Subject: Introduction to news.announce [This posting just changed to the new digest-like format. Further, some of the large lists that used to appear in news.announce.newusers now appear only in news.lists, in an attempt to cut down news.announce.newusers volume to postings that every new user should read fully. - mod, Jun 14, 1994] ------------------------------ Subject: Introduction. Welcome to Usenet! This periodic posting describes the the major Usenet announcement newsgroups. There are the four moderated newsgroups in the news.announce.hierarchy -- news.announce.important, news.announce.newgroups, news.announce.newusers and news.announce.conferences. The moderated groups news.admin.technical, news.answers and news.lists are also described, since they are closely related to the announcement newsgroups. ------------------------------ Subject: news.announce.important "news.announce.important" is a newsgroup for just what it says it is -- important announcements. It is intended to be read by everyone on Usenet, although nobody is forced to subscribe. To post to news.announce.important, send mail to the moderator at "announce@stargate.com". Some netnews implementations will automatically mail to the moderator anything posted instead of attempting to post it directly. If the message is appropriate, it will be posted by the moderator; if not, the moderator will suggest a more appropriate place to post it or a better way to go about the same goal. Discussions in news.announce.important are explicitly forbidden, and the volume of traffic will be kept low enough to keep people from feeling a need to unsubscribe. Usenet administrators for each site should make a point of reading news.announce.important. The current policy is that news.announce.important submissions must be: (a) short - preferably they should fit on one crt screen, including headers. (b) important enough to at least have their header shown to everyone on the net. The posting should be more of benefit to the net than to the poster. (c) not posted to any other newsgroup - news.announce.important by itself is supposed to be sufficient to reach everybody, and nobody should have to read an announcement more than once. (d) signed - the author should be clearly evident. (e) not commercial, political, or religious in nature. ------------------------------ Subject: news.announce.newsgroups "news.announce.newgroups" exists for announcements of either the creation or the consideration of a new newsgroup. All calls for votes, calls for discussions, vote results, and creation notices of all hierarchies should be posted to news.announce.newgroups. Submissions should be directed to announce-newgroups@uunet.uu.net (or to your nearest major site). Followups will be redirected to news.groups. ------------------------------ Subject: news.announce.newusers Introductory messages like this one will be repeated every month, in order to reach all newcomers. These messages will be placed in news.announce.newusers, which is also moderated. This makes it safe for experienced users who have already read these messages to unsubscribe to news.announce.newusers without missing anything new in news.announce.important. If you aren't familiar with the netnews guidelines in news.announce.newusers, please read them carefully. Your understanding of these rules will assure that you don't annoy the more than 3 million members of the net community (estimated) by unintentionally abusing the net, and will help you get more value from the net. This group does not accept postings from users (although the moderator is usually willing to entertain suggestions for edits and additions to existing postings). In addition to the periodic re-posting of these messages in news.announce.newusers, changes to the news.announce.newusers postings will be posted to news.misc; this allows experienced users to just follow the differences. After reading the postings in news.announce.newusers, newcomers can refer to the lists of newsgroups, mailing lists and periodic informational postings in news.lists. ------------------------------ Subject: news.answers Many newsgroups have postings that are made periodically for new users of those specific groups. These postings are usually referred to as FAQs, or Frequently-Asked Questions. The postings are usually cross-posted to the news.answers (and companion comp.answers, sci.answers, etc.) newsgroup for purposes of archiving and consolidated searching. Normally, users will not post articles here unless they have constructed a FAQ for a particular newsgroup. ------------------------------ Subject: news.announce.conferences news.announce.conferences is for announcements of conference programs, calls for papers, and things of that kind. Submissions should be directed to nac@sparky.sterling.com. Please keep Subject lines informative; if space permits, mention the topic and location there, and avoid acronyms unless very widely known. ------------------------------ Subject: news.admin.technical news.admin.technical is a newsgroup for discussion about Usenet software, policies, and the technical aspects of running Usenet news. Postings of a more general nature should be posted to the unmoderated group news.admin.misc instead. ------------------------------ Subject: news.lists Several people make an on-going effort to collect administrative information and interesting statistics about the news. This information, usually in the form of lists, is posted on a regular basis to the news.lists newsgroup. This allows others interested in these topics (such as news flow, volume, valid newsgroup names, etc) to find them all in one particular place. Again, this is not a group in which users will normally post, but they may find the information in the group to be of interest. Here are some postings in that group that users may want to consult. List of Active Newsgroups, Part ... Names and descriptions of all newsgroups in Usenet. Alternative Newsgroup Hierarchies, Part ... Describes the alternative newsgroup hierarchies, including alt.*, bionet.*, bit.*, biz.*, clari.*, gnu.*, hepnet.*, ieee.*, the inet/ddn distribution, info.*, k12.*, relcom.*, u3b.* and vmsnet.*. While alternative groups use the same underlying technology for transmission and reading, they are not considered part of mainstream Usenet, by definition. List of Periodic Informational Postings, Part ... A comprehensive list of postings like this one, including the information-rich Frequently Asked Questions postings (FAQs). Publicly Accessible Mailing Lists, Part ... A list of the large number of electronic mailing-lists that complement or sometimes supplement Usenet. Mailing lists usually have smaller audiences or more specialized interests than the average newsgroup; some of them later become Usenet groups. Many of these mailing lists are also available as gatewayed Usenet groups in the info.* and bit.listserv.* alternative hierarchies. Mailing Lists Available in Usenet A list of those Usenet newsgroups that are also available as mailing lists. ------------------------------ Subject: Moderators. Mark Horton Mark Moraes news.announce.important moderator news.announce.newusers moderator mark@stargate.com netannounce@deshaw.com David Lawrence Rich Ohnemus news.announce.newgroups moderator news.announce.conferences moderator news.lists moderator nac-request@sparky.sterling.com tale@uunet.uu.net Jonathan Kamens Scott Hazen Mueller news.answers moderator news.admin.technical moderator news-answers-request@mit.edu natech-request@uunet.uu.net ------------------------------