To FootThese are the accepted Internet standards. "RFC" actually stands for "Request For Comments"; but mortals should treat RFCs as accepted standards. Some are FYIs (For Your Information). You can get RFCs (including FYIs) from Demon; get the index file as well because there are lots of other related RFCs and you need to know which bits are superseded! (I hear that there is a full set on the Dec 1998 Demon Dispatches CD.) Read the generally-accepted Son-of-RFC1036 (SoRFC1036), which is very informative; some of it is applicable also to E-mail. Read also FYI28 = RFC1855.
Grandson-of-1036 seems in hand (news-link) :-
Newsgroups: news.admin.announce,news.admin.misc,
news.admin.net-abuse.usenet,news.software.nntp,
news.software.readers,news.software.misc
Subject: ANNOUNCE: RFC 1036 successor group established.
Date: 21 Jul 1997 09:14:40 -0400
Message-ID: <5qrtr1$tqj-NAA@darkmere.gen.nz>
Both RFCs and Internet Drafts are on ftp.demon.co.uk in /pub/mirrors/internic/. The RFCs are in the rfc directory, the internet drafts in the internet-drafts directory.
There is a RFC search engine.
A set of guidelines for news software is also at GNKSA.
There is an index of Internet Drafts at IETF, with (at 2005-04-08) a link-entry "Usenet Article Standard Update (usefor) -- 3 Internet-Drafts", linking to the current versions of articles "Usenet Best Practice", "News Article Format", "News Article Architecture and Protocols".
Usenet is a name applied to the well-known Big-8 newsgroups (those newsgroups with names starting with comp.*, humanities.*, misc.*, news.*, rec.*, sci.*, soc.*, and talk.*), rightly or wrongly with or without the addition of other local, national, or general hierarchies in the same distribution.
As seen on Demon's server, over 36,000 groups (Big-8, Alt, National, local, etc.) were available on 2000-07-09 (I can no longer conveniently find this figure; at 2005-09-13 it seems to be about 38,500). Indiscriminating servers may offer more, many spurious.
Usenet comprises the Big-8 news hierarchies; and most others similarly distributed follow similar standards.
There are also private hierarchies, hosted by particular servers. Their policies may differ; check their Guidelines. Hierarchy news:borland.* is an example; it should only be accessed via Borland machines, though it does leak out (but posts made outside do not leak in). But I believe news:microsoft.* uses the Usenet distribution by intent.
Be sure to choose the newsgroup correctly when posting.
Except for some of those in uncontrolled hierarchies, newsgroups have been created for specific and often carefully-defined topics. As a courtesy to other users, this should be respected. Off-topic matter should be redirected to the appropriate group.
JRS: is there a Charters site for the Big-8, like http://www.usenet.org.uk/ ?
AG :-
Not all big-8 groups have known charters.
An archive of RFDs, CFVs, etc. since 1991 or so can be found at ftp://ftp.isc.org/pub/usenet/news.announce.newgroups/
I suspect that vast directory broke my MSIE 4. Try an FTP program; I gather the announcements are stored as plain text.
An archive of control messages of all hierarchies can be found at ftp://ftp.isc.org/pub/usenet/control/
Compressed; not Zipped; but WinZip will undo.
CHL :-
The one I point to from www.usenet.org/usenet-information.html is Usenet Info Center Launch Pad
Useful URL, but I found no Charters - here?
ras2 :-
ftp://ftp.isc.org/pub/usenet/control/[hierarchy]/[group name].Z will get the cmsgs for you (if there are any) so you don't have to download entire directory listings.
Smart.
Try not to ask a Frequently Asked Question : many newsgroups have regularly-posted FAQ lists; and new users should always read back in a group before posting. This is a standard, accepted recommendation; the expected period used to be over a month.
World Usenet newsgroup FAQs are archived at ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet-by-hierarchy/<newsgroup>/<topic>.
FAQs for Big-8 newsgroups are cross-posted in news:news.answers; Some FAQs for uk.* newsgroups appear in news:uk.answers; FAQs for Demon newsgroups appear in news:demon.answers.
Many newsgroup FAQs, including UK ones, can be found at www.faqs.org. Garbo has further advice on finding FAQs, with links. It seems likely that the site updates itself from news:news.answers, holding the most recent copy; if cross-posting has stopped, that may be an old copy.
Subscribe to the Big-8 moderated newsgroups news.announce.newusers and news.announce.important; and if in U.K. to the U.K. one uk.net.news.announce, and if a Demon site to the Demon one demon.announce.
Lewis S. Eisen (leisen@pfx.on.ca) posts a list of newsgroup hierarchies every second Monday to news.groups, news.admin.hierarchies, news.answers, to help readers of the news locate a hierarchy of interest. This Master List of Newsgroup Hierarchies is available on the World Wide Web.
"To receive a copy of this list by email send a message to: leisen@pfx.on.ca with the SUBJECT: Send Master.
Mailing lists are something like newsgroups. John Hall et al wrote :-
There are even more mailing lists than there are newsgroups: see http://www.liszt.com/ for details of many of them, arranged by category, and for details of how to subscribe.
It depends on who you are. The standard response is that if you have to ask (other than seeking clarification of specified details) you are not competent to do it.
See "FAQ : How does one create a new Usenet newsgroup?", by Timo Salmi, and "The Big Eight Newsgroup Creation Process", by Russ Allbery.
Examples :-
For a newsgroup on the default server :
news:demon.service
For a newsgroup on a specified server :
news://forums.borland.com/borland.public.turbopascal
For a specific article, by message-ID :
news:5qrtr1$tqj-NAA@darkmere.gen.nz
AIUI, these forms may be entered into any browser's 'Location' field, or into an HTML file at '....' within <A HREF="....">..</A>.
What top-level news hierarchies are specifically "based" within the European Union and thereabouts, but not in individual countries, and generally distributed within that geographic region?
The answer includes, I guess, judging largely from what Demon provide :-
But not, it seems :-
The U.K. News Page has the prime U.K. Committee documents, including the charters of U.K. newsgroups.
Paul Carpenter has some links to other sites and more information; and there is a FAQ from time to time on Usenet.
There is an up-to-date list giving the exact current state (group names, linking to charters, and one-line descriptions) of the uk.* hierarchy at www.usenet.org.uk.
Charles H. Lindsey : 'See the usenet-information page for "What EVERY Usenet User should know"'.
On 4 Nov 1998 in uk.net.news.config, Robert Irvine <robbie@arakeen.demon.co.uk> gave the home page of UK-VOTING.
What top-level news hierarchies are specifically "based" within the British Isles and thereabouts and generally distributed within that geographic region? I mean the region to include the U.K. of G.B. & N.I., Ireland, the Isle of Man, the Channel Islands, the Scillies, Rockall, and any other bits I've forgotten.
The answer includes, I guess, judging largely from what Demon provide :-
But not, it seems :-
And maybe eng.*, which seems to be for EFL from abroad.
| U.K./G.B./B.I. Newsgroup Hierarchies, taken from revision: 1997 June 9, v5.02: | |
|---|---|
| arkane.* | Arkane Systems, UK |
| aston.* | Aston University, Birmingham, England |
| birmingham.* | Birmingham, England |
| cam.* | Cambridge area, England |
| cityscp.* | Cityscape Internet Services,
UK (ISP) |
| cov.* | City of Coventry, West Midlands, UK |
| covuni.* | Coventry University, West Midlands,
UK |
| demon.* | Newsgroups from the Demon network, UK |
| ed.* | Edinburgh, Scotland |
| ie.* | Ireland |
| leeds.* | Leeds, England |
| lon.* | London, England |
| midlands.* | English midlands, UK |
| mistral.* | Brighton, England |
| pipex.* | Pipex (ISP) |
| scot.* | Scotland |
| solent.* | Solent, UK (ISP) |
| uk.* | United Kingdom |
| uwarwick.* | University of Warwick, UK |
| © 1997 Lewis S. Eisen.
Reproduction in whole or in part is permitted so long as original author is duly credited. | |
In an article of Wed, 11 Jun 1997 13:00:15 in uk.net, Dave Beckett (D.J.Beckett@ukc.ac.uk) wrote :-
I run a small site that keeps a current database of all (currently) 66K .uk domains at URL:http://www.hensa.ac.uk/uksites/ and I was just checking the new domains added recently to the .org.uk domain (Select 'Changed' on URL:http://www.hensa.ac.uk/uksites/org/index.html)
A zipped list of all available newsgroups is on DEMON's FTP site?
Indeed,
Q : "Where on Demon's FTP can I get a full list of
Newsgroups provided by Demon?"
A :
"In the directory /pub/news. There is a choice of file formats all
starting active...".
In late 1996, a lot of useful documents on everything to do with newsgroups were packaged together in newsdesc.zip.