Usenet 1994 January/usenetsourcesnewsgroupsinfomagicjanuary1994.iso/answers/alt-creation-guide

Text File | 1993-12-21 | 14KB | 293 lines

Path: senator-bedfellow.mit.edu!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!spool.mu.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!news.cac.psu.edu!news.pop.psu.edu!news.pop.psu.edu!not-for-mail
From: [e-mail] (David Barr)
Newsgroups: alt.config,alt.answers,news.answers
Subject: So You Want to Create an Alt Newsgroup
Supersedes: <[e-mail]>
Followup-To: alt.config
Date: 21 Dec 1993 10:03:02 -0500
Organization: Penn State Population Research Institute
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Approved: [e-mail]
Expires: 8 Jan 1994 15:03:00 GMT
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
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Summary: This is a guide for anyone interested in creating a newsgroup
    within the alt.* hierarchy.  It is posted every 14 days.
Xref: senator-bedfellow.mit.edu alt.config:23392 alt.answers:1460 news.answers:16057

Version: $Id: alt-creation-guide,v 1.6 1993/12/07 00:56:50 barr Exp barr $
Archive-Name: alt-creation-guide

    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.

1. Technical background
=======================

o What is alt?
  Contrary to popular belief, "alt" is not named necessarily
  because it carries "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'."
   - [e-mail] (Eric Ziegast)

o 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 ofáposts 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.

o 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.

o 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, then this is more work for the
  person reading news.

o 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.


2. Common Reasons Proposed Groups are Rejected
==============================================

o "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.  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.

o 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 is becoming less and less critical, as softare
  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.

o 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.

o 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.

o ".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.

o Top-Level Mess:
  There are dozens of newsgroups named alt.<foo>, where <foo> 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.<foo>, or alt.sport.<foo>, or whatever.

o Big Seven 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 seven" hierarchy (rec, soc, talk etc.) sometime in the
  future.  Try to create it there first.  On the other hand, other
  newsadmins will then suggest you try out an alt group before trying
  to create a "big seven" group.

o Extremely Limited Interest:
  Yes, alt groups can be created for subjects that the "big seven"
  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.

o Not Proposed in alt.config:
  Some newsadmins will not create any groups that haven't been
  discussed in alt.config.  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.

  [e-mail] (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)."

o "But They Started It" Considered Irrelevant:
  The fact that someone else created a newsgroup with a bad name, which
  was accepted by your newsadmin for some reason, doesn't make other
  newsadmins look more kindly on your doing the same.

o "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?

o "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
============================

o Propose your group in alt.config.  Listen to constructive
  criticisms.

o Look for an appropriate place in existing alt hierarchies.
  alt.binaries, .books, .comp, .culture, .games, .lang, .music,
  .politics, .religion, .sex, .society, and .tv are all fairly
  well accepted.  Keep top-level hierarchies as broad as broad
  as possible.

o Make the component names a real hierarchy, rather than a
  message to news readers.

o Spell the newsgroup name correctly.

o And please, try using existing Big Seven newsgroups, alt newsgroups,
  or mailing lists before insisting on creating an "alt" group.

o If you group is related to current events, then create the
  group under alt.current-events.*.  You will get greater success.

o If your group contains binaries or other large files, create it under
  alt.binaries.*.  Newsadmins will thank you for it, as they typically
  expire these groups more quickly to compensate for their large size.

o Once you decide that it's time to create your newsgroup, contact your
  local news administrator.  If you are a news administrator, the
  consult your news software documentation on how to issue a "newgroup"
  control message.  Alternatively you can modify someone else's control
  message if you forget all the syntax.  Just look in the "control"
  newsgroup.

  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.

  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 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 Christopher Samuel:

  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!




Credits:
Based on previous work by:

[e-mail] (Jamie Andrews)
"Common Reasons Why People Oppose Proposed Alt Newsgroups"

[e-mail] (Christopher Samuel)
"Creating a new "alt" group -- guidelines"
originally by [e-mail] (Mark H. Weber)

with bits from

[e-mail] (Eric Ziegast)
"Welcome to ALT"
--
"It is much safer to obey than to rule." - Thomas α Kempis