
Archive-name: uk/newsadmins-faq
Posting-frequency: every 4 weeks
Last-modified: Sun May 19 14:17:59 BST 1996


		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
Fri Jan 26 10:39:34 GMT 1996	Moderator for uk.religion.jewish in Sect. 10
				Mention of uk.sun removed from Sect. 10
Fri Feb  9 11:52:44 GMT 1996	Moderator for uk.adverts.stolen.announce
				Correction of moderators for uk.announce.*
Wed Apr 24 10:30:06 BST 1996	Information about nl.*, bionet.*, bit.*, biz.*
				and linux.* in Sects 8 & 9
Mon May 13 21:02:11 BST 1996	Remark about shortage of votetakers removed
				from Sect. 7
Tue May 14 19:03:40 BST 1996	Pipex.co.uk changed to pipex.net in Sect. 10
Wed May 15 13:50:38 BST 1996	Uk-netnews-managers-request in Sect. 11
Wed May 15 19:35:53 BST 1996	Eunet-GB is now PSINet
Fri May 17 14:26:42 BST 1996	Moderators for uk.politics.announce and 
				Uk.religion.christian in Sect. 10
Sun May 19 14:17:59 BST 1996	Fixed format of Cnews mailpaths file in Sect. 9

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

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 Demon	Ade Lovett
	For Pipex	Mark Turner
	For PSINet	Scott McQueen
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.

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

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		r	nv
de				moderator@dana.de	nr	nv
nl				news@a3.xs4all.nl	nr	nv
nz				root@usenet.net.nz	nr	nv
bionet				dmack@*.bio.net		n	y
bionet				dmack@*.bio.net		r	nv
bionet				kristoff@*.bio.net	n	y
bionet				kristoff@*.bio.net	r	nv
bionet				shibumi@*.bio.net	nr	nv
linux				hpa@yggdrasil.com	nr	nv
bit				jim@*american.edu	n	y
bit				jim@*american.edu	r	nv
biz				edhew@xenitec.on.ca	n	y
biz				edhew@xenitec.on.ca	r	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:news@a3.xs4all.nl:nl.*:doit=newgroup
newgroup:root@usenet.net.nz:nz.*:doit=mail
newgroup:dmack@*.bio.net:bionet.*:doit=newgroup
newgroup:kristoff@*.bio.net:bionet.*:doit=newgroup
newgroup:shibumi@*.bio.net:bionet.*:mail
newgroup:hpa@yggdrasil.com:linux.*:doit=newgroup
newgroup:jim@*american.edu:bit.*:doit=newgroup
newgroup:edhew@xenitec.on.ca:biz.*:doit=newgroup

##	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:news@a3.xs4all.nl:nl.*:doit=mail
rmgroup:root@usenet.net.nz:nz.*:mail
rmgroup:dmack@*.bio.net:bionet.*:doit=mail
rmgroup:kristoff@*.bio.net:bionet.*:doit=mail
rmgroup:shibumi@*.bio.net:bionet.*:doit=mail
rmgroup:hpa@yggdrasil.com:linux.*:doit=mail
rmgroup:jim@*american.edu:bit.*:doit=mail
rmgroup:edhew@xenitec.on.ca:biz.*:doit=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>

		--------------------------------
bionet	%s@net.bio.net
gnu	%s@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu
linux	submit-%s@ratatosk.yggdrasil.com
nz	%s@usenet.net.nz
all	%s@britain.eu.net	(or %s@pipex.net 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.

		--------------------------------
bionet.*:%s@net.bio.net
gnu.*:%s@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu
linux.*:submit-%s@ratatosk.yggdrasil.com
nz.*:%s@usenet.net.nz
*:%s@pipex.net	(or %s@britain.eu.net or %s@moderators.uu.net)
		--------------------------------


Generally speaking, customers of PSINet (formerly Eunet-GB) and academic
sites on JANET should use britain.eu.net (no, NOT uk.psi.com for the
present) and everyone else should use pipex.net. To avoid congestion,
it is better not to go directly to uunet.uu.net. Both the UK sites
mentioned should 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.adverts.stolen.announce	uk-adverts-stolen-announce@usenet.org.uk
uk.announce			uk-announce@usenet.org.uk
uk.announce.events		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
uk.politics.announce		uk-politics-announce@usenet.org.uk
uk.religion.christian		uk-religion-christian@usenet.org.uk
uk.religion.jewish		uk-religion-jewish@usenet.org.uk

For some groups, there is a separate address for emailing the moderator
(rather than for submitting an article)

uk.religion.christian		uk-religion-christian-request@usenet.org.uk

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

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 
(send subscription requests to uk-netnews-managers-request@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/Fax: +44 161 437 4506                       Janet:    chl@uk.ac.man.cs.clw
Snail: 5 Clerewood Ave., CHEADLE, SK8 3JU, U.K.   UUCP:     mucs!clerew!chl
