Subject: UK Newsadmin's FAQ
Summary: Information for News Administrators specifically relevant to
.maintaining the uk.* hierarchy.
Supersedes: <DJzBM5.DqC@clw.cs.man.ac.uk>
Date: Fri, 19 Jan 1996 08:30:07 GMT
Expires: Fri, 23 Feb 1996 08:30:03 GMT


Archive-name: uk/newsadmins-faq
Posting-frequency: every 4 weeks


..UK Newsadmin's FAQ
..------------------

------------------------------

Subject: 1. Introduction

This FAQ is prepared by Charles Lindsey <chl@clw.cs.man.ac.uk> mainly for
the purpose of disseminating the results of the recent changes in management
of the uk.* hierarchy to the newsadmins, througout the UK and elsewhere, who
will be affected by them.

I don't know whether these particular questions are in fact "Frequently
Asked", but I certainly believe that they should be.

Comments and suggestions for future editions to chl@clw.cs.man.ac.uk please.

This FAQ is archived at
    <ftp://src.doc.ic.ac.uk/usenet/news-info/news.answers/uk/newsadmins-faq>

------------------------------

Subject: 2. Table of Contents

.1. Introduction
.2. Table of Contents
.3. Recent Changes
.4. Who manages the uk.* hierarchy?
.5. Who is control?
.6. What is usenet.org.uk?
.7. Who are the UK Volunteer Votetakers?
.8. So which groups should I take on my site?
.9. How do I send articles to a moderated group?
.10.Who are the moderators of the uk.* groups?
.11. What other sources of information are there?
.12. Where can I find an up-to-date list of newsgroups?
.13. What other questions are there?

------------------------------

Subject: 3. Recent Changes

Fri Jan  5 11:43:25 GMT 1996.Information about nz.* in Sect. 8
....Information about gnu.* and nz.* in Sect. 9
Sat Jan  6 15:52:25 GMT 1996.Call for more votetakers in Sect. 7
....Moderator for uk.org.bcs.announce in Sect. 10
....Mention of %s@moderators.uu.net in Sect. 10

------------------------------

Subject: 4. Who manages the uk.* hierarchy?

Three documents set out the procedures for creating and/or removing/renaming
newsgroups within the uk.* hierarchy.

    GUIDELINES FOR GROUP CREATION WITHIN THE UK HIERARCHY
.<ftp://src.doc.ic.ac.uk/usenet/news-info/news.answers/uk/guidelines>
    VOTING PROCEDURES WITHIN THE UK HIERARCHY
.<ftp://src.doc.ic.ac.uk/usenet/news-info/news.answers/uk/voting>
    THE UK USENET COMMITTEE
.<ftp://src.doc.ic.ac.uk/usenet/news-info/news.answers/uk/committee>

These documents were accepted on 7 Aug 95 following a vote conducted in
uk.net.news, with the results, respectively, of
..(93 yes : 13 no)
..(91 yes : 13 no)
..(76 yes : 23 no)

Essentially, they provide for a Committee to be elected each October, with a
person known as Control, answerable to the Committee, to oversee the process
of group creation.

The Committee elected in October 1995 comprises

Permanent members
.For BTnet.Nigel Titley
.For Eunet-GB.Roy Thearle
.For Demon.Ade Lovett
.For Pipex.Mark Turner
Open members
.Simon Gray
.Thomas Lee
.Richard Letts
.Charles Lindsey
.Ian Neal
.Claire Speed
Newsadmin members
.3 vacancies (there were no nominations)

The committee as a whole may be reached by email to committee@usenet.org.uk.

------------------------------

Subject: 5. Who is control?

The Committee (as elected in October 1995) have confirmed the appointment of

.Richard J. Letts

to exercise the functions of Control on their behalf. For official purposes
Richard may be reached at 'control@usenet.org.uk' (unofficially,
'R.J.Letts@salford.ac.uk' will also find him). It is requied that all RFDs
and CFVs should be posted to uk.net.news.announce in accordance with the
Guidelines document.

BTNet, Demon, Eunet-GB and Pipex wish it to be known that they will in
future honour all and only newgroup and rmgroup control messages for the
uk.* hierarchy issued by 'control@usenet.org.uk', and they urge all other
news administrators to adopt that same policy.

------------------------------

Subject: 6. What is usenet.org.uk?

A domain name. Silly question! Next?

But to be serious, it is a domain name set up to facilitate communication
with the Committee, in such a manner that the relevant officers can be
reached even if their identities change. Currently, the following services
are available.

.control@usenet.org.uk..to reach Control
.committee@usenet.org.uk..to reach the whole Committee
.ukvoting@usenet.org.uk..to reach the group of independent
.....UK Volunteer Votetakers
Watch this space for WWW and ftp addresses.

------------------------------

Subject: 7. Who are the UK Volunteer Votetakers?

A group of people, independent of the Committee, who are empowered by the
VOTING PROCEDURES to conduct votes. The coordinator of this group is Mark
Alexander, reachable via ukvoting@usenet.org.uk.

This group is currently overstretched, and more volunteers would be welcome.

------------------------------

Subject: 8. So which groups should I take on my site?

Well that is your prerogative to decide. If you want to take a standard uk.*
"full feed", then you should accept the periodic 'newgroup', 'rmgroup' and
'checkgroups' control messages issued by control@usenet.org.uk, and (for the
uk.* groups) no others. You may of course decide to take less than this if
your disc space and/or range of interests are limited.

It is possible to automate the acceptance of 'newgroup's issued by
control@usenet.org.uk (it is usually recommended that 'rmgroup's be
inspected manually before acceptance - there are not so many of those,
anyway).

If you run CNEWS, then the following 'controlperm' file will achieve the
necessary effects. Note that this example also shows the correct way to
handle control messages for the "Big-8" and also what is believed to be
correct for "Eunet", "de" and "nz" groups.

..--------------------------------

# Four fields per line, first a newsgroup pattern, second an author name
# (or "any"), third a set of operations ("n" newgroup, "r" rmgroup), and
# fourth a set of flags ("y" do it, "n" don't, followed optionally by
# "q" don't report at all, "v" include entire control message in report).
# Default for "y" or "n" alone is a brief mail report. Overall default is
# "yv".

# Dave Lawrence runs the main Usenet hierarchies
comp,sci,misc,rec,soc,talk,news,humanities.tale@uunet.uu.net.n.y
# but his name can be forged, so don't let him rmgroup...
comp,sci,misc,rec,soc,talk,news,humanities.tale@uunet.uu.net.r.n
# and nobody else gets any attention in these hierarchies
comp,sci,misc,rec,soc,talk,news,humanities.any...nr.nv

uk....control@usenet.org.uk.n.y
uk....control@usenet.org.uk.r.n
eunet....news@noc.eu.net..n.y
eunet....news@noc.eu.net..nr.nv
de....moderator@dana.de.n.y
de....moderator@dana.de.nr.nv
nz....root@usenet.net.nz.n.y
nz....root@usenet.net.nz.nr.nv

# it's really tempting to change this one to nq...
alt....any...nr.nv

# to.all groups are manually manipulated only
to....any...nr.nq

# final default:  refuse noisily
all....any...nr.nv

..--------------------------------

If you run INN, the corresponding file is 'control.ctl' and the facilities
available are slightly different. Here is the nearest equivalent to the
'controlperm' file above.

..--------------------------------

##  $Revision: 1.4 $
##  control.ctl - access control for control messages
##  Format:
##.<message>:<from>:<newsgroups>:<action>
##  The last match found is used.
##.<message>.Control message or "all" if it applies
##...to all control messages.
##.<from>..Pattern that must match the From line.
##.<newsgroups>.Pattern that must match the newsgroup being
##...newgroup'd or rmgroup'd (ignored for other messages).
##.<action>.What to do:
##...    doit.Perform action (usually sends mail too)
##...    doifarg.Do if command has an arg (see sendsys)
##...    doit=xxx.Do action; log to xxx (see below)
##...    drop.Ignore message
##...    log..One line to error log
##...    log=xxx.Log to xxx (see below)
##...    mail.Send mail to admin
##...xxx=mail to mail; xxx= (empty) to toss; xxx=/full/path
##...to log to /full/path; xxx=foo to log to ${LOG}/foo.log
##.last entry matched is used 
##.DEFAULT
all:*:*:mail

##.CHECKGROUPS MESSAGES
checkgroups:*:*:mail

##.IHAVE/SENDME MESSAGES
ihave:*:*:drop
sendme:*:*:drop

##.NEWGROUP MESSAGES
##  Any newsgroups
newgroup:*:*:mail
newgroup:tale@*.uu.net:comp.*|misc.*|news.*|rec.*|sci.*|soc.*|talk.*|humanities.*:doit=newgroup
newgroup:control@usenet.org.uk:uk.*:doit=newgroup
newgroup:news@noc.eu.net:eunet.*:doit=newgroup
newgroup:moderator@dana.de:de.*:doit=newgroup
newgroup:root@usenet.net.nz:nz.*:doit=mail

##.RMGROUP MESSAGES
##  Any newsgroups
rmgroup:*:*:mail
rmgroup:tale@*.uu.net:comp.*|misc.*|news.*|rec.*|sci.*|soc.*|talk.*|humanities.*:mail
rmgroup:control@usenet.org.uk:uk.*:mail
rmgroup:news@noc.eu.net:eunet.*:mail
rmgroup:moderator@dana.de:de.*:mail
rmgroup:root@usenet.net.nz:nz.*:mail

..--------------------------------


------------------------------

Subject: 9. How do I send articles to a moderated group?

Normally, you mail it to a server which keeps an up-to-date list of
moderators. In CNEWS, one of the following entries in your 'mailpaths' file
should suffice. see the following for information about mailpaths files:
.How to Construct the Mailpaths File
<ftp://src.doc.ic.ac.uk/usenet/news-info/news.answers/mailpaths/part1>

..--------------------------------
gnu.*.%s@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu
nz.*.%s@usenet.net.nz
all.%s@britain.eu.net.(or %s@pipex.co.uk or %s@moderators.uu.net)
..--------------------------------

The entries for gnu.* and nz.* were taken from the "nz.* Usenet Hierarchy
FAQ". Entries for other top-level hierarchies would be welcomed.

The arrangements in INN are, as usual, similar but different. I believe the
following should work.

..--------------------------------
gnu.*:%s@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu
nz.*:%s@usenet.net.nz
*:%s@pipex.co.uk.(or %s@britain.eu.net or %s@moderators.uu.net)
..--------------------------------


Generally speaking, customers of Eunet-GB and academic sites on JANET should
use britain.eu.net and everyone else should use pipex.co.uk. To avoid
congestion, it is better not to go directly to uunet.uu.net. Both the UK
sites mentioned mirror what is on Uunet.

It is also possible to use moderators.uu.net which is an MX record pointing
to most of the sites worldwide. It should automatically select the
'nearest', which in practice should be pipex for the UK (since
britain.eu.net is not in that scheme for some reason).

------------------------------

Subject: 10. Who are the moderators of the uk.* groups?

You do not really need this information, unless you want to construct your
'mailpaths' file d-i-y style. But here is the information available at the
present time, if you really like to see it.

uk.announce...mod-uk-announce@usenet.org.uk
uk.announce.events..mod-uk-announce-events@usenet.org.uk
uk.answers                      news-answers@mit.edu
uk.food+drink.archives..mark@alexr.co.uk
uk.net.news.announce..control@usenet.org.uk
uk.org.bcs.announce..mcramm@tay.ac.uk
uk.org.community.committee.comcom@nowster.demon.co.uk
uk.org.epsrc.hpc.news..alison.wall@rl.ac.uk
uk.org.starlink.announce        announce@starlink.rutherford.ac.uk

Note that uk.sun does not appear to be moderated on all sites. Attempts to
contact its moderator have failed. Nothing ever seems to be posted there.

------------------------------

Subject: 11. What other sources of information are there?

You might like to look at the following regular postings to news.admin.misc.
.How to become a Usenet site
<ftp://src.doc.ic.ac.uk/usenet/news-info/news.answers/usenet/site-setup>
.Usenet Software: History and Sources
<ftp://src.doc.ic.ac.uk/usenet/news-info/news.answers/usenet/software/part1>

You might like to join the mailing list uk-netnews-managers@cs.strath.ac.uk.

A message "Checkgroups message (with INET groups)" is posted regularly to
news.admin.misc. This contains a correct list of all the groups in the
"Big-8" Usenet hierarchy.

Checkgroups messages for the UK hierarchy will be issued periodically by
Control.

------------------------------

Subject: 12. Where can I find an up-to-date list of newsgroups?

A checkgroups message giving the exact current state of the uk.* hierarchy
will be issued by control@usenet.org.uk approximately every 6 months. In the
meantime, for a list of the uk.* newsgroups currently carried by the main
UK ISPs see

<ftp://ftp.demon.co.uk/pub/news/uk-isp/active.uk>

------------------------------

Subject: 13. What other questions are there?

Well, you should tell me that.

-- 
Charles H. Lindsey -------------------------------------------------------------
           At Home, doing my own thing.           Internet: chl@clw.cs.man.ac.uk
Voice: +44 161 437 4506                           Janet:    chl@uk.ac.man.cs.clw
Snail: 5 Clerewood Ave., CHEADLE, SK8 3JU, U.K.   UUCP:     mucs!clerew!chl
