From: spaf@cs.purdue.EDU (Gene Spafford)
Newsgroups: news.announce.newusers,news.answers
Subject: Introduction to news.announce
Date: 4 Sep 92 03:51:54 GMT
Expires: 3 Nov 92 15:51:53 GMT
Followup-To: news.newusers.questions
Organization: Dept. of Computer Sciences, Purdue Univ.
Supersedes: <spaf-intro_711614915@cs.purdue.edu>

Archive-name: news-announce-intro/part1
Original-author: mark@stargate.com (Mark Horton)
Last-change: 30 Nov 91 by spaf@cs.purdue.edu (Gene Spafford)

The news.announce hierarchy contains the four moderated newsgroups
news.announce.important, news.announce.newgroups,
news.announce.newusers, and news.announce.conferences.

"news.announce.important" is a newsgroup for just what it says it is --
important announcements.  It is intended to be read by everyone on
Usenet, although nobody is forced to subscribe.  To post to
news.announce.important, send mail to the moderator at
"announce@stargate.com".  Some netnews implementations will
automatically mail to the moderator anything posted instead of
attempting to post it directly.  If the message is appropriate, it will
be posted by the moderator; if not, the moderator will suggest a more
appropriate place to post it or a better way to go about the same
goal.

Discussions in news.announce.important are explicitly forbidden, and
the volume of traffic will be kept low enough to keep people from
feeling a need to unsubscribe.  Usenet administrators for each site
should make a point of reading news.announce.important.

The current policy is that news.announce.important submissions must be:

(a) short - preferably they should fit on one crt screen, including headers.
(b) important enough to at least have their header shown to everyone on the
    net.  The posting should be more of benefit to the net than to the poster.
(c) not posted to any other newsgroup - news.announce.important by itself is 
    supposed to be sufficient to reach everybody, and nobody should have to
    read an announcement more than once.
(d) signed - the author should be clearly evident.
(e) not commercial, political, or religious in nature.

news.announce.newgroups exists for announcements of either the
creation or the consideration of a new newsgroup.  All calls for
votes, calls for discussions, vote results, and creation notices of
all hierarchies should be posted to news.announce.newgroups.
Submissions should be directed to announce-newgroups@rpi.edu (or to
your nearest major site).  Followups will be redirected to
news.groups.

Some messages will be repeated every month, in order to reach all
newcomers.  These messages will be placed in news.announce.newusers,
which is also moderated.  This makes it safe for experienced users who
have already read these messages to unsubscribe to
news.announce.newusers without missing anything new in
news.announce.important.  If you aren't familiar with the netnews
guidelines in news.announce.newusers, please read them carefully.
Your understanding of these rules will assure that you don't annoy the
more than 1 million members of the net community (estimated) by
unintentionally abusing the net, and will help you get more value from
the net.

news.announce.conference is for announcements of conference programs,
calls for papers, and things of that kind.  Submissions should be
directed to nac@tekbspa.tss.com.  Please keep Subject lines
informative; if space permits, mention the topic and location there,
and avoid acronyms unless very widely known.


	Mark Horton                         Gene Spafford
	news.announce.important moderator   news.announce.newusers moderator
	mark@stargate.com                   spaf@cs.purdue.edu

 	David Lawrence                      Dennis Page
 	news.announce.newgroups moderator   news.announce.conferences
 	tale@rpi.edu                        denny@tekbspa.tss.com
-- 
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
Xref: sparky news.announce.newusers:130 news.answers:2771