Acbosgd.794
net.news
utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!ihnss!cbosg!cbosgd!mark
Wed Dec 23 21:28:32 1981
proposed USENET policies
The following policies for USENET are proposed. Comments are invited.
Proposed USENET Policies
The most important consideration is the USENET exists for and by
the users, and should respond to the needs of those users. As needs
arise, users should be allowed to make proposals which all interested
users can vote on.
USENET is a cashless network. No person or organization may charge
another organization for news, except that by prearrangement, one
site (a) may be required to pay the expenses incurred by another site (b)
in sending news to site (a). Such expenses include the cost of phone
calls and equipment, but only to the extent that such expenses would
not be incurred if site (b) did not send news to site (a). Each site
is expected to carry its own local costs. If a site receives news, it
should be willing to forward that news on to at least two additional sites.
News articles are divided into a number of classes. Each site may decide
which classes it wants to accept and which classes it forwards to its
neighboring sites. Classes sanctioned by USENET include the following:
net Computer Science related topics. Articles on these
newsgroups have professional or academic orientation,
and generally have direct benefit to the organizations
on the network.
fa Like net, but copies of mailing lists from the ARPANET.
pers Topics of personal interest, such as hobbies. Such topics
do not necessarily relate to the job a person is doing,
and can be viewed as a "spare time" activity.
fpa Like fa, but for personal topics.
Portions of USENET, such as a group of machines which are all part of
one company or university, may form additional classes of newsgroup for
distribution within that portion of the network. They may apply any
standards to these classes they wish.
Articles posted to USENET sanctioned classes are expected to be of high
quality. The name of the author should be signed. Articles which are
likely to be offensive to any part of the user community should not be
posted. Peer pressure via direct electronic mail will, hopefully,
prevent any further distastful or offensive articles. Repeated
violations of this policy can be grounds for removing a user or site
from the network.
In the past, it has been too easy for any user to create a new newsgroup.
This has resulted in a disorganized and inconsistent set of newsgroups.
Newsgroups in the four categories above will be created by a member of
the USENET committee. A user wishing to create a new newsgroup should
propose it by posting an article to net.general (or pers.general, as
appropriate). Others wishing to subscribe to the newsgroup should send
direct electronic mail to the first user. If there is enough interest
to warrent creation of the newsgroup, the user should send the replies
to the committee, who will create the newsgroup (possibly with a different
name or class).
---- end of policy statement
(The formation of the committee is undecided. It would probably contain
people such as myself, glickman, swd, trt, smb, and jte, depending on
time and interest.)
I propose dividing the existing newsgroups up as follows. This is not
a hard and fast division, and I will be happy to listen to suggested
redivisions. The rationalle behind putting net.chess in net is that
it is Computer Science research related. The microcomputer groups were
put in pers because they are mostly for the hobbyist. But the real
criterion is whether a system which is "all business" would want to
receive a given group - comments from such systems are especially welcome.
net.general Usenet news of general interest
net.applic Applicative programming languages
net.bugs.all Bug reports on various software
net.bugs.2bsd Berkeley pdp-11 distribution
net.bugs.4bsd Berkeley VAX distribution
net.bugs.u3 UNIX 3.0
net.bugs.v7 Version 7 bugs
net.chess Computer chess
net.eunice The Eunice Unix emulator for VMS
net.news News about netnews
net.news.b Version B news
net.periphs Hardware peripherals
net.test Test messages, not interesting.
net.ucds UNIX circuit design system
pers.rec.all Participant sports (recreation)
pers.rec.ski Skiing (formerly net.ski)
pers.rec.scuba Diving (formerly net.scuba)
pers.rumor Rumors about software, hardware, etc.
pers.sport.all All spectator sports mailing lists
pers.sport.baseball Baseball
pers.sport.football Football
pers.sport.hockey Hockey
pers.auto.all Car owner discussions/queries
pers.auto.vw Volkswagen Rabbit
pers.aviation Aviation topics
pers.columbia News about the space program
pers.cycle Motorcycle topics
pers.games Computer games of the /usr/games type
pers.games.rogue That wonderful game
pers.ham-radio Ham radio
pers.jokes The latest good joke you heard
pers.jokes.q We drop this newsgroup
pers.movies Movie reviews
pers.music What is this group about, anyway?
fa.arpa-bboard Arpanet bulletin boards
(arpanet-bboards@AI)
fa.digest-p For Digest maintainers
fa.editor-p Editors (editor-people@su-score)
fa.human-nets * Computers in the real world
(human-nets@AI)
fa.info-terms News about terminals (info-terms@MC)
fa.info-vax Information on the VAX, mostly VMS
fa.printers Printers
fa.tcp-ip * TCP & IP protocols (tcp-ip@brl)
fa.unix-wizards Unix system gurus mailing list
(unix-wizards@SRI-UNIX)
fa.works * Work station computers (workS@AI)
pfa.arms-d * Continuing debate on arms (arms-d@MC)
pfa.energy * Various energy topics (energy@MC)
pfa.info-cpm The CP/M operating system (info-cpm@AI)
pfa.info-micro * Microcomputers (info-micro@AI)
pfa.poli-sci * Political science (poli-sci@rutgers)
pfa.sf-lovers * For science fiction fans (sf-lovers@AI)
pfa.space * The space program (space@mc)
pfa.telecom * Telecommunications (telecom@rutgers)
pfa.unix-cpm Unix vs. CP/M (unix-cpm@UDEL)
Mark Horton
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