsgroups.

  Although it's difficult to say exactly what qualifies as an FAQ that
belongs in news.answers, the basic description is, "any posting which
answers common questions and is meant to be read by human beings."
Furthermore, FAQs cross-posted in news.answers should have meaningful
subject lines.  For example, an FAQ for rec.chess should have a
subject line saying something like "chess Frequently Asked Questions
(FAQ)," rather than just "Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)."

  For example, the comp.unix.questions "Frequently Asked Questions
about Unix - with Answers [Monthly posting]" and the
news.announce.newusers "Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on
Netiquette" belong in news.answers, as does the README file from
comp.mail.maps.  However, the comp.mail.maps map postings and the
readership statistics from news.lists do not.

  FAQ postings from any hierarchy that travels using "USENET
mechanisms" can be cross-posted to news.answers (i.e., news.answers is
not limited to postings from the comp, sci, misc, soc, talk, news and
rec hierarchies).  If an FAQ maintainer feels that his or her posting
is of interest only to people in its home hierarchy, then (s)he can
(try to) restrict the distribution of the FAQ using the Distribution
mechanism; if (s)he feels that it is of general interest, (s)he can
avoid any Distribution restrictions, in which case the FAQ might
receive a wider distribution than most postings in the hierarchy.
This is a pretty reasonable thing, considering that FAQs are often
considered the "distilled wisdom" of a newsgroup or group of
newsgroups, so a single FAQ from a hierarchy might be of wider
interest than the hierarchy as a whole.

  Where there is an ambiguity, we will decide whether or not a posting
belongs in the newsgroup.

  There are several reasons why this newsgroup exists.  They include:

* It is easier for site administrators to keep FAQs around for a long
  time if they are all cross-posted to one newsgroup.  Administrators
  can make the maximum expire time for news.answers very long, instead
  of making every newsgroup with FAQs in it have a long maximum expire
  time.

* It is easier for sites that archive FAQs to generate their archives,
  since they will need to watch just one newsgroup rather than
  scanning the entire news spool.

* It provides a "quick reference" for users, in several different
  respects.  Users who want to browse through the various FAQs that
  the USENET has to offer can do so in just one newsgroup.  Users who
  want to find an FAQ from a particular newsgroup but don't know its
  subject can search for that newsgroup in the headers of the articles
  in news.answers.

* Software for retrieving FAQs can also be simplified to use
  news.answers as the basis for FAQ searches.



           What are the other *.answers newsgroups?

  Each of the other *.answers newsgroups (alt.answers, de.answers,
  comp.answers, misc.answers, rec.answers, sci.answers, soc.answers,
talk.answers) is meant to serve as a repository for FAQ postings that
are relevant to its hierarchy.  FAQs are cross-posted to these
*.answers newsgroups IN ADDITION, rather than instead of, to
news.answers.  For example, FAQs for newsgroups in the "rec" hierarchy
are cross-posted to both rec.answers and news.answers.  There shouldn't
be any postings in these *.answers newsgroups that don't appear in
news.answers as well.

  Obviously, since all postings in these newsgroups are cross-posted
to news.answers, postings in these newsgroups must conform to the same
guidelines as postings to news.answers.

  These *.answers newsgroups have a few purposes:

* Site administrators can select which hierarchies' FAQs their sites
  receive with greater granularity than just "receive everything in
  news.answers" or "receive nothing in news.answers."  They can
  receive FAQs for some newsgroups they don't receive, without
  receiving the FAQs for all newsgroups.

* Similarly, people who wish to archive some FAQs at their sites can
  choose which postings to archive with greater granularity.

* Users who wish to read the FAQs for certain hierarchies can read
  just those hierarchies' *.answers newsgroups, rather than having to
  read news.answers and skip over the postings they don't want to see.



              How does it work?

  An FAQ maintainer who wants an FAQ to appear in news.answers submits
it to the moderators, following the guidelines in the "*.answers
submission guidelines" posting for proper submission and format of the
FAQ.

  The moderators accept the posting as-is, ask the submitter to make
modifications, or reject it completely.  If modifications are
requested, the submitter makes the modifications and resubmits the
posting to news.answers.

  FAQs that are approved are assigned a unique (to *.answers) archive
name, which the FAQ maintainer should put in an "Archive-name:" line
at the top of the FAQ.  For example, the comp.unix.questions FAQ might
be given the archive name "unix-faq", in which case "Archive-name:
unix-faq" would be added to the top of the FAQ.  Multi-part postings
will be so labeled in the "Archive-name:" line, for example,
"Archive-name: X-faq/part1".  FAQ submitters should put the
"Archive-name:" line in their postings, with a suggested archive name
in it.  For more information about choosing archive name, see the
"*.answers submission guidelines" posting.

  Once an FAQ has been approved for *.answers, its maintainer can post
it directly to the group(s) him- or herself, by indicating in the
header of the message that it was approved by the news.answers
moderators.  FAQ maintainers who don't know how to do that can contact
the news.answers moderators to find out.

  This needs to be emphasized: we will not actually post copies of
FAQs in *.answers.  Instead, our job is to approve FAQs, which are
then cross-posted by their maintainers to the *.answers, and to watch
the *.answers groups to make sure unauthorized postings do not appear
in them.  However, we will assist FAQ maintainers who would like us to
post their FAQs for them and/or who would like help in figuring out
how to properly go about posting a periodic FAQ.  (Furthermore, see
the FAQ posting service mentioned at the end of the "Submission
instructions" section of the "*.answers submission guidelines"
posting.)



            What about the mailing lists?

  If you are interested in discussion about the maintenance of USENET
periodic postings and related topics (e.g. automatic archival of such
postings), you may wish to join the "faq-maintainers" mailing list.
FAQ maintainers who post FAQs in *.answers are encouraged to join.

  If you are not interested in discussion, but you would still like to
receive announcements directed to FAQ maintainers, then you may wish
to join the "faq-maintainers-announce" list instead.  Note that
subscribers to faq-maintainers will automatically receive messages
sent to faq-maintainers-announce.

  To subscribe to or unsubscribe from one of these lists, send mail
with your request to [e-mail].  To send a
message to "faq-maintainers", write to [e-mail].  To
send a message to "faq-maintainers-announce", write to
[e-mail], with a blind carbon copy ("bcc") to
[e-mail] (if you don't know how to do this,
ask for help from someone at your site or contact us), so that replies
to your message will go to the faq-maintainers list rather than the
faq-maintainers-announce list (which should not be used for
discussion).



            Where are *.answers archived?

  All of the *.answers newsgroups are archived in the periodic posting
archive on rtfm.mit.edu [18.70.0.209].  Postings are located in the
anonymous ftp directories /pub/usenet/alt.answers,
/pub/usenet/comp.answers, etc., and are archived by "Archive-name".
Other subdirectories of /pub/usenet contain periodic postings that may
not appear in *.answers (as well as most of the *.answers postings),
saved by Subject line rather than by Archive-name.

  If you do not have anonymous ftp access, you can access the archives
by mail server as well.  Send an E-mail message to
[e-mail] with "help" and "index" in the body on
separate lines for more information.

  Other news.answers/FAQ archives (which carry some or all of the FAQs
in the rtfm.mit.edu archive), sorted by country, are:

Belgium
-------

  gopher                cc1.kuleuven.ac.be port 70
  anonymous FTP         cc1.kuleuven.ac.be:/anonymous.202
  mail-server           [e-mail]  get avail faqs

Canada
------

  gopher        jupiter.sun.csd.unb.ca port 70

France
------

  anonymous ftp        cnam.cnam.fr:/pub/FAQ
               grasp1.univ-lyon1.fr:/pub/faq
              grasp1.univ-lyon1.fr:/pub/faq-by-newsgroup
  gopher        gopher.univ-lyon1.fr, port 70
  mail server        [e-mail]

Germany
-------

  anonymous ftp        ftp.Germany.EU.net:/pub/newsarchive/news.answers
            ftp.informatik.uni-muenchen.de:/pub/comp/usenet/news.answers
            ftp.uni-paderborn.de:/doc/FAQ
            ftp.saar.de:/pub/usenet/news.answers (local access only)
  gopher        gopher.Germany.EU.net, port 70.
              gopher.uni-paderborn.de
  mail server        [e-mail]
            [e-mail]
            [e-mail]
  World Wide Web    http://www.Germany.EU.net:80/
  FSP            ftp.Germany.EU.net, port 2001
  gopher index        gopher://gopher.Germany.EU.net:70/1.archive
            gopher://gopher.uni-paderborn.de:70/0/Service/FTP

Mexico
------
  anonymous ftp        mtecv2.mty.itesm.mx:/pub/usenet/news.answers

The Netherlands
---------------

  anonymous ftp        ftp.cs.ruu.nl:/pub/NEWS.ANSWERS
               ftp.win.tue.nl:/pub/usenet/news.answers
  gopher        ftp.win.tue.nl, port 70
            gopher.win.tue.nl, port 70
  mail server        [e-mail]

Switzerland
-----------

  anonymous ftp        nic.switch.ch:/info_service/usenet/periodic-postings
  anonymous UUCP    chx400:ftp/info_service/Usenet/periodic-postings
  mail server        [e-mail]
  telnet        nic.switch.ch, log in as "info"


Taiwan
------

  anonymous ftp        nctuccca.edu.tw:/USENET/FAQ

United States
-------------

  anonymous ftp        ftp.uu.net:/usenet
  World Wide Web    http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu:80/hypertext/faq/usenet/top.html

  If you decide to archive *.answers and make them available to people
for anonymous ftp, mail archive server or something else, please let
us know so we can mention your archive in this posting.

  Note that the periodic posting archives on rtfm.mit.edu are also
accessible via WAIS (the database name is "usenet" on port 210).  If
you don't know what WAIS is, don't worry about it, although you can
look in comp.infosystems.wais if you're curious.  And don't write to
us and ask, please; we unfortuately already have too many things to
deal with without having to answer questions about other people's
software.

  Thanks to the following people for running the various FAQ archives
mentioned above:

  Martin Berli <[e-mail]>
  Torsten Blum <[e-mail]>
  Frederic Chauveau <[e-mail]>
  Ingo Dressler <[e-mail]>
  Thomas A. Fine <[e-mail]>
  J. Anthony Fitzgerald <[e-mail]>
  Armin Gruner <[e-mail]>
  Hank P. Penning <[e-mail]>
  Juan G Ruiz Pinto <[e-mail]>
  James R. Revell, Jr. <[e-mail]>
  Thomas Thissen <[e-mail]>
  Herman Van Uytven <[e-mail]>
  Arjan de Vet <[e-mail]>
  <[e-mail]>

--
        [e-mail] (Ping Huang)
        [e-mail] (Jonathan I. Kamens)
        [e-mail] (Thomas Koenig)
        [e-mail] (Aliza R. Panitz)
        [e-mail] (Paul W. Schleck)

            -- the *.answers moderation team