I say let's start with one, and go from there.
I'll push this through. A quick summary of what I have to do:
I post a Request For Discussion to news.announce.newgroups, in which I
propose the newsgroup, its ensues, in which everyone agrees with my
proposal (yeah, right!), and then it goes to vote.
It's not clear to me how long the discussion lasts, the regular posting
says 30 days, but that may be only if no agreement is made. I believe
if an agreement can be made quickly, a vote can be called for sooner.
But there's plenty of time to find that out after the discussion has
been started.
Also, In addition to news.announce.newgroups, I should post to other
relevant newsgroups. Does anyone have any suggestions of groups where this
posting should go? I was figuring on comp.infosystems. (Suggest quick,
I'll give you all a couple of hours.)
Note that the disussion will take place in news.groups. Follow-ups to
the request for discussion will go there automatically.
tom
BTW, Here's the regualar posting that describes the whole procedure.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Archive-name: creating-newsgroups/part1
Original-author: woods@ncar.ucar.edu (Greg Woods)
Last-change: 23 Sep 1992 by spaf@cs.purdue.edu (Gene Spafford)
GUIDELINES FOR USENET GROUP CREATION
REQUIREMENTS FOR GROUP CREATION:
These are guidelines that have been generally agreed upon across
USENET as appropriate for following in the creating of new newsgroups in
the "standard" USENET newsgroup hierarchy. They are NOT intended as
guidelines for setting USENET policy other than group creations, and they
are not intended to apply to "alternate" or local news hierarchies. The
part of the namespace affected is comp, news, sci, misc, soc, talk, rec,
which are the most widely-distributed areas of the USENET hierarchy.
Any group creation request which follows these guidelines to a
successful result should be honored, and any request which fails to
follow these procedures or to obtain a successful result from doing so
should be dropped, except under extraordinary circumstances. The
reason these are called guidelines and not absolute rules is that it is
not possible to predict in advance what "extraordinary circumstances"
are or how they might arise.
It should be pointed out here that, as always, the decision whether or not
to create a newsgroup on a given machine rests with the administrator of that
machine. These guidelines are intended merely as an aid in making those
decisions.
The Discussion
1) A request for discussion on creation of a new newsgroup should be posted to
news.announce.newgroups, and also to any other groups or mailing lists at
all related to the proposed topic if desired. The group is moderated, and
the Followup-to: header will be set so that the actual discussion takes
place only in news.groups. Users on sites which have difficulty posting to
moderated groups may mail submissions intended for news.announce.newgroups
to announce-newgroups@uunet.uu.net.
The article should be cross-posted among the newsgroups, including
news.announce.newgroups, rather than posted as separate articles. Note that
standard behaviour for posting software is to not present the articles in
any groups when cross-posted to a moderated group; the moderator will handle
that for you.
2) The name and charter of the proposed group and whether it will be moderated
or unmoderated (and if the former, who the moderator(s) will be) should be
determined during the discussion period. If there is no general agreement on
these points among the proponents of a new group at the end of 30 days of
discussion, the discussion should be taken offline (into mail instead of
news.groups) and the proponents should iron out the details among
themselves. Once that is done, a new, more specific proposal may be made,
going back to step 1) above.
3) Group advocates seeking help in choosing a name to suit the proposed
charter, or looking for any other guidance in the creation procedure, can
send a message to group-advice@uunet.uu.net; a few seasoned news administrators
are available through this address.
The Vote
1) AFTER the discussion period, if it has been determined that a new group is
really desired, a name and charter are agreed upon, and it has been
determined whether the group will be moderated and if so who will
moderate it, a call for votes may be posted to news.announce.newgroups and
any other groups or mailing lists that the original request for discussion
might have been posted to. There should be minimal delay between the
end of the discussion period and the issuing of a call for votes.
The call for votes should include clear instructions for how to cast
a vote. It must be as clearly explained and as easy to do to cast a
vote for creation as against it, and vice versa. It is explicitly
permitted to set up two separate addresses to mail yes and no votes
to provided that they are on the same machine, to set up an address
different than that the article was posted from to mail votes to, or
to just accept replies to the call for votes article, as long as it
is clearly and explicitly stated in the call for votes article how
to cast a vote. If two addresses are used for a vote, the reply
address must process and accept both yes and no votes OR reject
them both.
2) The voting period should last for at least 21 days and no more than 31
days, no matter what the preliminary results of the vote are. The exact
date that the voting period will end should be stated in the call for
votes. Only votes that arrive on the vote-taker's machine prior to this
date will be counted.
3) A couple of repeats of the call for votes may be posted during the vote,
provided that they contain similar clear, unbiased instructions for
casting a vote as the original, and provided that it is really a repeat
of the call for votes on the SAME proposal (see #5 below). Partial vote
results should NOT be included; only a statement of the specific new
group proposal, that a vote is in progress on it, and how to cast a vote.
It is permitted to post a "mass acknowledgement" in which all the names
of those from whom votes have been received are posted, as long as no
indication is made of which way anybody voted until the voting period
is officially over.
4) ONLY votes MAILED to the vote-taker will count. Votes posted to the net
for any reason (including inability to get mail to the vote-taker) and
proxy votes (such as having a mailing list maintainer claim a vote for
each member of the list) will not be counted.
5) Votes may not be transferred to other, similar proposals. A vote shall
count only for the EXACT proposal that it is a response to. In particular,
a vote for or against a newsgroup under one name shall NOT be counted as
a vote for or against a newsgroup with a different name or charter,
a different moderated/unmoderated status or (if moderated) a different
moderator or set of moderators.
6) Votes MUST be explicit; they should be of the form "I vote for the
group foo.bar as proposed" or "I vote against the group foo.bar
as proposed". The wording doesn't have to be exact, it just needs to
be unambiguous. In particular, statements of the form "I would vote
for this group if..." should be considered comments only and not
counted as votes.
7) A vote should be run only for a single group proposal. Attempts to create
multiple groups should be handled by running multiple parallel votes rather
than one vote to create all of the groups.
The Result
1) At the completion of the voting period, the vote taker must post the
vote tally and the E-mail addresses and (if available) names of the voters
received to news.announce.newgroups and any other groups or mailing lists
to which the original call for votes was posted. The tally should include
a statement of which way each voter voted so that the results can be
verified.
2) AFTER the vote result is posted, there will be a 5 day waiting period,
beginning when the voting results actually appear in
news.announce.newgroups, during which the net will have a chance to
correct any errors in the voter list or the voting procedure.
3) AFTER the waiting period, and if there were no serious objections that might
invalidate the vote, and if 100 more valid YES/create votes are received
than NO/don't create AND at least 2/3 of the total number of valid votes
received are in favor of creation, a newgroup control message may be sent
out. If the 100 vote margin or 2/3 percentage is not met, the group should
not be created.
4) The newgroup message will be sent by the news.announce.newgroups moderator
at the end of the waiting period of a successful vote. If the new group is
moderated, the vote-taker should send a message during the waiting period to
Gene Spafford <spaf@cs.purdue.edu> and David C. Lawrence <tale@uunet.uu.net> with
both the moderator's contact address and the group's submission address.
5) A proposal which has failed under point (3) above should not again be
brought up for discussion until at least six months have passed from the
close of the vote. This limitation does not apply to proposals which never
went to vote.
-- Gene Spafford Software Engineering Research Center & Dept. of Computer Sciences Purdue University, W. Lafayette IN 47907-1398 Internet: spaf@cs.purdue.edu phone: (317) 494-7825