From sparkyfs!hercules!apple!olivea!sun-barr!decwrl!purdue!turbo.bio.net!lear Fri Oct  5 08:41:28 PDT 1990

Original-from: [email protected] (Greg Woods)
[Most recent change: 06 Sep 1990 by [email protected] (Eliot Lear)]

     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, news, sci, misc, soc, talk, rec,
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

1) A call for discussion on creation of a new newsgroup should be posted
  to news.announce.newgroups, and also to any other groups or mailing lists
  at all related to the proposed topic if desired. This group 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]".

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.

The Vote

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 call 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 may 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) may 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.

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 votes
  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.

  The newgroup message may be sent by the vote-taker (if able to do so)
  or by the system administrator on the vote-taker's machine. If this
  option is not available, then the vote-taker should send mail to
  "[email protected]" saying that a successful vote has been run
  and requesting that a newgroup message be sent. DO NOT send the vote
  results; we can look those up in news.announce.newgroups if we haven't seen
  them there already. In any case, please send mail to Gene Spafford
  ([email protected]) informing him of a successful vote, so he can add the
  new group to the official list of groups which he maintains.

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