Acbosgd.794 net.news utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!ihnss!cbosg!cbosgd!mark Wed Dec 23 21:28:32 1981 proposed USENET policies The following policies for USENET are proposed. Comments are invited. Proposed USENET Policies The most important consideration is the USENET exists for and by the users, and should respond to the needs of those users. As needs arise, users should be allowed to make proposals which all interested users can vote on. USENET is a cashless network. No person or organization may charge another organization for news, except that by prearrangement, one site (a) may be required to pay the expenses incurred by another site (b) in sending news to site (a). Such expenses include the cost of phone calls and equipment, but only to the extent that such expenses would not be incurred if site (b) did not send news to site (a). Each site is expected to carry its own local costs. If a site receives news, it should be willing to forward that news on to at least two additional sites. News articles are divided into a number of classes. Each site may decide which classes it wants to accept and which classes it forwards to its neighboring sites. Classes sanctioned by USENET include the following: net Computer Science related topics. Articles on these newsgroups have professional or academic orientation, and generally have direct benefit to the organizations on the network. fa Like net, but copies of mailing lists from the ARPANET. pers Topics of personal interest, such as hobbies. Such topics do not necessarily relate to the job a person is doing, and can be viewed as a "spare time" activity. fpa Like fa, but for personal topics. Portions of USENET, such as a group of machines which are all part of one company or university, may form additional classes of newsgroup for distribution within that portion of the network. They may apply any standards to these classes they wish. Articles posted to USENET sanctioned classes are expected to be of high quality. The name of the author should be signed. Articles which are likely to be offensive to any part of the user community should not be posted. Peer pressure via direct electronic mail will, hopefully, prevent any further distastful or offensive articles. Repeated violations of this policy can be grounds for removing a user or site from the network. In the past, it has been too easy for any user to create a new newsgroup. This has resulted in a disorganized and inconsistent set of newsgroups. Newsgroups in the four categories above will be created by a member of the USENET committee. A user wishing to create a new newsgroup should propose it by posting an article to net.general (or pers.general, as appropriate). Others wishing to subscribe to the newsgroup should send direct electronic mail to the first user. If there is enough interest to warrent creation of the newsgroup, the user should send the replies to the committee, who will create the newsgroup (possibly with a different name or class). ---- end of policy statement (The formation of the committee is undecided. It would probably contain people such as myself, glickman, swd, trt, smb, and jte, depending on time and interest.) I propose dividing the existing newsgroups up as follows. This is not a hard and fast division, and I will be happy to listen to suggested redivisions. The rationalle behind putting net.chess in net is that it is Computer Science research related. The microcomputer groups were put in pers because they are mostly for the hobbyist. But the real criterion is whether a system which is "all business" would want to receive a given group - comments from such systems are especially welcome. net.general Usenet news of general interest net.applic Applicative programming languages net.bugs.all Bug reports on various software net.bugs.2bsd Berkeley pdp-11 distribution net.bugs.4bsd Berkeley VAX distribution net.bugs.u3 UNIX 3.0 net.bugs.v7 Version 7 bugs net.chess Computer chess net.eunice The Eunice Unix emulator for VMS net.news News about netnews net.news.b Version B news net.periphs Hardware peripherals net.test Test messages, not interesting. net.ucds UNIX circuit design system pers.rec.all Participant sports (recreation) pers.rec.ski Skiing (formerly net.ski) pers.rec.scuba Diving (formerly net.scuba) pers.rumor Rumors about software, hardware, etc. pers.sport.all All spectator sports mailing lists pers.sport.baseball Baseball pers.sport.football Football pers.sport.hockey Hockey pers.auto.all Car owner discussions/queries pers.auto.vw Volkswagen Rabbit pers.aviation Aviation topics pers.columbia News about the space program pers.cycle Motorcycle topics pers.games Computer games of the /usr/games type pers.games.rogue That wonderful game pers.ham-radio Ham radio pers.jokes The latest good joke you heard pers.jokes.q We drop this newsgroup pers.movies Movie reviews pers.music What is this group about, anyway? fa.arpa-bboard Arpanet bulletin boards (arpanet-bboards@AI) fa.digest-p For Digest maintainers fa.editor-p Editors (editor-people@su-score) fa.human-nets * Computers in the real world (human-nets@AI) fa.info-terms News about terminals (info-terms@MC) fa.info-vax Information on the VAX, mostly VMS fa.printers Printers fa.tcp-ip * TCP & IP protocols (tcp-ip@brl) fa.unix-wizards Unix system gurus mailing list (unix-wizards@SRI-UNIX) fa.works * Work station computers (workS@AI) pfa.arms-d * Continuing debate on arms (arms-d@MC) pfa.energy * Various energy topics (energy@MC) pfa.info-cpm The CP/M operating system (info-cpm@AI) pfa.info-micro * Microcomputers (info-micro@AI) pfa.poli-sci * Political science (poli-sci@rutgers) pfa.sf-lovers * For science fiction fans (sf-lovers@AI) pfa.space * The space program (space@mc) pfa.telecom * Telecommunications (telecom@rutgers) pfa.unix-cpm Unix vs. CP/M (unix-cpm@UDEL) Mark Horton ----------------------------------------------------------------- gopher://quux.org/ conversion by John Goerzen of http://communication.ucsd.edu/A-News/ This Usenet Oldnews Archive article may be copied and distributed freely, provided: 1. There is no money collected for the text(s) of the articles. 2. The following notice remains appended to each copy: The Usenet Oldnews Archive: Compilation Copyright (C) 1981, 1996 Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman.