Amiga Plus 1995 #2/Amiga Plus CD - 1995 - No. 2.iso/internet/faq/englisch/answers-introduction

Text File | 1995-04-11 | 15.0 KB | 355 lines

Archive-name: news-answers/introduction
Version: $Id: Introduction,v 1.88 1995/01/18 17:19:56 pshuang Exp $
Posting-Frequency: monthly

[The most recent version of this document is posted periodically in
the *.answers newsgroups, including news.answers, and in
news.announce.newusers.  It can also obtained by anonymous FTP as
rtfm.mit.edu:/pub/usenet/news.answers/news-answers/introduction.  If
you do not have access to anonymous FTP, you can retrieve it by
sending email to [e-mail] with the command "send
usenet/news.answers/news-answers/introduction" in the message.]

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Introduction

  This is the introductory posting 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 postings can be found in them, how to
submit new postings for them, 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.

------------------------------

Subject: What is news.answers?

  The news.answers newsgroup serves as a repository for periodic
informational postings (many of which are called "Frequently Asked
Questions", or "FAQ's") from other Usenet newsgroups.

  Although it's difficult to say exactly what qualifies as a posting
that belongs in news.answers, the basic description is, "any article
which answers common questions and is meant to be read by human
beings."  Furthermore, postings cross-posted in news.answers should
have subject lines that describe their content.  For example, an FAQ
posting 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 "Unix - Frequently Asked
Questions...." postings 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, since
they are not primarily intended for human perusal.

  Periodic informational postings from any hierarchy that travels
using "Usenet mechanisms" may be appropriate for cross-posting to
news.answers (i.e., news.answers is not limited to postings from the
comp, sci, misc, soc, talk, news and rec hierarchies).  Where there is
any ambiguity, the *.answers moderators 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 periodic
     informational postings 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 periodic informational postings in it have a
     long maximum expire time.

   * It is easier for sites to archive periodic informational
     postings, 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 periodic
     informational postings that the Usenet has to offer can do so in
     just one newsgroup.  Or, 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 postings in news.answers.

   * Software for retrieving periodic informational postings can also
     be simplified to use news.answers as the basis for searches.

------------------------------

Subject: 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 postings that are
relevant to its hierarchy.  Postings are cross-posted to these
*.answers newsgroups IN ADDITION to, rather than instead of,
news.answers.  For example, postings 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 additional purposes:

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

   * Similarly, people who wish to archive some but not all periodic
     informational postings at their sites can choose which postings
     to archive with greater granularity, in a simple fashion.

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

------------------------------

Subject: How does it work?

  A periodic posting maintainer who wants his or her posting(s) to
appear in news.answers (and other *.answers newsgroups) submits it to
the moderators, following the guidelines in the "*.answers submission
guidelines" article for proper submission and format of the posting's
headers.  The guidelines article is periodically posted to news.answers;
it can also be retrieved from rtfm.mit.edu archives with anonymous FTP
as /pub/usenet/news.answers/news-answers/guidelines.  [If someone does
not access to anonymous FTP, they can retrieve it by sending email to
[e-mail] with the command "send
usenet/news.answers/news-answers/guidelines" in the message.]

  The moderators may accept the posting as-is, ask the submitter to
make modifications to the headers, or reject it completely.  If header
modifications are requested, the submitter makes the modifications and
resubmits the posting.  Once a posting has been approved for *.answers,
the moderators will explain how to indicate in the header of the message
that it was approved by the *.answers moderators, and the maintainer
can then post it directly to the group(s) him- or herself thereafter.

  This needs to be emphasized, as it marks a very important difference
between how the *.answers moderated newsgroups work and how most
moderated Usenet newsgroups work: we will not actually post copies of
postings which appear in *.answers.  Instead, our job is to approve
such postings (which are then cross-posted by their maintainers
directly into the *.answers newsgroups) and to watch over the
*.answers groups for problem postings.  We are happy to render
assistance to maintainers who have problems figuring out to go about
posting a periodic informational posting as painlessly as possible,
however.  (For example, the "*.answers submission guidelines" points
at several software packages available to simplify posting articles on
a regular basis; we also maintain a specialized server which can
periodically post articles, for people who cannot install additional
software packages to help them manage their postings.)

------------------------------

Subject: Is there a forum to discuss issues related to FAQs?

  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.
Maintainers of articles cross-posted into *.answers are especially
encouraged to join.  If you are not interested in discussion, but you
would still like to receive announcements directed to such
maintainers, then you may wish to join the "faq-maintainers-announce"
list instead.  Note that subscribers to faq-maintainers will
automatically receive all messages sent to faq-maintainers-announce;
there is no need to subscribe to both mailing lists.

  To subscribe to or unsubscribe from one of these lists, send mail
with your request to [e-mail].  Your request
will be processed by a human being -- therefore, any understandable
format will work.  (An automated list handler may be used in the
future.)

  You can access the archives of the faq-maintainers list in
rtfm.mit.edu:/pub/faq-maintainers via anonymous FTP.

------------------------------

Subject: Where are postings to *.answers archived?

  All of the *.answers newsgroups are archived in the periodic posting
archive on rtfm.mit.edu [18.181.0.24].  (Please always reference the
hostname rtfm.mit.edu, as IP addresses and canonical names will change
in the future, but rtfm.mit.edu will remain correct.)

  Postings are located in the anonymous FTP directories
/pub/usenet/alt.answers, /pub/usenet/comp.answers, etc., and are saved
by the "Archive-name" lines contained within the postings.  Other
subdirectories of /pub/usenet archive postings by the normal (i.e.,
non-*.answers) newsgroup(s) they are posted to; the postings are saved
by Subject line instead of "Archive-name".  These other directories
contain many periodic informational postings not cross-posted to
*.answers, but which are listed in the List of Periodic Informational
Postings (itself periodically posted to the news.lists and
news.answers newsgroups).

  For example, a posting with the subject "Bar Frequently Asked
Questions", cross-posted to the newsgroups comp.bar, comp.answers, and
news.answers, with archive name "bar/general-faq", can be retrieved
via anonymous FTP as

      rtfm.mit.edu:/pub/usenet/news.answers/bar/general-faq
        or as
      rtfm.mit.edu:/pub/usenet/comp.bar/Bar_Frequently_Asked_Questions

  If you do not have access to anonymous FTP, you can access the
archives using the rtfm.mit.edu mail server.  The above example
posting could be retrieved with the mail server command "send
usenet/news.answers/bar/general-faq".  For more information, send
email to [e-mail] with "help" and "index" in the body
on separate lines.

  Note: due to the excessive loads imposed on the machine, the ability
to access and search the Usenet archives on rtfm.mit.edu via the WAIS
protocol has been disabled indefinitely.

  Other *.answers and periodic informational postings "mirror"
archives (which carry some or all of the postings in the rtfm.mit.edu
archive) are listed here, sorted by country.  It is usually faster and
less wasteful of network resources to use an archive located in your
country, or on your continent.

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

Finland
-------
anonymous FTP   ftp.funet.fi:/pub/doc/rtfm

France
------
anonymous FTP   ftp.univ-lyon1.fr:/pub/faq
                ftp.univ-lyon1.fr:/pub/faq-by-newsgroup
                ftp.pasteur.fr:/pub/FAQ
gopher          gopher.insa-lyon.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

Korea
-----
anonymous FTP   hwarang.postech.ac.kr:/pub/usenet/news.answers

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

The Netherlands
---------------
anonymous FTP   ftp.cs.ruu.nl:/pub/NEWS.ANSWERS
gopher          gopher.win.tue.nl, port 70
mail server     [e-mail]
WWW/search    http://www.cs.ruu.nl/cgi-bin/faqwais

Sweden
------
anonymous FTP   ftp.sunet.se:/pub/usenet

Switzerland
-----------
anonymous FTP   ftp.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   ftp.edu.tw:/USENET/FAQ
mail server     [e-mail]

United Kingdon
--------------
anonymous FTP   src.doc.ic.ac.uk:/usenet/news-faqs/
FSP             src.doc.ic.ac.uk port 21
gopher          src.doc.ic.ac.uk port 70.
mail server     [e-mail]
telnet          src.doc.ic.ac.uk login as sources
World Wide Web  http://src.doc.ic.ac.uk/usenet/news-faqs/

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.

------------------------------

Subject: Acknowledgements

  Thanks to the following people for running some of 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)

            -- the *.answers moderation team

------------------------------

End of "Introduction to the *.answers newsgroups" Digest
********************************************************