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From: [email protected] (David C Lawrence)
Newsgroups: news.announce.newgroups,news.groups,news.announce.newusers,news.admin.misc,news.answers
Subject: How to Create a New Usenet Newsgroup
Followup-To: news.newusers.questions
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Approved: [email protected] (David C Lawrence)
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Archive-name: usenet/creating-newsgroups/part1
Original-author: [email protected] (Greg Woods)
Comment: enhanced & edited until 5/93 by [email protected] (Gene Spafford)
Last-change: 31 Jan 1997 by [email protected] (David C Lawrence)

                GUIDELINES FOR USENET GROUP CREATION

REQUIREMENTS FOR GROUP CREATION:

These are guidelines that have been generally agreed upon across
Usenet as appropriate for following in the creating of new newsgroups
in the "standard" Usenet newsgroup hierarchy. They are NOT intended as
guidelines for setting Usenet policy other than group creations, and
they are not intended to apply to "alternate" or local news
hierarchies. The part of the namespace affected is comp, humanities,
misc, news, rec, sci, soc, talk, which are the most widely-distributed
areas of the Usenet hierarchy.

Any group creation request which follows these guidelines to a
successful result should be honored, and any request which fails to
follow these procedures or to obtain a successful result from doing so
should be dropped, except under extraordinary circumstances.  The
reason these are called guidelines and not absolute rules is that it
is not possible to predict in advance what "extraordinary
circumstances" are or how they might arise.

It should be pointed out here that, as always, the decision whether or
not to create a newsgroup on a given machine rests with the
administrator of that machine. These guidelines are intended merely as
an aid in making those decisions.

The Discussion

[email protected] is a body of volunteers experienced with
the newsgroup creation process.  They assist people who want to
propose new groups with the formation and submission of a good
proposal.  It is strongly encouraged, though not required, that they
be contacted with an outline of the basic idea for a proposal, and a
mentor will work with the proponents to submit a formal proposal.
People who have experience with the process and wish to help others
should contact [email protected] to join.

1) A request for discussion on creation of a new newsgroup should be
  posted to news.announce.newgroups, news.groups, and any other
  groups or mailing lists at all related to the proposed topic if
  desired.  news.announce.newgroups is moderated, and the
  Followup-to: header will be set so that the actual discussion takes
  place only in news.groups.  Users on sites which have difficulty
  posting to moderated groups may mail submissions intended for
  news.announce.newgroups to [email protected].  The proposal
  must be in the format defined in "How to Format and Submit a
  New Group Proposal", a pointer to which is at the end of this message.

  The article should be cross-posted among the newsgroups, including
  news.announce.newgroups, rather than posted as separate articles.
  Note that standard behaviour for posting software is to not present
  the articles in any groups when cross-posted to a moderated group;
  the moderator will handle that for you.

2) The name and charter of the proposed group and whether it will be
  moderated or unmoderated (and if the former, who the moderator(s)
  will be) should be determined during the discussion period. If
  there is no general agreement on these points among the proponents
  of a new group at the end of 30 days of discussion, the discussion
  should be taken offline (into mail instead of news.groups) and the
  proponents should iron out the details among themselves.  Once that
  is done, a new, more specific proposal may be made, going back to
  step 1) above.

3) Group advocates seeking help in choosing a name to suit the
  proposed charter, or looking for any other guidance in the creation
  procedure, can send a message to [email protected]; a few
  seasoned news administrators are available through this address.

The Vote

The Usenet Volunteer Votetakers (UVV) are a group of neutral
third-party vote-takers who currently handle vote gathering and
counting for all newsgroup proposals.  The coordinators of the group
can be reached at [email protected]; contact them to arrange the
handling of the vote.  The mechanics of vote will be handled in accord
with the paragraphs below.

1) AFTER the discussion period, if it has been determined that a new
  group is really desired, a name and charter are agreed upon, and it
  has been determined whether the group will be moderated and if so
  who will moderate it, a call for votes may be posted to
  news.announce.newgroups and any other groups or mailing lists that
  the original request for discussion might have been posted
  to. There should be minimal delay between the end of the discussion
  period and the issuing of a call for votes.  The call for votes
  should include clear instructions for how to cast a vote. It must
  be as clearly explained and as easy to do to cast a vote for
  creation as against it, and vice versa.  It is explicitly permitted
  to set up two separate addresses to mail yes and no votes to
  provided that they are on the same machine, to set up an address
  different than that the article was posted from to mail votes to,
  or to just accept replies to the call for votes article, as long as
  it is clearly and explicitly stated in the call for votes article
  how to cast a vote.  If two addresses are used for a vote, the
  reply address must process and accept both yes and no votes OR
  reject them both.

2) The voting period should last for at least 21 days and no more than
  31 days, no matter what the preliminary results of the vote
  are. The exact date that the voting period will end should be
  stated in the call for votes. Only votes that arrive on the
  vote-taker's machine prior to this date will be counted.

3) A couple of repeats of the call for votes may be posted during the
  vote, provided that they contain similar clear, unbiased
  instructions for casting a vote as the original, and provided that
  it is really a repeat of the call for votes on the SAME proposal
  (see #5 below). Partial vote results should NOT be included; only a
  statement of the specific new group proposal, that a vote is in
  progress on it, and how to cast a vote.  It is permitted to post a
  "mass acknowledgement" in which all the names of those from whom
  votes have been received are posted, as long as no indication is
  made of which way anybody voted until the voting period is
  officially over.

4) ONLY votes MAILED to the vote-taker will count. Votes posted to the
  net for any reason (including inability to get mail to the
  vote-taker) and proxy votes (such as having a mailing list
  maintainer claim a vote for each member of the list) will not be
  counted.

5) Votes may not be transferred to other, similar proposals. A vote
  shall count only for the EXACT proposal that it is a response
  to. In particular, a vote for or against a newsgroup under one name
  shall NOT be counted as a vote for or against a newsgroup with a
  different name or charter, a different moderated/unmoderated status
  or (if moderated) a different moderator or set of moderators.

6) Votes MUST be explicit; they should be of the form "I vote for the
  group foo.bar as proposed" or "I vote against the group foo.bar as
  proposed". The wording doesn't have to be exact, it just needs to
  be unambiguous. In particular, statements of the form "I would vote
  for this group if..." should be considered comments only and not
  counted as votes.

7) A vote should be run only for a single group proposal.  Attempts to
  create multiple groups should be handled by running multiple
  parallel votes rather than one vote to create all of the groups.

The Result

1) At the completion of the voting period, the vote taker must post
  the vote tally and the E-mail addresses and (if available) names of
  the voters received to news.announce.newgroups and any other groups
  or mailing lists to which the original call for votes was
  posted. The tally should include a statement of which way each
  voter voted so that the results can be verified.

2) AFTER the vote result is posted, there will be a 5 day waiting
  period, beginning when the voting results actually appear in
  news.announce.newgroups, during which the net will have a chance to
  correct any errors in the voter list or the voting procedure.

3) AFTER the waiting period, and if there were no serious objections
  that might invalidate the vote, and if 100 more valid YES/create
  votes are received than NO/don't create AND at least 2/3 of the
  total number of valid votes received are in favor of creation, a
  newgroup control message may be sent out.  If the 100 vote margin
  or 2/3 percentage is not met, the group should not be created.

4) The newgroup message will be sent by the news.announce.newgroups
  moderator at the end of the waiting period of a successful vote.

5) A proposal which has failed under point (3) above should not again
  be brought up for discussion until at least six months have passed
  from the close of the vote.  This limitation does not apply to
  proposals which never went to vote or polls that were cancelled or
  invalidated.

ADDITIONAL REFERENCES:

If you want to create a new group, the following additional documents
should be read before you begin the process.

Subject: How to Format and Submit a New Group Proposal
Newsgroups: news.announce.newgroups,news.groups

Subject: How to Write a Good Newsgroup Proposal
Newsgroups: news.announce.newgroups,news.groups

Subject: Usenet Newsgroup Creation Companion
Newsgroups: news.groups,news.announce.newusers,news.answers

Subject: What is Usenet?
Newsgroups: news.announce.newusers,news.admin.misc,news.answers

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