nyuuzyou/wikis huggingface dataset:
Diagram of the Current Newsgroup Creation Process

In this diagram, "Board" refers to the Big-8 Management Board.
This diagram was produced with an evaluation copy of RFFlow. I have enjoyed working with the program and would buy a copy, except that this is the only diagram I have need of at the present time. This plug for RFFlow is provided gratis; neither I nor the Big-8 Management Board have received any compensation from RFFlow.
Disappearing articles

News articles need to "disappear" for a couple of reasons.
== Articles marked read in your newsreader ==
Your newsreader might hide the articles you have read, so that you will not have to wade through e.g. 100 articles you have already seen just in order to find 20 new ones. This behaviour depends on how your newsreader is set up.
=== Ways to mark articles unread ===
* In Netscape, a little green dot disappears when you select the article to read it. If you click where the dot used to be, you can "unread" it and keep it on the screen.
* You may have a "show all articles" option that will list both read and unread articles. In Microsoft® Outlook Express 6, you can change this setting by going View → Current View → Hide Read Messages.
* You may also be able to "flag" an article so that you can easily find it again.
== Expiring articles on your news server ==
News servers have a finite amount of hard disk space. This is why they must expire (i.e., remove) articles from time to time; they need to make room for new ones.
=== Example configurations ===
* Some servers might cause every article to expire when that article is 14 days old.
* Others could cause alt.* newsgroup articles to expire after 4 days, but might keep news.* articles around for 21 days.
* A similar tactic would be to allocate 10% of the total storage space to alt.* and another 10% to news.*, and to expire articles as their volume reaches their predefined quota.
* Still other servers may cause articles to expire once any newsgroup reaches 10 MB in size, regardless of the amount or age of the articles.
=== How to locate an expired article ===
If a given article has expired from your news server, and you really want to read it, you need to obtain it elsewhere.
* You may find the article in Google Groups or in some other archive.
* You might also be able to find a "public" news server on which the article is still available.
* If you post a request to the newsgroup, perhaps either the author or someone else could mail you a copy of the article you want.
* Maybe one of your friends is lucky enough to have access to a news server with longer expiration times.
----
This article is based on material authored by members of the Moderation Board and nnq-workers mailing list, particularly by Dennis D. Calhoun (until 2005) and Thor Kottelin (since 2007).
Category:news.newusers.questions
Dokuwiki vs. MediaWiki syntax

Feature	Dokuwiki	Mediawiki 	Bold Text	** **		Underlined Text	__ __		Code Text 		<pre> </pre>	Strike-through Text			Level 1 Headline	====== ======	== ==	Level 2 Headline	===== =====	=== ===	Level 3 Headline	==== ====	==== ====	Level 4 Headline	=== ===	===== =====	Level 5 Headline	== ==	====== ======	Internal Link	[[ ]]	[[ ]]	External Link	[[URL|anchor]]	[URL anchor]	Ordered List Item	-	#	Unordered List Item	*	*	Horizontal rule
Images 	{{ | }} 	[[File:Example.jpg]]	Smileys 	8-) 		Force newline 	\\ 		superscript		 	 			 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	
{| {{Prettytable}}
|-
! header 1
! header 2
! header 3
|-
| row 1, cell 1
| row 1, cell 2
| row 1, cell 3
|-
| row 2, cell 1
| row 2, cell 2
| row 2, cell 3
|}
Bold Text
Italic Text
Underlined Text
Code Text
Strike-through Text
== Level 1 Headline ==
=== Level 2 Headline ===
==== Level 3 Headline ====
===== Level 4 Headline =====
====== Level 5 Headline ======
Internal Link
Link
# Ordered List Item
* Unordered List Item
Table Header	Second Header	Third Header	table cell	table cell	table cell
Finances

The Usenet Big-8 Management Board is financed entirely through donations by Board members or members of the public. Our regular recurring expenditures are as follows:
* €4.99 per month for mail and web hosting
* €25 per year for domain name registration
* $100 per year for moderation software hosting
We use donations primarily to pay the above-noted bills, and secondarily to cover expenses associated with the Board's outreach activities (e.g., attendance at technical conferences where we speak about the Board's work) and to help fund maintenance and development of the STUMP and WebSTUMP moderation software.
In March 2021, the Board joined Open Collective Europe in order to make all of its financial activities transparent. If you would like to see a record of the Board's income and expenditures, or make a financial contribution to the Board, you can do so via the Usenet Big-8 Management Board Open Collective.
Finding an offline newsreader

Microsoft Outlook Express and Mozilla Seamonkey can be used offline, but they do not have the more powerful features normally found in a stand-alone newsreader. (If you do decide to use one of them, be sure you configure it not to post HTML or attach Vcards to newsgroups postings.) If you are interested in finding a better newsreader, here are some suggestions.
== Windows: Forté Agent ==
Agent is one of the best offline newsreaders available for Microsoft Windows. (Free Agent has been discontinued.)
For assistance in using Agent, subscribe to the newsgroup .
== Mac OS: MacSOUP ==
A good offline newsreader for the Macintosh is MacSOUP. It is a shareware program; you can try it for free, but if you decide to keep it, you should pay for it.
== Where to find more alternatives ==
* NewsReaders.com is an excellent source of information about newsreaders for all systems.
* You can visit the newsgroup , and ask which newsreaders are made for your system.
* For information about desirable behavior in a newsreader, and reviews of many newsreaders, please visit the Good Net-Keeping Seal of Approval (GNKSA) site.
----
This article is based on material authored by members of the Moderation Board and nnq-workers mailing list, particularly by Kathy Morgan (until 2005) and Thor Kottelin (since 2007).
Category:news.newusers.questions
Frequently asked questions (FAQs)

== Big-8 management ==
*FAQ: Big-8 Hierarchy Management
*FAQ: Control Messages & Checkgroups What is the process for notifying news server administrators of changes in the eight classes of Usenet newsgroups? 
*FAQ: Group Removal How is an old newsgroup terminated? 
*FAQ: Moderation How do moderators control a moderated newsgroup? 
*FAQ: New Newsgroup Users Information for new participants in the community of newsgroups. 
*FAQ: Newsgroup Creation How does a new Usenet newsgroup come into existence? 
*FAQ: How to Create a New Newsgroup DRAFT FAQ for periodic posting to news.* hierarchy.
*FAQ: Letter to Proponents What are the responsibilities of a proponent?
*Frequently Asked Questions for news.groups.proposals How does news.groups.proposals fit into the system?
== Other issues ==
*FAQ: What is Usenet? How do the Big-8 newsgroups fit into Usenet?
*FAQ: Who takes care of the FAQ sites?
*FAQ: What is going on with the child-pornography crackdown?
Category:Help for new Usenet users
F
Great Moments in Usenet History

Note well: all claims listed here are subject to further review. Caveat emptor!
Corrections & amendments most welcome.
See "20 Year Archive on Google Groups" for other highlights.
Date 	Event
1979 	Duke University graduate students Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis Usenet invent a method of sharing news.
1980 	Usenet, Usenix, UUCP developed as "the poor man's ARPANET."
1981 	net.news split off from net.general to discuss new newsgroups.
1982 	Mark Horton creates net.news.group.
1983 	Mark Horton creates net.announce, the first moderated newsgroup.
1983 	Spafford (Spaf) organizes the backbone.
1984 	Is the death of the net coming in September?
1984 	Development of newspaths improves moderation (B News 2.11).
1986-87 	The Great Renaming: The Big Seven organized. Roots of the voting system planted.
1986 	net.news.group renamed news.groups.
1987 	alt.* groups formed.
1987 	First Guidelines for Creation: Spafford, Horton, Adams, Woods, Fair as backbone admins.
1988 	Spaf kills the backbone (The Cabal).
1989 	news.announce.newgroups created (Greg Woods-->Eliot Lear-->tale, 1989-1991).
1989 	April Fools Called Off.
1992 	Kibo proposes HappyNet.
1993 	The September That Never Ended.
1993 	Formation of Usenet Volunteer Votetakers (UVV) under Ron "Asbestos" Dippold.
1993 	Spaf burns out, says good-bye.
1993 	tale (David C. Lawrence) takes over Checkgroups from Spaf; Mark Moraes inherited other lists.
1995 	New humanities hierarchy created by a vote of 508:97. The Big Seven becomes the Big Eight.
1996 	tale creates the PGP key used by news.announce.newgroups moderators (1996-04-10).
1997 	Usenet II proposed. Usenet II home page.
1998 	HappyNet updated.
2001 	Google's 20-year retrospective of Usenet History.
2001 	Jim Ellis, RIP.
Oct. 13, 2002	Russ Allbery, Todd McComb, and piranha succeed tale.
2005 	Old newsgroup creation system suspended. Eleven people tagged to work on a new system.
March 2006 	Big-8.org opens for business. skirv preserves one-syllable tradition.
Oct. 1, 2006 	Big-8 Management Board confirmed by previous n.a.n. moderators.
Oct. 2, 2006 	Death of Usenet. Film at 11.
Category:History
Help in your own language

The helpers in know a lot of answers, but we don't always speak the same languages as the people we're trying to help! In many cases, the best help for technical problems will come from a newsgroup which speaks your own language.
These newsgroups are good starting points for new users who are not very familiar with English:
; : Computer related topics (for Swiss readers)
; : Discusion general sobre Internet en Chile
; : Postings by new users (Chinese)
; : Hilfe zum Usenet (moderated)
; : Preguntas generales sobre las news (Spanish)
; : Les premières questions sur Usenet (French)
; : Usenet users, new user question/discussion (Korean)
; : Domande e risposte sul servizio news (Italian)
; : Startpunt voor beginners op internet (Dutch/Netherlands; moderated)
; : Newsprogramvare og news generelt (Norwegian)
; : Discussao sobre as Usenet news em Portugal (Portugese)
; : Tekniska och administrativa frågor kring news (Swedish)
; : Help for newcomers (Taiwanese)
In addition to the above, the users in one of the related soc.culture.* newsgroups might be able to point you to other newusers groups which are available in your language.
----
This article is based on material authored by members of the Moderation Board and nnq-workers mailing list, particularly by Dennis D. Calhoun (until 2005) and Thor Kottelin (since 2007).
Category:news.newusers.questions
How does a group change moderators?

= Brief Outline: =
Ideally, the old moderator or team hands off control of the group to the new moderator(s) by sending an e-mail to moderators-request@isc.org. Up-to-date contact addresses for the moderator(s) should be supplied in that e-mail at the same time that the request is made.
As a courtesy but as not a requirement, the outgoing moderator might inform the Big-8 Management Board about the change in moderators. It is the ISC, not the Board, that maintains the official list of submission addresses used by the moderation system.
If the original moderation scheme seems to be broken, interested parties may initiate a Moderator Vacancy Investigation.
=
How to volunteer or donate

== Volunteering ==
If you'd like to volunteer to help administer the Big 8, please contact the Board. Let us know your background, skills, availability, and areas of interest so we can match tasks with the right people.
At the moment we are particularly interested in volunteers who can help with:
* Identifying moderated newsgroups with absentee moderators
* Taking over moderation of newsgroups with absentee moderators
* Maintaining, documenting, and further developing the STUMP and WebSTUMP moderation software
== Donations ==
In March 2021, the Usenet Big-8 Management Board joined Open Collective Europe in order to make all of its financial activities transparent. If you would like to make a financial contribution to the Board, you can do so via the Usenet Big-8 Management Board Open Collective.
== Helping Usenet ==
There are many ways to make Usenet at large a better place for discussion, and you don't necessarily need a lot of time or special skills to make a difference. Things you could do include:
* Participate! There are lots of quiet groups that would benefit from some extra traffic. If you can post a helpful answer to someone's question, or add something to an ongoing thread, it will make that group livelier and more fun for everyone. And remember that even if a group looks completely dead, there may still be people subscribed to it; try posting an on-topic article and see if it sparks an interesting discussion.
* Promote Usenet elsewhere on the Internet. People who have arrived on the Internet after the rise of the Web may not be aware that Usenet exists. Even those who have heard of it may know it only as a file-sharing service. If you can let people know what Usenet is and how to access it, there will be more people to help keep conversations going.
* Moderate a newsgroup. If a newsgroup moderator needs help, or wishes to hand over moderation to someone else, they may post a message to the group asking for volunteers. You will most likely need to have a track record of positive contributions to the group in order for the existing moderators to trust you with the task. Or you may find a moderated newsgroup with a missing moderator: the newsgroups is marked as moderated, but articles that you post disappear and never show up in the group. If you believe that the moderator of a Big-8 group is missing, please contact the Board so that we can investigate.
* If you have programming skills, you could volunteer to work on software that works with Usenet. For example, the open-source newsreaders Pan and slrn are both open to contributions. If there's another Usenet client that you'd like to improve, you could check its homepage and see if there's a way to volunteer.
Internet Systems Consortium

The Systems Consortium (ISC) is a non-profit corporation that supports "the infrastructure of the universal connected self-organizing Internet--and the autonomy of its participants--by developing and maintaining core production quality software, protocols, and operations." One of the services that the ISC donates to Usenet is set of ftp archives in which the official (canonical) list of Big-8 groups is maintained along with the control messages that created the groups.
In the control messages are the original charters (if any) of each newsgroup.
== The ISC Newsgroup Archives ==
Archived control messages from news.announce.newgroups
ftp root directory for news.announce.newgroups
ISC CONFIG list of active newsgroups
ISC archive of control messages
Checkgroups--the canonical list.
ftp version of Checkgroups
Archives of charters and RFDs for each hierarchy
Top level directory.
comp.*
humanities.*
misc.*
news.*
rec.*
sci.*
soc.*
talk.*
Minutes/2020-04-25

Present: Bill Horne (BH), Kathy Morgan (KM), Fred Goldstein (FG), Jason Evans (JE), Tristan Miller (TM)
KM reported that she is still moderating , which has not received submissions in a while. The B8MB is responsible for moderating , , and . The moderation software is a STUMP instance running on Panix. KM has just renewed the Panix account for another year at a cost of $100. BH has the login information.
BH has prepared a handover document. The Board's wiki is hosted on a site run by Roman Racine, who has offered help to migrate it off to new hosting. The Board has an e-mail alias on GSuite that costs $6/month/user unless it can prove to Google that it is a non-profit organization. Tim Skirvin has been providing the Board with DNS; the Board will need to get in touch with him to re-point the big-8.org name to new hosting. There exists a static copy of the Board's wiki on tokak.us.
KM said that the Board has a set of rules and policies that it is free to change. The Board posts occasional announcements on when it makes significant changes to the rules and policies.
BH and KM agreed to post such an announcement on the Board's new membership.
KM observed that under the current policies, when the Board is down to two members, it needs to appoint a third member.
FG, BH, and KM unanimously elected JE and TM as Board members.
FG and KM offered to stay on the Board's mailing list, but said they were resigning from the Board.
It was agreed to drop the Board's GSuite account in favour of a self-hosted mail server. BH to nuke the GSuite account.
BH said that the Board can continue to reach him by e-mail, but that it should not publicize his e-mail address. He can receive X509-encrypted messages.
Category:Meeting minutes for 2020
Minutes/2020-04-27

Present: TM, JE
==Hosting==
JE to set up new web and mail hosting for the Board. JE to e-mail Kathy Morgan to have the big-8.org domain name transferred to his GoDaddy account.
==Wiki==
TM to handle the migration of the Board's MediaWiki instance at <http://big-8.albasani.net/>. It may be possible to export the pages directly from the web interface. Alternatively TM will write to Roman Racine, who is hosting the wiki, to ask for shell access.
==Board membership==
Board policy requires there to be at least three members, so TM and JE to seek volunteers.
Category:Meeting minutes for 2020
Minutes/2020-05-04

Present: TM, JE
==Hosting==
JE has set up new web/mail hosting, which is paid up for the next six months. The board@big-8.org e-mail is now a real account. JE to send TM the admin credentials so that he can set up forwarding. The mail server runs an Nginx web server for the admin interface. This doesn't allow PHP, so if we need to run MediaWiki then we may need to set up a separate web server with its own hosting. Alternatively we could use the existing Nginx to serve a statically generated site. TM suggested using Pelican in that case.
==Admin/legal issues==
TM to investigate the possibility of registering the Board as a non-profit organization in Austria.
==Panix==
TM in the process of getting the Panix credentials from Kathy Morgan. JE has been in contact with Paul Schleck (who assists with the administration of WebSTUMP on Panix) and will send his contact info to TM.
Category:Meeting minutes for 2020
Minutes/2020-05-08

Present: Rayner Lucas (RL), JE, TM
==Board membership==
RL introduced himself and TM and JE decided to formally appoint him to the Board.
==Infrastructure==
JE suggested that in the near future we should test if the Board's infrastructure still works, and familiarize ourselves with it, by changing a moderation address and/or by processing a group deletion request. JE to get in touch with news server operators to see whether/how they are using the Board's group list.
==Admin/legal issues==
TM reported that establishing an organization in Austria is not too difficult in terms of fees and paperwork (though it is required to submit a constitution in German). At least one member of the organization must be resident in Austria, but there is no citizenship requirement. However, for formal non-profit status (which may be necessary for donations to be tax-deductible) there may be significant initial and ongoing fees/paperwork. Agreed to defer further consideration of organizing in Austria in favour of RL looking into the corresponding procedures in the UK.
==Wiki==
TM has not yet had a reply to his e-mail to Roman and so will look into other ways of contacting him. TM to ask Kathy and Fred if they still have wiki credentials we can use, as we will need these to access the private sections of the wiki in the event that we need to scrape the site manually.
Category:Meeting minutes for 2020
Minutes/2020-05-22

Present: RL, JE, TM
==General financial/organizational matters==
The meeting discussed RL's second written report on the requirements for incorporating or for registering as a charity in the UK. Incorporation does not confer any tax benefits, and registering as a charity requires 50% of the trustees to be resident in the UK. It was agreed to abandon any further investigation of forming a legal entity for the time being, and instead continue to operate as an informal group.
==Wiki==
The albasani.net web server hosting the Board's official wiki is still down. Kathy Morgan and Bill Horne have been in touch with Roman Racine and asked him to get in touch with us so that we can migrate the wiki to our new host. However, he hasn't done so yet, possibly because he is busy recovering from the server crash. It was agreed to wait another week or two.
==Signing keys for control messages==
TM reported on an ongoing thread on news.admin.hierarchies and news.software.nntp (see news:r6chgv$dam$1@news.trigofacile.com regarding migrating to newer, stronger PGP keys. Russ Alberry, who handles these technical aspects on behalf of the Board, is participating.
==News admins==
TM reported that a poster with the handle U.ee has been producing PNG and PDF maps of news servers: news:r6qs03$1omd$1@news.usenet.ee These might come in handy for our further work in contacting news admins.
==Panix==
TM reported on his initial survey of the Panix setup. There is a .procmailrc account with recipes that shunt mail to various sinks: some mail was forwarded to individual Board members, some is placed in mailboxes in $HOME/Mail, mail for moderated newsgroups gets sent to various moderators and STUMP installations, and some gets sent to the bit bucket. TM changed the recipes that forward messages to individual board members so that they instead send to board@big-8.org. TM to contact Paul Schlenk to ask about his role in maintaining the account and whether he can give us any introduction/advice. RL to start also investigating the Panix account and the STUMP documentation at <http://igor.chudov.com/stump/>.
Category:Meeting minutes for 2020
Minutes/2020-05-29

Present: RL, JE, TM
==Wiki==
Still no response from Roman Racine. TM will ping him late next week if he still hasn't responded, possibly using the board@big-8.org account.
==Panix==
RL has had a cursory look at the STUMP documentation, and will continue to read and experiment next week.
==Misc==
JE is setting up his own peering NNTP server in order that he and the Board gets some experience in such matters.
Category:Meeting minutes for 2020
Minutes/2020-06-05

Present: RL, JE, TM
==Wiki==
Bill Horne forwarded a message from Roman Racine with login credentials to the machine that was running the news and web servers on albasani.net; the machine had crashed but there is a (possibly non-working) disk image available to download. Bill, JE, and TM had all replied to Roman Racine to inform him about the new Board but so far the Board had received no answer. It was agreed to that TM would use the credentials to download the disk image for inspection and see if the MediaWiki database can be recovered.
==Newsgroups==
JE did a brief survey of newsgroups in the Big-8. There are currently 1992 newsgroups in the Big-8 hierarchy, with rec.* and comp.* having the greatest number of grousp, and humanities.* the least.
==Misc==
JE reported on his progress installing a news server: INN uses the system's GnuPG installation to verify the control messages. Since the keys we are using are so old that recent versions of GnuPG cannot process them, this probably means that nobody running an up-to-date news server is able to verify the official list of Big-8 groups.
==Panix==
RL reported that he was continuing to investigate STUMP, having installed it locally. The next step is to install local news and web servers for testing purposes. RL also attempted to subscribe to the STUMP mailing list; he received no confirmation but no bounce message either.
==Future meetings==
It was agreed to invite Todd M. McComb to the next Board meeting so that we can introduce each other. JE to get in touch with him to confirm his participation and, if necessary, to reschedule the meeting for a more mutually convenient time. TM gave advance notice that he may not be able to attend the regular Board meeting on 26 June due to a conflicting meeting.
Category:Meeting minutes for 2020