A Beginner's Guide to the Internet/INTERNET.ISO/text/usenet/info/usenet.faq

Text File | 1995-03-14 | 12.1 KB | 264 lines

Archive-name: news-answers/introduction
Version: $Id: Introduction,v 1.44 1993/04/18 01:00:32 jik Exp $



                 Introduction

  This is the monthly introductory article for the moderated
newsgroups alt.answers, comp.answers, misc.answers, news.answers,
rec.answers, sci.answers, soc.answers, and talk.answers (hereafter
collectively referred to as "*.answers").  It explains the purpose of
the newsgroups, what kinds of articles should be submitted to them,
how to submit, how to participate in the mailing list for periodic
posting maintainers, and where to find archives of *.answers postings.

  Comments about, suggestions about or corrections to this posting are
welcomed.  If you would like to ask me to change this posting in some
way, the method I appreciate most is for you to actually make the
desired modifications to a copy of the posting, and then to send me
the modified posting, or a context diff between my posted version and
your modified version (if you do the latter, make sure to include in
your mail the "Version:" line from my posted version).  Submitting
changes in this way makes dealing with them easier for me and helps to
avoid misunderstandings about what you are suggesting.



            What is news.answers?

  The news.answers newsgroup serves as a repository in which periodic
informational postings (a.k.a "Frequently Asked Questions" postings,
or "FAQs") from other newsgroups are posted.

  Although it's difficult to say exactly what qualifies as an FAQ that
belongs in news.answers, the basic description is, "any posting which
answers common questions and is meant to be read by humans beings."
Furthermore, FAQs cross-posted in news.answers should have meaningful
subject lines.  For example, an FAQ for rec.chess should have a
subject line saying something like "chess Frequently Asked Questions
(FAQ)," rather than just "Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)."

  For example, the comp.unix.questions "Frequently Asked Questions
about Unix - with Answers [Monthly posting]" and the
news.announce.newusers "Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on
Netiquette" belong in news.answers, as does the README file from
comp.mail.maps.  However, the comp.mail.maps map postings and the
readership statistics from news.lists do not.

  FAQ postings from any hierarchy that travels using "USENET
mechanisms" can be cross-posted to news.answers (i.e. news.answers is
not limited to postings from the comp, sci, misc, soc, talk, news and
rec hierarchies).  If an FAQ maintainer feels that his (and I mean
that "his" in a completely politically correct, gender-neutral way, so
don't bother complaining about it) posting is of interest only to
people in its home hierarchy, then he can (try to) restrict the
distribution of the FAQ using the Distribution mechanism; if he feels
that it is of more general interest, he can avoid any Distribution
restrictions, in which case the FAQ might receive a wider distribution
that most postings in the hierarchy.  This is a pretty reasonable
thing, considering that FAQs are often considered the "distilled
wisdom" of a newsgroup or group of newsgroups, so a single FAQ from a
hierarchy might be of wider interest than the hierarchy as a whole.

  Where there is an ambiguity, I will decide whether or not a posting
belongs in the newsgroup.

  There are several reasons why this newsgroup exists.  They include:

* It is easier for site administrators to keep FAQs around for a long
  time if they are all cross-posted to one newsgroup....
  Administrators can make the maximum expire time for news.answers
  very long, instead of making every newsgroup with FAQs in it have a
  long maximum expire time.

* It is easier for sites that archive FAQs to generate their archives,
  since they will need to watch just one newsgroup rather than
  scanning the entire news spool.

* It provides a "quick reference" for users, in several different
  respects.  Users who want to browse through the various FAQs that
  the USENET has to offer can do so in just one newsgroup.  Users who
  want to find an FAQ from a particular newsgroup but don't know its
  subject can search for that newsgroup in the headers of the articles
  in news.answers.

* Software for retrieving FAQs can also be simplified to use
  news.answers as the basis for FAQ searches.



           What are the other *.answers newsgroups?

  Each of the other *.answers newsgroups (alt.answers, comp.answers,
misc.answers, rec.answers, sci.answers, soc.answers, talk.answers) is
meant to serve as a repository for FAQ postings that are relevant to
its hierarchy.  FAQs are cross-posted to these *.answers newsgroups IN
ADDITION TO news.answers, rather than instead of news.answers.  For
example, FAQs for newsgroups in the "rec" hierarchy are cross-posted
to both rec.answers and news.answers.  There shouldn't be any postings
in these *.answers newsgroups that don't appear in news.answers as
well.

  Obviously, since all postings in these newsgroups are cross-posted
to news.answers, postings in these newsgroups must conform to the same
guidelines as postings to news.answers.

  These *.answers newsgroups have a few purposes:

* Site administrators can select which hierarchies' FAQs their sites
  receive with greater granularity than just "receive everything in
  news.answers" or "receive nothing in news.answers."  They can
  receive FAQs for some newsgroups they don't receive, without
  receiving the FAQs for all newsgroups.

* Similarly, people who wish to archive some FAQs at their sites can
  choose which postings to archive with greater granularity.

* Users who wish to read the FAQs for certain hierarchies can read
  just those hierarchies' *.answers newsgroups, rather than having to
  read news.answers and skip over the postings they don't want to see.



              How does it work?

  An FAQ maintainer who wants his FAQ to appear in news.answers
submits it to the moderator, following the guidelines in the
"*.answers submission guidelines" posting for proper submission and
format of the FAQ.

  The moderator either accepts the posting as-is, asks the submitter
to make modifications, or rejects it completely.  If modifications are
requested, the submitter makes the modifications and resubmits the
posting to news.answers.

  FAQs that are approved will be assigned a unique (to *.answers)
archive name, which the FAQ maintainer should put in an
"Archive-name:" line at the top of the FAQ.  For example, the
comp.unix.questions FAQ might be given the archive name "unix-faq", in
which case "Archive-name: unix-faq" would be added to the top of the
FAQ.  Multi-part postings will be so labeled in the "Archive-name:"
line, for example, "Archive-name: X-faq/part1".  FAQ submitters should
put the "Archive-name:" line in their postings, with a suggested
archive name in it.  For more information about choosing archive name,
see the "news.answers submission guidelines" posting.

  Once an FAQ has been approved for *.answers, its maintainer can post
it directly to the group(s) himself, by indicating in the header of
the message that it was approved by the news.answers moderator.  FAQ
maintainers who don't know how to do that can contact the news.answers
moderator to find out.

  This should be emphasized: I will not actually post copies of FAQs
in the newsgroup.  Instead, my job is to approve FAQs, which are then
cross-posted by their maintainers to the newsgroup, and to watch the
newsgroup to make sure unauthorized postings do not appear in it.
However, I am willing to assist FAQ maintainers who would like me to
post their FAQs for them, and/or who would like help in figuring out
how to properly go about posting a periodic FAQ.



             What about the mailing list?

  If you are interested in discussion about the maintenance of USENET
periodic postings and related topics (e.g. automatic archival of such
postings), you may wish to join the "faq-maintainers" mailing list.
FAQ maintainers who post FAQs in news.answers are encouraged to join
the mailing list.

  If you are not interested in discussion, but you would still like to
receive announcements directed to FAQ maintainers, then you may wish
to join the "faq-maintainers-announce" list instead.  Note that
subscribers to faq-maintainers will automatically receive messages
sent to faq-maintainers-announce.

  To subscribe to or unsubscribe from one of these lists, send mail
with your request to [e-mail].  To send a
message to "faq-maintainers," write to [e-mail].  To
send a message to "faq-maintainers-announce", write to
[e-mail], with a blind carbon copy ("bcc") to
[e-mail] (if you don't know how to do this,
ask for help from someone at your site or contact me), so that replies
to your message will go to the faq-maintainers list rather than the
faq-maintainers-announce list (which should not be used for
discussion).



            Where are *.answers archived?

  All of the *.answers newsgroups are archived in the periodic posting
archive on rtfm.mit.edu [18.70.0.226].  Postings are located in the
anonymous ftp directories /pub/usenet/alt.answers,
/pub/usenet/comp.answers, etc., and are archived by "Archive-name".
Other subdirectories of /pub/usenet contain periodic postings that may
not appear in *.answers.

  If you do not have anonymous ftp access, you can access the archives
by mail server as well.  Send an E-mail message to
[e-mail] with "help" and "index" in the body on
separate lines for more information.

  Other news.answers/FAQ archives (which carry some or all of the FAQs
in the rtfm.mit.edu archive) are:

    ftp.cs.ruu.nl [131.211.80.17] in the anonymous ftp
        directory /pub/NEWS.ANSWERS (also accessible via mail
        server requests to [e-mail])
    cnam.cnam.fr [192.33.159.6] in the anonymous ftp directory /pub/FAQ
    ftp.uu.net [137.39.1.9 or 192.48.96.9] in the anonymous ftp
        directory /usenet
    ftp.win.tue.nl [131.155.70.100] in the anonymous ftp directory
        /pub/usenet/news.answers
    grasp1.univ-lyon1.fr [134.214.100.25] in the anonymous ftp
        directory /pub/faq (stored by Archive-name) or in
        /pub/faq-by-newsgroup (stored by newsgroup). Also
        accessible via mail server requests to
        [e-mail] (send "help" for
        instructions), and via gopher on port 70 on the
        gopher.univ-lyon1.fr server).
    nctuccca.edu.tw [140.111.3.21] in the anonymous ftp directory
        /USENET/FAQ
    nic.switch.ch [130.59.1.40] in the anonymous ftp directory
        /info_service/Usenet/periodic-postings, with FAQs in
        the "faqs" subdirectory and an index in the "00index"
        file (also accessible by telnet'ing to nic.switch.ch
        and logging in as "info", or by mail to
        [e-mail], or by anonymous UUCP to
        host chx400 in the directory
        ~/ftp/info_service/Usenet/periodic-postings)

Furthermore, the gopher servers on port 70 of jupiter.sun.csd.unb.ca
[131.202.3.10] and gopher.win.tue.nl [131.155.70.78] have news.answers
archives.

  If you decide to archive *.answers and make them available to people
for anonymous ftp, mail archive server or something else, please let
me know so I can mention your archive in this posting.

  Note that the periodic posting archives on rtfm.mit.edu are also
accessible via Prospero and WAIS (the database name is "usenet" on
port 210).  If you don't know what Prospero or WAIS are, don't worry
about it.  And don't write to me and ask, please; I unfortuately
already have too many things to deal with without having to answer
questions about other people's software.


                   Credits

  Thanks to Martin Berli <[e-mail]> for running the SWITCH FAQ
archive, Frederic Chauveau <[e-mail]> for running the
cnam.cnam.fr FAQ archive, James R. Revell, Jr. <[e-mail]>
for running the ftp.uu.net archive, Hank P. Penning <[e-mail]>
for running the archive.cs.ruu.nl archive, and
<[e-mail]> for running the
grasp1.univ-lyon1.fr server.  Thanks to J. Anthony Fitzgerald
<[e-mail]> for making news.answers postings available via gopher on
the unba.ca gopher server.



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