Copyright © 1990-2006 by Prof. Timo Salmi
Last modified Sun 21-May-2006 21:29:05
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Copyright © 1990-2006 by Prof. Timo Salmi Last modified Sun 21-May-2006 21:29:05 |
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Brief answer: If you do not know, then you probably are far too
inexperienced to consider it.Long answer: The creation of a Usenet newsgroup is quite a complicated process. Not technically, but administratively. The creation process is described e.g. in
Among other things creating a new newsgroup in the "Big-8" hierarchies involves a request for discussion (RFD), a call for votes (CFV), a waiting period if the votes passes, the actual creation by the Usenet authorities. For information see "The big eight newsgroup creation process" by Russ Allbery. For special information about moderated newsgroups see Denis McKeon's mod-faq.html. Furthermore, there is a lot of useful information, including "Creating New Newsgroups" at the news.newusers.questions newsgroup's home page, if you have a little patience to browse through the material. Or, subscribe to the said newsgroup, and wait until Jon Bell's frequently posted "TIP" WHERE TO FIND OUT HOW TO CREATE A NEWSGROUP comes around!
I was involved in the creation of the two comp.archives.msdos newsgroups even if the actual voting process was kindly taken care by another person. I can assure you that it is much hard work and it takes several months (yes, indeed) to go through the whole process. Hence it is not realistic to make suggestions of creating new newsgroups without careful consideration and groundwork.
Carefully think is it really a newsgroup you wish to have. In many cases, especially if the need is local, you might instead wish to consider setting up a mailing list.
From Sethu Rathinam. Reprinted with permission.
If you want to create a Usenet newsgroup, you need to read at
least the following documents - they are posted to news.answers
and/or news.groups periodically. Read these groups often for at
least 6 months before attempting to create a newsgroup.
Timo's addendum: Browse news.announce.newgroups for David C Lawrence's
A point by David DeLaney. "Before you do anything else, you
check to make sure that there are no existing groups that already
cover the area." See "Where do I find a
complete list of Usenet newsgroups?"
After a positive vote result to create a new newsgroup has been
confirmed there still can be hitches. There have been considerable
problems in 1998 because of forged cmsg control messages to create
bogus newsgroups. Jon Bell told me that some newsadmins may have
disabled automatic new newsgroups processing altogether. "People
who are interested in the new groups [that have passed the vote]
will have to ask their news server administrators to add those
groups. Providing them with a copy of the vote results from DejaNews
or elsewhere would probably help."
The process of creating the alt-hierarchy newsgroups differs
somewhat. Eric O. Troldahl points out that alt-newsgroups
creation advice is best asked on alt.config.National hierarchy newsgroups also have systems of their own, which can vary. The links at the end of this page cover one example, the creation of new sfnet newsgroups. That information is in the local language, Finnish, to emphasize the national-only nature of such newsgroups.
Finally, there are newsgroups local to an organization. For example, many universities have a newsgroup system of their own. The creation of a new newsgroup in the local hierarchy is usually up to the local newsadmin. If so, it is him/her you should ask.
