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User:Mxmsj/Usenet

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Proposed page title: Big-8 Management Board (Usenet)

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Introduction: What the Board does

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The Big-8 Management Board oversees eight managed hierarchies in Usenet:

  • comp.*
  • humanities.*
  • misc.*
  • news.*
  • rec.*
  • sci.*
  • soc.*
  • talk.*

These are known as the "Big-8 hierarchies".

The idea of management distinguishes these eight subsets of Usenet from unmanaged hierarchies such as alt.*. In the Big-8, newsgroups are added, removed, or modified by the action of the Big-8 Management Board. In unmanaged hierarchies, the control messages to perform these functions may be sent by any user.[1]

According to the Board, its charter is to:

Development of hierarchy management in the Big-8

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The Development of Checkgroups

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The first steps towards hierarchy management--producing reliable lists of available newsgroups--were taken in 1980.[2] In May of 1981, Mark Horton reported that he had "renamed all the arpanet newsgroups from NET.whatever to fa.whatever."[3] Horton created net.news.group in January of 1982 "for discussions about proposed new newsgroups."[4] That same month, Curt Stephens began to publish a list of newsgroups in the new group.[5] By the end of 1982, Adam Buchsbaum was producing a "List of Active Newsgroups," [6] which was taken over by Gene Spafford (spaf) in 1984 and augmented by the regular publication of Checkgroups control messages.[7] spaf continued in that role until 1993, when David C. Lawrence (tale) took over the task of publishing the lists.

Development of Guidelines for Group Creation

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In the early days of Usenet, there was no control over the creation of new newsgroups. Anyone could issue the necessary control messages to create a new group, as is still the case in unmanaged hierarchies:

From: cbosgd!mark (cbosgd!mark)
Subject: official policy on creation of new newsgroups
Newsgroups: net.news.group
Date: 1982-05-31 21:52:27 PST
Message-ID: [bnews.cbosgd.2329]

The current official policy on creation new newsgroups is that someone is supposed to propose it in net.general,net.news.group (substitute whatever for net if it's a local group, or set up your own procedure) and all followups are supposed to go to net.news.group only. (The followup command in all recent versions of news does this automatically.) Once a consensus is reached, the person who originally proposed it should make a yes/no decision on the newsgroup and a name, announce it to net.general, and create it. (If he is not the netnews contact at his site, he should ask that person to create it, or ask me.)[8]

Message-ID: [bnews.azure.1484]
Newsgroups: net.general
From: curts@sri-unix
Date: Sat Nov 20 10:30:44 1982
Subject: grouplist

A new newsgroup may be created by simply posting material to the net under a new newsgroup name. However, THIS IS NOT RECOMMENDED! There are limits to the number of newsgroups that can be supported by the net. If you wish to send material to the net, first try to find an established newsgroup that deals with a subject related to that material. If there is no appropriate newsgroup, suggest the creation of a new group via net.news.group. Usually, there will be enough feedback to establish whether there is an audience for the subject that you would like to discuss.[9]

On October 31, 1987, spaf circulated the first Guidelines on "How to Create a New Newsgroup."[10] Although the document prescribed a routine for developing a proposal and issuing a call for votes, it had no strict mechanism for the subsequent creation of the group: "You can issue the control message yourself, but many sites will ignore the group unless the control message originates from one of the known backbone admins." These five backbone administrators were Gene Spafford, Mark Horton, Rick Adams, Greg Woods, and Erik Fair.[11].

The practice of voting on newsgroup proposals continued from 1987 until 2005. The last edition of the Guidelines for Big-8 Newsgroup Creation under the old system were published in August of that year.[12]

Development of news.groups and news.announce.newgroups

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In 1987, net.news.group became news.groups.[13] The new group inherited the task of the old group: to discuss newsgroup proposals and provide lists of active newsgroups.

On August 8, 1989, news.announce.newgroups (n.a.n.) was created with Greg Woods as the initial moderator of the group: "The moderated group will contain ONLY new group proposals, calls for votes, and results of votes, and periodic postings of the newsgroup creation guidelines. Proposals for changes to the newsgroup creation procedure will also be considered, again with the discussion and inevitable flame wars taking place only in news.groups, provided that these proposals do not become too numerous (bearing in mind that the major goal of this new group is to keep the volume low)."[14] Eliot Lear began to serve as a backup moderator for Woods in 1990. In 1991, David C. Lawrence (tale) became the moderator of n.a.n.[15]

Subsequent news.announce.newgroups moderators

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Under tale, all of the ingredients for hierarchy management were consolidated. As moderator of news.announce.newgroups, he oversaw the creation and removal of newsgroups. After 1993, he also took over the job of issuing Checkgroups so that news administrators could have a reliable list of active newsgroups. In 1996, tale began authenticating his posts by using a PGP key to counteract a flood of bogus control messages that had been sent out under his name.[16] As a general rule, most news administrators ceased to honor control messages in the Big-8 hierarchy that were not authenticated by tale's PGP key.

Russ Allbery began to help tale with hierarchy management in 2001.[17] A year later, Allbery succeeded tale as the lead moderator for news.announce.newgroups; he immediately appointed piranha and Todd McComb as fellow n.a.n. moderators.[18] In 2004, Brian Edmonds joined the moderation team.[19]

Since 1987, most newsgroup decisions had been made by the system of voting developed under spaf's guidance. In 2005, the voting system came under attack, and the news.announce.newgroups moderators announced a moratorium on accepting RFDs and asked for new ideas about how to manage the Big-8.[20] Those discussions led in turn to the formation of an interim group[21] that eventually became the Big-8 Management Board, the successor to the n.a.n. moderation team of Allbery, piranha, McComb, and Edmonds.[22]

Controversies (DRAFT)

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The change from the previous management approach, especially the public voting on newsgroup proposals as managed under the various editions of the Guidelines from 1987 until 2005, has been highly controversial. Among the issues raised since the voting process was suspended in 2005 are:

  • The transition from an interim board to a permanent board.
  • The nature of the Board as a self-perpetuating institution.
  • The procedures adopted by the Board for its internal discussions and decision-making processes.
  • The relationship between the Board and long-time participants in news.groups.
  • The decision of the Board to abandon voting on proposals altogether and use other methods to determine the viability of proposals.

References

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Allbery, Russ. "ADMINISTRIVIA: New members of group-advice" (2001-03-04). Retrieved on 2006-11-22.

________. "ANNOUNCEMENT: Change of Moderators" (2002-10-13). Retrieved on 2006-11-22.

________. "Big Eight hierarchy management transition" (2006-09-30). Retrieved on 2006-11-22.

________. "The Big Eight Newsgroup Creation Process 1.11" (2005-08-25). Retrieved on 2006-11-22.

________. "Usenet Hierarchy Administration FAQ 1.8" (2006-08-12). Retrieved on 2006-11-22.

Bernstein, Joe. "History of the guidelines for newsgroup creation in the Big Seven and Big Eight hierarchies 0.35" (2001-11-02). Retrieved on 2006-11-22.

________. "1981-1982 creation.txt" (2003-11-01). Retrieved on 2006-11-22.

________. "Early lists of newsgroups" (2002-01-20). Retrieved on 2006-11-22.

Buchsbaum, Adam. "List of Active Newsgroups" (1982-12-05). Retrieved on 2006-11-22.

Edmonds, Brian. "How To Write a Good Newgroup Message 1.19" (2003-07-23). Retrieved on 2006-11-22.

Guntner, David. "Authenticated newgroup/rmgroup messages" (1996-05-22). Retrieved on 2006-11-22.

Horton, Mark. "net.news.group is being renamed news.groups" (1986-11-07). Retrieved on 2006-11-22.

________. "network name change is in effect" (1981-05-12). Retrieved on 2006-11-22.

________. "official policy on creation of new newsgroups" (1982-06-01). Retrieved on 2006-11-22.

Internet Software Consortium (ISC). Sample "List of Big Eight Newsgroups" (2006-09-15). Retrieved on 2006-11-22.

McComb, Todd. "ANNOUNCEMENT: New Team Member" (2004-07-01). Retrieved on 2006-11-22.

________. "Call for Volunteers: Advisory Board" (2005-10-31). Retrieved on 2006-11-22.

________. "Welcome to new Board members" (2005-11-21). Retrieved on 2006-11-22.

Spafford, Gene. "Bad addresses & control messages"--first Checkgroups (1984-10-01). Retrieved on 2006-11-22.

________. "List of Moderators" (1991-05-20). Retrieved on 2006-11-22.

Stephens, Curt. "grouplist" (1982-01-26). Retrieved on 2006-11-22.

________. "grouplist" (1982-11-20). Retrieved on 2006-11-22.

Supernews. "Composing and Posting a Control (newgroup) Message" (2006). Retrieved on 2006-11-22.

Woods, Greg. "news.announce.newgroups is up" (1989-08-08). Retrieved on 2006-11-22.

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Specific hierarchies:

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Official web site for the Big-8 Management Board

Updated version of this draft

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