Talk:Alt.* hierarchy

Where's John

Someone should mention John Gilmore here, or are all of you conservatives? Family Guy Guy 07:19, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

Hi,

" Likewise, any and all of the alt.binaries.* newsgroups can be accepted or rejected by administrators if they choose. Binaries are often of extremely large size, which is why administrators may choose to exclude them."

Which administrators are you talking about ? The administrators of the servers providing access to newsgroup ? Or the administrators of the newsgroup itself ? Because, as I can read, there's not really admin for the alt. hierarchies, so I don't understand.

No, you don't...there are no administrators for the hierarchy, but there are admins who choose whether or not to add newsgroups to their servers.

I have no idea what I'm talking about... 04:48, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Interesting article, though.

I'm the author of the previous post. I apologize, I just had not read the first part of the article, lol.

So, if I understand, there is indeed administrators in the alt hierarchy. And if I want to create a group about, mmh, bananas for instance, named alt.bananas, I have first to submit this idea to the alt.config group, or my group may exist but may not be well distributed. Strange, however, does it mean that the news servers check alt config before to retrieve all the group of alt ? Moreover, what does it means "technically capable" ? What do I need to create a newsgroup with my newsreader ?

Thanks. 16 april 2006

Okay. Let's see. First, alt.config is not actually used for anything except flame wars. The original purpose of alt.config, and the reason control messages were crossposted to alt.config, was to ensure the control messages were done correctly; creators of newsgroups were theoretically required to submit another control message cleaning up the errors, as control messages can be sent for newsgroups already created; doing so doesn't re-create the newsgroup, but adds to the original charter.

However, in practice, this has never been how it worked. what actually happens is as follows -

guy#1 - hey, here's a group I want to create: alt.bananas (or what have you)

guy#2 - this is ridiculous. there is no demand for a newsgroup of this sort, and you've made a grammatical error in your control message. similar groups, alt.plantaines, alt.fruit, alt.fruit.tropical cover this topic, as well as to some extent alt.republic.banana. your newsgroup is being removed (rmgroup message is sent)

guy#3 - guy#2, your argument is ridiculous. the alt. hierarchy is free, he can create any group he wants. I remember just last week you created a group, alt.guy.number.two.is.god, and if you can do something so frivolous, so can he. And besides, you smell, and are stupid (resends control message to create group)

repeat ad nauseum back and forth for 2 months, while every news server has already picked up the group, and people have posted to alt.bananas for quite some time, while the thread still rages on about whether the group is warranted, who said what to whom back in 2001, who called someone's mother fat first, killfiles are engaged, other people chime in, and the discussion is crossposted to alt.troll, alt.flame, and every other newsgroup in alt. - a snuh cascade may occur.

Don't believe me? look here: [1]

The simple fact is that anyone can send a control message and any newsgroup can be created. most news servers don't automatically add groups from control messages, because of all the frivolous groups, but as well, neither do they remove groups based on control messages. The best way to go is to create a group and then get everyone you know (and several people you don't) to ask their service provider to add the newsgroup to their servers. Putting such a request into a signature file and posting everywhere on usenet also helps.

No news admins check alt.config for new groups, because it's stuffed to the brim with flame wars, hipcrime posts, and spam. Note that as soon as a control message is sent to create a group, the group exists. All that is left then is propagation, which is done by having news admins add the group to their hierarchy. So in essence, alt.config, while technically required, makes next to no difference whether a group is created.

In answer to your second question, there are certain programs around used for alt. newsgroup creation. Look around. Some newsreaders support control. messages, but not many.

Hope this helps.

I have no idea what I'm talking about... 04:48, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

No, there are no "administrators" for individual newsgroups, except for a handful of "moderated" groups that require approval to post in.

This Usenet Tutorial is a page I wrote about 10 years ago that will answer most of your questions about Usenet - rather than filling up a talk page with questions. I'm also removing the Sources tag at the top, as the article has plenty of sources. If there is some fact that needs challenging, please use

{{fact}}

next to the fact you are disputing.StreamingRadioGuide (talk) 05:06, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Language top-levels vs country top-levels

The page currently says "The language of preference in the "original" Usenet hierarchies, including alt.*, is English, which implies that the preferred character set encoding for these newsgroups is ASCII. Other language hierarchies have later been created in parallel to the existing English ones, for example de.* for German, fr.* for French, etc."

It is my understanding that de. and fr. etc are country top-levels and not language top-levels (even though many de. groups would use German as the language of communication). For example, za. mean "South Africa", not "Afrikaans". -- leuce (talk) 07:57, 13 July 2018 (UTC)