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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The Usenet Oldnews Archive: Compilation Copyright (C) 1981, 1996
Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman.