home
***
CD-ROM
|
disk
|
FTP
|
other
***
search
/
Collection of Internet
/
Collection of Internet.iso
/
faq
/
rec
/
news_ans
/
guidelin
next >
Wrap
Internet Message Format
|
1994-03-29
|
37KB
Path: bloom-beacon.mit.edu!senator-bedfellow.mit.edu!cam.ov.com!jik
From: jik@cam.ov.com (Jonathan I. Kamens)
Newsgroups: news.answers,alt.answers,comp.answers,de.answers,misc.answers,rec.answers,sci.answers,soc.answers,talk.answers
Subject: *.answers submission guidelines
Supersedes: <news-answers/guidelines_762262746@rtfm.mit.edu>
Followup-To: poster
Date: 29 Mar 1994 10:24:33 GMT
Organization: OpenVision Technologies, Inc.
Lines: 811
Approved: news-answers-request@MIT.Edu
Distribution: world
Expires: 12 May 1994 09:45:43 GMT
Message-ID: <news-answers/guidelines_764934343@rtfm.mit.edu>
Reply-To: news-answers-request@MIT.Edu (the *.answers moderation team)
NNTP-Posting-Host: bloom-picayune.mit.edu
Originator: jik@bloom-picayune.MIT.EDU
Xref: bloom-beacon.mit.edu news.answers:16971 alt.answers:2256 comp.answers:4339 de.answers:50 misc.answers:516 rec.answers:4662 sci.answers:1020 soc.answers:1009 talk.answers:185
Archive-name: news-answers/guidelines
Version: $Id: guidelines,v 1.96 94/03/21 05:08:22 lcb Exp $
In order to submit an FAQ posting to the news.answers newsgroup (and
to zero or more of the other *.answers newsgroups (alt.answers,
comp.answers, de.answers, misc.answers, rec.answers, sci.answers,
soc.answers, talk.answers) along with it), you should first modify the
header of your posting to conform to the guidelines given below, in
section I. Then, you should submit your posting to us using the
instructions given below, in section II.
Once your posting is approved, you will post it directly to
news.answers and other newsgroups yourself; i.e., after approval, you
no longer have to go through us at all to post. This is explained in
more detail below.
I. Submission guidelines
A. Why the guidelines?
There are three main reasons for the guidelines:
1. Appropriateness
Only periodic informational postings that are intended to be read
by people belong in news.answers. The guidelines are meant to
prevent other types of postings, including discussion of periodic
informational postings, from appearing in the group.
2. Usefulness to people
The newsgroup should be as useful as possible to the people who
read it. Requirements such as effective "Subject:" and
"Summary:" lines (see below) further this goal.
3. Automatic archiving
One of the main points of news.answers is that it can be archived
automatically in order to build up a database of periodic
informational postings. Requirements such as the "Archive-name:"
line further that goal.
B. What the guidelines DON'T specify
These guidelines DO NOT specify a specific, required format for
the bodies of FAQ postings. Postings in *.answers are not
required to adhere to "Digest Message Format" format (Internet RFC
1153), or MIME (RFC 1341), or HTML, or SGML, or any other text
format, standard or otherwise.
This omission is intentional. Forcing all *.answers postings to
adhere to a specific format would dissuade many FAQ maintainers
from submitting their postings to *.answers. Such a result would
be in direct contradiction to the chartered purpose of *.answers;
therefore, FAQ maintainers are free to choose whatever format they
want (assuming that it is human-readable) for the bodies of their
postings.
These guidelines also DO NOT specify lower or upper limits for the
size of an acceptable FAQ posting. However, a pragmatic lower limit
is set by the requirement that the articles be useful to people. As
for a pragmatic upper limit, FAQ maintainers may wish to consider
that some part of their audience may not be able to access very
large articles at their sites due to intermediary software problems
(64KB is a common magic number), so postings larger than that may
not be able to be read by many people.
C. Required header fields
There are two "headers" in a news.answers posting. The first is
the normal header that any article posted to the USENET has. The
second header, the "auxiliary header," is separated from the first
by one or more blank lines. As far as the News software is
concerned, the auxiliary header is just part of the body of the
article; however, news.answers requires some information in it.
The requirements for each of the two headers are discussed in
detail below. Required headers are marked with "(Required)",
while optional ones are marked with "(Optional)".
1. The normal header
a. Newsgroups (Required)
We need to know exactly what will appear in the Newsgroups line
of the posting.
In addition to news.answers, your posting should be cross-posted
to the other *.answers newsgroups of hierarchies in which it is
posted. For example, a posting that is normally posted in both
rec.music.makers.synth and comp.sys.ibm.pc.soundcard should be
posted to both rec.answers and comp.answers in addition to
news.answers. Note that postings to any of the *.answers
newsgroups MUST be posted in news.answers, regardless of what
other *.answers newsgroups they also appear in.
Although the order of newsgroups on the line is not important
from the point of view of the news software, we prefer to have
news.answers listed last. The other *.answers newsgroups should
be listed directly before news.answers. Listing the primary
newsgroup(s) first improves the accuracy of newsgroup volume
statistics, provides better key information for index lists
and catalogues, and minimizes accidental postings to the
*.answers newsgroups from buggy newsreaders.
Example:
Newsgroups: comp.sys.foo,comp.answers,news.answers
Note that your Newsgroups line should NOT contain only *.answers
groups. FAQ postings should be cross-posted to *.answers from
their home newsgroups, rather than being posted separately to
*.answers.
However, if you get approval for *.answers cross-posting in the
middle of your "posting cycle," and you do not wish to wait
until the next scheduled posting time to cross-post to
*.answers, then you can post your FAQ only to *.answers. If you
choose to do this, please make sure to let us know you are going
to, and please do not do it more than once.
b. Subject (Required)
The subject line of your posting should have some meaning
outside of its home newsgroup(s). For example, instead of just
"FAQ," you might have "<x> FAQ", where "<x>" is the name of the
newsgroup or the topic being discussed.
Furthermore, important information should appear near the
beginning of the subject line, so that news readers that display
article summaries don't cut off the important information. For
example, instead of "Frequently Asked Questions about <x>," use
"<x> Frequently asked Questions."
For postings which are being split into multiple parts, you
should indicate in each posting's Subject line which part that
particular posting is, and how many parts total there are. For
this purpose, simple Arabic numberals is prefered over Roman
numerals because Arabic numberals are more easily sorted and
manipulated by software.
Example:
Subject: comp.sys.foo Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ), Part 1/2
Subject: comp.sys.foo Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ), Part 2/2
c. Followup-To (Required) and Reply-To (Optional)
Your posting must have a "Followup-To:" line in the header that
directs followups to somewhere other than *.answers. You may
choose to direct followups back to the home newsgroup(s) of the
FAQ, or to direct followups to the author of the FAQ, in which
case "Followup-To: poster" is sufficient. That means that you
actually put the word "poster" there, as specified in the RFC
which describes the format of Usenet postings. Do NOT put an
E-mail address in the "Followup-To:" field.
If you forget the "Followup-To:" and we get mailed followups to
your FAQ, we're going to get peeved at you.
Furthermore, your posting must have a valid E-mail reply address
in the header, either in the "From:" field, or if not in "From:"
then in "Reply-To:".
Example:
From: guru@foosys.com (Joe R. Programmer)
Followup-To: comp.sys.foo
Reply-To: faq-mail@foosys.com (FAQ Comments address)
In this example, "guru" apparently wants mail about the FAQ to
go to a different address than the rest of his mail. We've
shown the "From:" header, because the version of the FAQ that
you forward to us should show the "From:" header just as it will
appear when the article is actually posted.
d. Supersedes, Expires, References (Optional)
It is a good idea to use "Supersedes:" and "Expires:" header
lines to make sure that each version of your FAQ stays around
until the next time it is posted. A useful tool for this is the
Perl FAQ poster written by Jonathan Kamens. It is available
from rtfm.mit.edu, via anonymous ftp in the file
/pub/post_faq/post_faq.shar, or via mail server (send mail to
mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu with "send post_faq/post_faq.shar" in
the body).
Post_faq takes an article with its static headers (i.e., the
headers that don't change each time the article is posted)
included, adds dynamic headers to it, and posts the article.
Another utility, Ian Kluft's AUTO-FAQ package (which is also
written in Perl) provides more functionality, including
automatic splitting of large FAQs into multi-part postings. If
you're looking for something with a high level of automation to
assist you in your FAQ maintenance and posting, you might want
to try AUTO-FAQ instead of post_faq. It's available via
anonymous ftp in ftp.amdahl.com:pub/faq/auto-faq.shar.Z.
Furthermore, if you are posting a multi-part FAQ posting or a
series of related FAQ postings, it is a good idea to add a
"References:" line to all of the postings except the first one,
making the contents of that line the Message-ID of the first
posting in the series. If you do this, then people who use
threaded news readers will be able to manipulate the entire
series as a single thread, including (for example) killing the
entire thread if they're not interested or saving the entire
thread to a file with one command. The perl FAQ poster
mentioned above supports an option for doing this.
Example:
Expires: Fri, 1 May 1992 00:00:00 GMT
Supersedes: <foo-faq_701650000@foosys.com>
The date in the "Expires:" header should be far enough into the
future that a new version of the FAQ will be posted before the
one you're posting now expires. We've shown both headers in the
format the post_faq script would use. We haven't shown a
"References:" header, since the example posting we've been
presenting is not part of a multi-part FAQ; if there were a
"References:" header, it would contain a Message ID just like
the "Supersedes:" header.
e. Summary (Optional)
You are encouraged to put a summary of the contents of your
article in the Summary field of the header. Try to describe
what your FAQ discusses, and aim your description at someone who
may not actually be directly interested in the topic covered by
your FAQ. There have been discussions about using the Summary
fields of the FAQ postings in news.answers to construct a short
"catalog" of the information available through news.answers, so
think of the Summary field as a "catalog entry" for your FAQ.
Note that header fields (except for the Newsgroups field) are
allowed to span multiple lines, as long as the continuation
lines after the first start with whitespace (at least one space
or tab character).
Example:
Summary: This posting contains a list of Frequently Asked
Questions (and their answers) about Foo computers. It
should be read by anyone who wishes to post to the
comp.sys.foo newsgroup.
2. The auxiliary header
The auxiliary header looks like the main message header (i.e.
"Field-name: field-value"), but is separated from the main
message header by a blank line, as well as followed by a blank
line separating it from the rest of the body of the message.
The auxiliary header of this posting is:
Archive-name: news-answers/guidelines
Version: $Id: guidelines,v 1.96 94/03/21 05:08:22 lcb Exp $
a. Archive-name (Required)
In order to be cross-posted in news.answers, your posting must
include an auxiliary archival header with an "Archive-name:"
field.
The purpose of the archive name is two-fold. First of all, it
specifies where the FAQ should be stored in archives of the
news.answers newsgroup. Second, it should give people, even
people who do not read the home newsgroup of the FAQ, a pretty
good idea of what's in it. Therefore, abbreviations which will
only be recognized by people already familiar with the topic
covered by the FAQ should be avoided if possible.
The archive name should be composed of one or more one-word
(i.e., no spaces) components, separated by slashes. Each
component should be 14 characters or less in length, if
possible, but this is not a strict requirement; if 14 characters
isn't enough, then each component should be unique in the first
14 characters (i.e., two archive names should never be identical
after their components are all truncated to 14 characters).
Avoid periods in the archive name, because some operating
systems choke on them; if you must have word separators, use
hyphens or underscores rather than periods.
The archive namespace is hierarchical; for example, there are a
number of lists of bookstores in the "books/stores" directory of
the namespace, and all of their archive names start with
"books/stores/". Avoid using slashes in your archive name
unless you are taking advantage of the hierarchical nature of
the namespace, i.e., unless you have multiple related FAQ
postings which should appear in a single directory in the
archive namespace.
Multi-part FAQs should be named "name/part1", "name/part2", etc.
Alternatively, if the parts of the FAQ are split by topic rather
than by size, then you can use short topic names rather than
"part1", "part2", etc.
If you post a diff for your FAQ, it should be named "name/diff".
If you post multiple diffs for a multi-part FAQ, they should be
named "name/diff1", "name/diff2", etc. (if you want to use just
one diff for a multi-part FAQ, you can just use "name/diff" as
its name). If you post a diff to a one-part posting, then the
original FAQ should be named "name/part1" (or "name/faq", or
whatever else you think is appropriate, as long as we approve
it) and the diff should be named "name/diff".
Consider these examples:
Topic Archive name(s)
----------------------------------- ------------------------------
comp.ai FAQ ai-faq/part1
ai-faq/part2
ai-faq/part3
rec.travel.air FAQs, various topics air-travel/bucket-shops
air-travel/cheap-tickets/part1
air-travel/cheap-tickets/part2
air-travel/faq
air-travel/jetlag-prevention
air-travel/na-airport-codes
air-travel/world-airport-codes
soc.culture.esperanto FAQ esperanto-faq
Please pick the archive name that you would like to use for your
posting, and include the "Archive-name:" line with that archive
name in it, when submitting to news.answers. If there is some
problem with it, or if we would like to suggest an alternate
name, we will let you know.
Example:
Archive-name: foo-faq
If your posting already has an "Archive-name:" line which is not
a valid news.answers archive name and you do not want to change
it, or if you want the "Archive-name:" line you add to contain
the name of a file in your own archives rather than in the
news.answers archives, you can use a
"News-answers-archive-name:" header line instead.
b. Other archive names (Optional)
The software which builds the FAQ archive on rtfm.mit.edu (see
the "Introduction to the *.answers newsgroups" posting for more
information about it) automatically uses the "Archive-name:"
line to determine the file name in which to save an FAQ, when
saving it in any of the "answers" newsgroups (news.answers,
rec.aviation.answers, etc.).
Furthermore, if you have a field of the form
"Newsgroup-name-archive-name: name" in your FAQ's auxiliary
header (see the example below), the specified archive name will
be used to save in the specified newsgroup. Such a
newsgroup-specific archive name overrides any generic
"Archive-name:" line.
When an archive name for an FAQ cannot be determined in either
of the ways mentioned above, the Subject line of the posting
(with some minor modifications) is used as its file name.
For example, if you have this in your normal header:
Newsgroups: comp.foo,comp.bar,comp.answers,news.answers
Subject: Comp.foo FAQ
and this in your auxiliary header:
Archive-name: foo-faq
Comp-bar-archive-name: bar-faq
then the posting will be saved as "foo-faq" in comp.answers and
news.answers (because they are both "answers" newsgroups and
will therefore use the Archive-name line), as "bar-faq" in
comp.bar, and as "Comp.foo_FAQ" in comp.foo.
If you do decide to specify additional archive names in your
posting, please obey the guidelines for archive names given
above.
c. Posting-Frequency (Optional)
A "Posting-Frequency" field in the auxiliary header can give
the reader a good idea of how often your FAQ is posted, for example
"every 14 days" or "monthly" (see section D, below).
Example:
Posting-Frequency: monthly
If you specify this field, it will be automatically copied into
the "List of Periodic Informational Postings".
d. Last-modified, Version (Optional)
You can have other fields in the auxiliary header, if you want.
Two common ones are "Last-modified:" and "Version:".
Example:
Last-modified: 1992/03/25
Version: 2.5
3. Sample FAQ headers
Putting together the examples We've given above, your FAQ's
headers (or, at least, the ones you submit to us) might look like
this:
From: guru@foosys.com (Joe R. Programmer)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.foo,comp.answers,news.answers
Subject: comp.sys.foo FAQ
Followup-To: comp.sys.foo
Reply-To: faq-mail@foosys.com (FAQ Comments address)
Summary: This posting contains a list of Frequently Asked
Questions (and their answers) about Foo computers. It
should be read by anyone who wishes to post to the
comp.sys.foo newsgroup.
Expires: Fri, 1 May 1992 00:00:00 GMT
Supersedes: <foo-faq_701650000@foosys.com>
Archive-name: foo-faq
Posting-Frequency: monthly
Last-modified: 1992/03/25
Version: 2.5
Note that the blank line separating the normal header from the
auxiliary header must be completely blank, i.e., no tabs or
spaces, and that there must also be one or more completely blank
lines after the auxiliary header.
Of course, you can include in the posting header any of the other
standard USENET header fields that have not been discussed here.
D. Posting frequency
The frequency at which you choose to post your FAQ is left to your
discretion. Some FAQ maintainers find that a monthly posting,
with an Expires header to prevent each posting from going away
before its replacement is posted, is sufficient. Some other
newsgroups are so busy that a weekly posting of the FAQ is needed.
Another possibility is to post the complete FAQ relatively
infrequently, while posting a shorter pointer to it (e.g.,
providing instructions for getting it from archives) more
frequently.
If you choose to post your FAQ more frequently than once per
month, you might want to consider not cross-posting it to
*.answers every time you post. Although it may be necessary to
post the FAQ in its home newsgroup often, it is probably not
necessary to post it in *.answers as frequently.
Note, however, that if you do this, you can't use Supersedes every
time you post your FAQ, since a posting in just the FAQ's home
newsgroup should not supersede the posting in both the home
newsgroup and *.answers. Therefore, unless you're willing to have
two copies of your FAQ in your home newsgroup at all times, you
should always cross-post to *.answers (or use the system mentioned
above, cross-posting the full FAQ to *.answers and a more frequent
pointer posting just in its home newsgroup).
When submitting your FAQ, please be sure to let us know the
frequency at which you intend to post it to its home newsgroup, as
well as the frequency at which you intend to cross-post it to
*.answers (if different). The best way for this is to put this
information into the "Posting-Frequency" field of the auxiliary
header.
E. Mailing lists for FAQ maintainers
Maintainers of FAQs are strongly urged to join the faq-maintainers
mailing list, which is used for discussion about the *.answers
newsgroups and the maintenance of USENET FAQs.
If you don't want to be on the discussion list, you may wish to
join the faq-maintainers-announce list, which will be used only
for announcements, instead. Note that subscribers to
faq-maintainers automatically receive messages sent to
faq-maintainers-announce.
Traffic on faq-maintainers tends to come in bursts -- it averages
three to four messages per week, but during a burst there may be as
many as several dozen messages in a single day, and in between such
bursts, there may be weeks of no messages at all.
Traffic on faq-maintainers is very, very low (e.g., it is not unheard
of for six months to pass with no messages sent to the list).
When submitting your FAQ, make sure to let us know whether or not
you want to be on one of the lists.
F. List of Periodic Informational Postings
Unless you tell us otherwise, We will add any postings submitted
to *.answers to the "List of Periodic Informational Postings"
(LoPIP) articles which appear in news.answers, news.lists, and
news.announce.newusers.
If you do not have copies of the LoPIP postings and would like to
get them, to see what they're like or to check if your FAQ is
already listed, see the instructions at the end of this message.
G. Article approval
Once all of the other issues listed in this posting are resolved,
you will be given approval to cross-post your FAQ to *.answers.
You will have to indicate in the header of your posting that such
approval has been given, or the posting will be mailed to us
instead of posted.
Note that we are intentionally being somewhat vague about what
this entails. When we approve your posting for *.answers, we will
provide more specific instructions.
H. Checklist
Following is a checklist for your *.answers submission. Please
go through all the questions; if you answer "no" to any of
them, look at the relevant section of this article again, and
correct your submission accordingly.
Does the posting have a message header?
Does the posting have a Newsgroups line?
Does the Newsgroups line contain other than *.answers
newsgroups?
Does the Newsgroups line contain news.answers?
Are the *.answers newsgroups listed last on the
Newsgroups line?
Does the Newsgroups line contain all relevant *.answers
newsgroups?
Does the Newsgroups line contain inappropriate *.answers
newsgroups?
Does the posting have a Subject line?
Is the Subject line informative?
Is important information on the Subject line near the beginning
of the line?
Does the posting have a Followup-To line?
Does the Followup-To line point not point to any
*.answers newsgroups?
Does the posting have a From or Reply-To line with a valid address?
Does the posting have an Archive-name line?
Is the auxiliary header separated from the text by a blank line?
Is the auxiliary header separated from the main header by a blank
line?
Is the Archive-name line valid?
Have you told us the frequency of your posting?
Have you told us wether you want to be on faq-maintainers or
faq-maintainers-announce?
II. Submission instructions
If you have a posting which you wish to submit to *.answers, you
should first read the guidelines listed above and modify your
posting to conform to them. Then, you should submit it by posting
it to the news.answers newsgroup, assuming that the software on the
poster's site works properly and will forward the posting to the
news.answers moderator, or by mailing it to the news.answers
submission address, news-answers@MIT.Edu. ONLY SUBMISSIONS SHOULD
BE MAILED TO THAT ADDRESS. If there is some commentary or
explanation that needs to be made, it should be mailed in a
separate message to news-answers-request@MIT.Edu, which is the
moderator contact address for any *.answers-related business.
If you post the FAQ to both *.answers and one or more other
moderated groups, you need separate approval from each of the
moderators. Wait for approval from each of them (including us)
before actually posting. In this case, you should send in the
FAQ to us via e-mail, because the submission will be sent via
e-mail to the first moderated group which appears in the
Newsgroup line.
Please submit the FAQ in a form as close as possible to how it
appears when you post it normally. This means that you should
include a complete header, with at the very least the Subject line
you normally use. We very much prefer you actually posting the
message to news.answers as you would post it normally, including
the cross-posted newsgroups, but omitting the moderation approval
header line that would cause the article to actually be posted
rather than mailed to us; this way, we will get to see exactly how
the article will look when it is actually posted in news.answers.
Also, if your FAQ does not say somewhere near the top how often it
is posted, then please let us know the frequency in separate
E-mail.
Note that if you do not indicate moderator approval in the header
of your posting, it will NOT be posted to any newsgroup, even if
you list other newsgroups on the Newsgroups line besides *.answers
groups. Therefore, you CAN and SHOULD place all Newsgroups to
which you intend to post in the Newsgroups line, in the order you
intend them to be in when you post.
We will respond, by agreeing that the FAQ belongs in *.answers
as-is, or by asking you to make minor modifications to it in order
to make it acceptable, or by rejecting it as inappropriate for
*.answers. If you are asked to make modifications, please do so
and resubmit the posting to us just as you did the first time.
We are all volunteers, doing *.answers moderation in our spare
time. Therefore, we can't always process submissions and other
*.answers - related correspondence immediately. Please don't
write to us asking whether we received your submission until at
least a week after you submitted it.
Once an FAQ has been approved for *.answers, you will post it
directly to the group yourself, by indicating in the header of the
message that it was approved by the *.answers moderator, as
described above.
If possible, try to avoid posting your FAQ at a "predictable"
time. For example, if you have decided to post it monthly, don't
automatically decide to post it on the first of every month. This
causes a flood of FAQs in *.answers (and on the net in general) at
certain times of months, and this flood is big enough to overwhelm
some smaller sites and many readers of *.answers. Therefore,
rather than picking the "obvious" time to post, pick some other,
random time during the month to do your posting.
If you have trouble posting your FAQ once it has been approved,
because your site won't let you post to a moderated newsgroup,
because you don't have good posting access, or because of any other
reason, feel free to get in touch with us and we'll try to help.
Alternatively, you can use the FAQ server which we run to help
solve such problems; you mail your FAQ or FAQs to it, and it posts
them periodically automatically. For more information about the
FAQ server, send mail to faq-server@rtfm.mit.edu with "help"
(without the quotes) in the Subject of your message.
III. Once your posting is approved
The following is a list of some situations which might occur after
your FAQ has been approved for *.answers, and what you need to do
for each one.
A. Transfer an FAQ to a new maintainer
The old maintainer should inform news-answers-request@mit.edu of
the change in maintainers. The new maintainer should read this
document (i.e., the "*.answers submission guidelines") and
inform news-answers-request@mit.edu that he has done so.
Furthermore, the new maintainer should resubmit the FAQ if he
intends to make any header changes other than changing the From
and/or Reply-To lines. The new maintainer should wait for
approval before posting.
B. Change an FAQ's posting frequency
Inform news-answers-request@mit.edu of the new frequency, unless
you have a "Posting-Frequency" field in your auxiliary header;
in that case, just change that field.
C. Change an FAQ's header(s)
1. Subject line
Inform news-answers-request@mit.edu of the new Subject line,
or resubmit the entire FAQ to news-answers@mit.edu, and wait
for approval before posting.
2. Newsgroups line
Inform news-answers-request@mit.edu of the new Newsgroups
line, or resubmit the entire FAQ to news-answers@mit.edu, and
wait for approval before posting.
3. From line, without changing maintainers
If the new From line obviously refers to the same individual
as the old one, you don't have to do anything. If it's not
obvious that the new From line refers to the same individual,
inform news-answers-request@mit.edu and wait for approval
before posting.
4. Archive-name line
Inform news-answers-request@mit.edu and wait for approval
before posting.
5. Followup-To line
As long as it exists and doesn't contain any *.answers
newsgroups in it, you don't have to do anything.
6. Other headers
As long as you don't change the overall structure of your
headers (e.g., make sure you keep an auxiliary header with
the Archive-name line in it), you don't have to do anything
about changes to other headers.
D. Add postings to or delete postings from an FAQ
1. Add a new part to a multi-part FAQ
Submit the new part to news-answers@mit.edu, or inform
news-answers-request@mit.edu if the new part's headers are
consistent with the other parts (e.g., if your Subject lines
are in the form "foo FAQ part * of *" and your archive names
look like "foo-faq/part*", and you add a new part which looks
just like the others except for a new part number, you don't
have to resubmit the new part or resubmit all the other parts
because you changed the "of *" number in their Subject
lines). Wait for approval before posting.
2. Add a diff posting
Submit it to news-answers@mit.edu. If you already have a
multi-part FAQ, choose the archive name to be consistent with
the other ones. If your archive names look like "foo-faq/part*",
the diff posting should have the archive name "foo-faq/diff". If
your FAQ had only one part before the change, add "/part1" to the
archive name (e.g. "foo-faq/part1"), and submit both the FAQ and
the diff posting.
3. Split up a single-part FAQ
Submit all the parts to news-answers@mit.edu, with archive names
in the format "foo-faq/part1", "foo-faq/part2", etc.
4. Delete a part from a multi-part FAQ
Inform news-answers-request@mit.edu. Wait for approval
before posting.
5. Terminate an FAQ (i.e., stop posting it forever)
Inform news-answers-request@mit.edu.
E. Create a new FAQ
Submit it to *.answers following the guidelines in sections I
and II above, just like you submitted your previous FAQ(s).
IV. This posting
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.
The following people provided feedback and helped to make this
posting more readable and useful:
Stan Brown <brown@NCoast.ORG>
L. Detweiler <ld231782@longs.lance.colostate.edu>
Aydin Edguer <edguer@alpha.CES.CWRU.Edu>
Mark Eckenwiler <eck@panix.com>
Tom_Lane@G.GP.CS.CMU.EDU
Cindy Tittle Moore <tittle@ics.uci.edu>
Steven D. Ourada <sourada@iastate.edu>
Edward Reid <ed@titipu.resun.com>
Ken Shirriff <shirriff@sprite.Berkeley.EDU>
Dan Tilque <dant@logos.WR.TEK.COM>
Bill Wohler <wohler@sap-ag.de>
V. Getting the "List of Periodic Informational Postings"
There are seven "List of Periodic Informational Postings"
postings:
Subject: List of Periodic Informational Postings, Part 1/7
Subject: List of Periodic Informational Postings, Part 2/7
Subject: List of Periodic Informational Postings, Part 3/7
Subject: List of Periodic Informational Postings, Part 4/7
Subject: List of Periodic Informational Postings, Part 5/7
Subject: List of Periodic Informational Postings, Part 6/7
Subject: List of Periodic Informational Postings, Part 7/7
Newsgroups: news.lists,news.announce.newusers,news.answers
They are available in the indicated USENET newsgroups, or via
anonymous ftp from rtfm.mit.edu (18.70.0.209) in the files:
/pub/usenet/news.answers/periodic-postings/part1
/pub/usenet/news.answers/periodic-postings/part2
/pub/usenet/news.answers/periodic-postings/part3
/pub/usenet/news.answers/periodic-postings/part4
/pub/usenet/news.answers/periodic-postings/part5
/pub/usenet/news.answers/periodic-postings/part6
/pub/usenet/news.answers/periodic-postings/part7
They are also available from mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu by sending a
mail message containing any or all of:
send usenet/news.answers/periodic-postings/part1
send usenet/news.answers/periodic-postings/part2
send usenet/news.answers/periodic-postings/part3
send usenet/news.answers/periodic-postings/part4
send usenet/news.answers/periodic-postings/part5
send usenet/news.answers/periodic-postings/part6
send usenet/news.answers/periodic-postings/part7
If you want to find out more about the mail server, send a message
to it containing "help".
--
pshuang@mit.edu (Ping Huang)
jik@cam.ov.com (Jonathan I. Kamens)
ig25@rz.uni-karlsruhe.de (Thomas Koenig)
buglady@bronze.lcs.mit.edu (Aliza R. Panitz)
pschleck@unomaha.edu (Paul W. Schleck)
-- the *.answers moderation team