There are tens of thousands of Usenet newsgroups in existence, spread out over hundreds of different newsgroup hierarchies. Some Usenet hierarchies are carried on news servers worldwide, while others do not propagate beyond specific geographical areas.
No one single news server can possibly locate and carry every single Usenet newsgroup in existence. Usenet news administrators must choose which newsgroups and newsgroup hierarchies to carry on their servers.
This document details the Usenet newsgroup hierarchies currently carried on the CIS Usenet News NNTP Server, usenet.pitt.edu. Additionally, it explains the guidelines we use in determining what newsgroups and newsgroup hierarchies to carry.
Before reading this document, you might wish to skim the University of Pittsburgh Usenet News FAQ, if you didn't jump here from there.
Here's a quick index for the rest of this document:
The CIS Usenet News NNTP Server currently carries the following Usenet hierarchies.
Regional and local (i.e., not worldwide) newsgroup hierarchies:
The Big 8 worldwide newsgroup hierarchies:
Other worldwide newsgroup hierarchies:
(For a brief description of each of these hierarchies, consult the Master List of Newsgroup Hierarchies.)
Requests to add or remove entire newsgroup hierarchies to and from (respectively) the CIS Usenet News NNTP Server should be emailed to news+@pitt.edu.
Requests submitted to add new hierarchies are reviewed by the Usenet News Administrators and the Standing Committee on Internet News Service Policy (SCINSP), who then either approve or reject the request.
The criteria used to decide whether to approve a newsgroup hierarchy addition request are based largely on the anticipated resources the newsgroup hierarchy will require, and additionally upon the anticipated ability of the Usenet news server to successfully receive and distribute articles in the hierarchy's newsgroups.
In practicality, no one really requests the removal of entire newsgroup hierarchies. (At least, we've never had anyone make such a request.) So far, every hierarchy removal to date has come about because the Usenet News Administrations silently removed the hierarchy, based upon evidence that indicated practically no one was reading newsgroups in the hierarchy.
Requests to add or remove newsgroups to and from (respectively) the CIS Usenet News NNTP Server should be emailed to news+@pitt.edu.
Most of the Usenet newsgroup hierarchies we carry have formal procedures that are used to create or delete newsgroups within the hierarchy. Therefore, for such hierarchies, there is a canonical list of valid newsgroups for the hierarchy. With such hierarchies, our policy is to carry only (and all of) the canonical newsgroups for the hierarchy.
For example, we accept all newsgroups in the comp, humanities, misc, news, rec, sci, soc and talk hierarchies that have passed their votes for creation. These 8 newsgroups hierarchies are commonly referred to as the Big 8 newsgroups. There is a formal procedure to create and delete Big 8 newsgroups; this procedure is outlined in the How to Create a New Usenet Newsgroup document, available at the news.announce.newusers official archive.
Another example is the clari hierarchy. The clari.* newsgroups contain text articles and binary pictures from commercial news wire services; we pay the ClariNet Communications Corporation to receive these Usenet newsgroups. The ClariNet Communications Corporation also maintains the canonical list of valid clari.* newsgroups; we add and remove newsgroups from our server according to ClariNet.
Other hierarchies have similar procedures. In fact, of the newsgroup hierarchies we carry, only the alt hierarchy does not have either an official procedure for creating and deleting newsgroups, or an authoritative centralized maintainers.
For the non-alt hierarchies, if you feel we've made an error--that is, we are either not carrying one of the canonical newsgroups, or are carrying a non-canonical newsgroup--please feel free to send email to news+@pitt.edu and let us know.
Unlike most other hierarchies, the alt hierarchy does not have an official procedure for creating and deleting newsgroups. Nor does the alt hierarchy have an authoritative central maintainer. (The "alt" in the alt hierarchy stands for "alternative creation procedures", not "alternative topics".)
Explaining why the alt hierarchy works in this manner is beyond the scope of this document. If you're interested in a bit of lost history and tales of days of yore, see the Usenet section of Henry Edward Hardy's The History of the Net thesis.
Because alt has no official newsgroup creation and deletion policies, anyone can essentially create any alt.* newsgroups they want, and as a result, today there are thousands of alt.* newsgroups. Only the largest Usenet sites can afford to carry every alt.* newsgroup. By necessity, most other sites carry only a portion of the newsgroups in the alt.* hierarchy.
The unique situation of the alt hierarchy presents a quandary to many Usenet news administrators, who must decide which alt.* newsgroups they will carry on their Usenet news servers. Over the years, two primary strategies have emerged. The first strategy is for Usenet newsgroup administrators to only add the alt.* newsgroups requested by their customers. The second strategy is for Usenet news administrators to review newly-created alt.* newsgroups against certain guidelines, and to carry the ones that pass the guidelines. Many sites use a mix of these two strategies.
As the latter strategy (reviewing against guidelines) evolved, so did the normal guidelines used in the strategy. Today, enough Usenet news administrators employ similar enough guidelines that they have been documented. The Alt Creation Guide FAQ documents the usual guidelines and practices of Usenet news administrators today, as does the How To Write a Good Newgroup Message FAQ (even though both documents are aimed at people who wish to create new alt.* newsgroups, and not at Usenet news administrators).
The University of Pittsburgh Usenet News Server does not carry every alt.* newsgroup. (In fact, the Usenet news server carries only about a sixth of all possible alt.* newsgroups.) We employ a hybrid of the two strategies described above in order to determine which alt.* newsgroups to carry.
We will add alt.* groups to the Usenet news server that meet the following conditions.
We will only add an alt.* newsgroup to the news server if its creation was discussed in the newsgroup alt.config prior to its actual creation. In this context, discussed means that the proponent of creating the newsgroup posted the newsgroup proposal, and made a reasonable attempt at addressing problems or criticisms raised by others.
Additionally, the proponent must have waited at least a week (7 days) after the first proposal was posted until creating the newsgroup.
The actual control message sent to create the newsgroup must have included the newsgroup's charter in the body of the message, or at least a rough description of the intended purpose of the newsgroup.
The actual control message sent to create the newsgroup must have included a valid newsgroups file line, as described in the How To Write a Good Newgroup Message FAQ.
The newsgroup must not meet any of the following common rejection criteria, as described in the Alt Creation Guide FAQ: "harmful" newsgroup names, component too long, useless components, ".word.word.word" ending, all-numeric part of newsgroup name, top-level mess, alt.acronym groups, and Big 8 move threat.
Generally speaking, we will only remove an alt.* newsgroup from the Usenet news server under the following conditions:
If a Big 8 newsgroup is proposed, voted upon, passed, and created, and that Big 8 newsgroup replicates an existing alt.* newsgroup, we will remove the existing alt.* newsgroup.
This process is sometimes referred to as "moving to the Big 8". In fact, alt.* newsgroups are sometimes created to test whether or not a topic has enough popularity and support to pass a Big 8 creation vote.
The Usenet News administrators will occasionally remove alt.* newsgroups that have died (meaning, only spammers post to the newsgroup, and no one at the University of Pittsburgh reads the group).
Note that for any particular alt.* newsgroup, neither the subject nor topic of the group enters into the addition/removal decision-making process. In other words, the decision-making process is not content-sensitive.
This is a completely deliberate philosophy, adopted to avoid having to address such thorny (subjective) issues as which alt.* newsgroups are "appropriate" and "useful", and which ones aren't. Our decision to carry a particular alt.* newsgroup is based only on whether the person who created the newsgroup cared enough about it to follow the established creation procedures. We do not care what the topic of the newsgroup is.
Copyright 1998 University of Pittsburgh. All rights reserved.
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