XPost: uk.net.news.announce, uk.answers
Archive-name: uk/newsadmins-faq
Posting-frequency: monthly
Last-modified: Tue 2 Nov 16:37:47 GMT 2021
UK Newsadmins' FAQ
==================
==============================
Subject: Introduction
This FAQ is prepared by Charles Lindsey for the
purpose of disseminating the current status concerning management of the uk.* hierarchy to newsadmins throughout the UK and elsewhere.
I don't know whether these particular questions are in fact "Frequently
Asked", but I certainly believe that they should be.
Comments and suggestions for future editions to
chl@clerew.man.ac.uk please.
This FAQ is archived at
<
http://www.usenet.org.uk/newsadmins.html> and at
<
ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/uk/newsadmins-faq>
==============================
Subject: Table of Contents
1. Recent Changes
2. Who manages the uk.* hierarchy?
3. Who is control?
4. What is usenet.org.uk?
5. Who are the UK Volunteer Votetakers?
6. What about the wales.*, scot.*, ni.* and england.* hierarchies?
7. So which groups should I take on my site?
8. How do I send articles to a moderated group?
9 . Who are the moderators of the uk.* groups?
10. What other sources of information are there?
11. Where can I find an up-to-date list of newsgroups?
12. PGP signature of control messages
13. What other questions are there?
==============================
Subject: 1. Recent Changes
Thu Jan 8 19:37:07 GMT 2015 Committee changes
Sat Jul 11 21:21:13 BST 2015 Change of Control
Sat Jan 30 15:28:26 GMT 2016 Committee changes
Mon Feb 20 14:32:16 GMT 2017 Committee changes
Tue Jan 2 19:57:10 GMT 2018 Committee changes
Mon Nov 12 16:37:52 GMT 2018 Committee changes
Mon Nov 12 16:37:52 GMT 2018 Removal of obsolete stuff
Thu Nov 22 18:06:36 GMT 2018 Revised INN control.ctl
Sat 30 Nov 20:32:14 GMT 2019 Committee changes
Thu 5 Nov 11:35:27 GMT 2020 Committee changes
Tue 2 Nov 16:37:47 GMT 2021 Committee changes
==============================
Subject: 2. Who manages the uk.* hierarchy?
Four documents set out the procedures for creating and/or removing/renaming newsgroups within the uk.* hierarchy.
GUIDELINES FOR GROUP CREATION WITHIN THE UK HIERARCHY
<
https://www.usenet.org.uk/guidelines.html>
<
ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/uk/guidelines>
VOTING PROCEDURES WITHIN THE UK HIERARCHY
<
https://www.usenet.org.uk/voting.html>
<
ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/uk/voting>
THE UK USENET COMMITTEE
<
https://www.usenet.org.uk/committee.html>
<
ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/uk/committee>
Three of these documents were accepted on 7 Aug 95 following a vote conducted in
uk.net.news, with the results, respectively, of
(93 yes : 13 no)
(91 yes : 13 no)
(76 yes : 23 no)
Essentially, they provide for a Committee to be elected each October, with a person known as Control, answerable to the Committee, to oversee the process
of group creation.
A Mentors document was added on 13 Jul 2000 (17 yes : 8 no) and abolished
on 14 June 2010 following a Fast-Track.
The Committee elected in October 2021 comprises
Open members
Until Dec 2022
Molly Mockford
Charles Lindsey
Owen Dunn
Until Dec 2023
Mark Goodge
Fiona Gostling (aka 'Kat')
Mike Fleming
Until Dec 2024
Ian Clifton
Matthew Vernon
1 vacancy
Appointed members
None
The committee as a whole may be reached by email to committee (at) usenet.org.uk.
==============================
Subject: 3. Who is Control?
The Committee have appointed Matthew Vernon as Control, and Charles Lindsey
as Deputy Control.
For official purposes Control may be reached at control (at) usenet.org.uk. It is
required that all RFDs and CFVs should be posted to uk.net.news.announce in accordance with the Guidelines document, and it is advised that all those responsible for the administration of news servers in the UK should subscribe to that group.
Many large news administrators have indicated that they will in
future honour all and only newgroup and rmgroup control messages for the
uk.* hierarchy issued by control (at) usenet.org.uk, and they urge all other news administrators to adopt that same policy.
==============================
Subject: 4. What is usenet.org.uk?
A domain name. Silly question! Next?
But to be serious, it is a domain name set up to facilitate communication
with the Committee, in such a manner that the relevant officers can be
reached even if their identities change. Currently, the following services
are available.
control (at) usenet.org.uk to reach Control
committee (at) usenet.org.uk to reach the whole Committee
ukvoting (at) usenet.org.uk to reach the group of independent
UK Volunteer Votetakers
https://www.usenet.org.uk the UK Usenet Website
==============================
Subject: 5. Who are the UK Volunteer Votetakers?
A group of people, independent of the Committee, who are empowered by the VOTING PROCEDURES to conduct votes. The coordinator of this group is Jon Ribbens, reachable via ukvoting (at) ukvoting.org.uk. They also have their own website at <
http://www.ukvoting.org.uk>.
==============================
Subject: 6. What about the wales.*, scot.*, ni.* and england.* hierarchies?
These hierarchies were formed at about the same time as uk.*,
but their equivalents of control and committee had
all ceased operation by around 2002, and their websites are now unreachable.
Their groups continue to exist and are still in use to varying extents,
but they are running on auto-pilot and no arrangements for creation and
removal of groups are in place.
==============================
Subject: 7. So which groups should I take on my site?
Well that is your prerogative to decide. If you want to take a standard uk.* "full feed", then you should accept the periodic 'newgroup', 'rmgroup' and 'checkgroups' control messages issued by control (at) usenet.org.uk, and (for the
uk.* groups) no others. You may of course decide to take less than this if
your disc space and/or range of interests are limited.
It is possible to automate the acceptance of these control messages issued by control (at) usenet.org.uk, and it is always safe to do so if you first verify the
PGP signatures with which they are authenticated (if you are unable to do
that, it is recommended that at least 'rmgroup's and 'checkgroups' be
inspected manually before acceptance - there are not so many of those,
anyway).
If you run INN, then the following 'control.ctl' will achieve the necessary effects. Note that this example also shows the correct way to handle control messages for the "Big-8".
================================
## control.ctl - Access control for control messages.
## Format:
## <message>:<from>:<newsgroups>:<action>
##
## <message> Control message or "all" if it applies to all control
## messages.
## <from> Pattern that must match the From line.
## <newsgroups> Pattern that must match the newsgroup being newgroup'd
## or rmgroup'd (ignored for other messages).
## <action> What to do:
## doit Perform action
## drop Ignore message
## log One line to error log
## mail Send mail to admin
## verify-pgp_userid Do PGP verification on user.
## All actions except drop and mail can be given a log
## location by following the action with an = and the
## log ("mail" says to mail the admin, an empty location
## tosses the log information, and a relative path xxx
## logs to $LOG/xxx.log).
##
## The *last* matching entry is used. See the expire.ctl(5) man page for
## complete information.
## -------------------------------------------------------------------------
## DEFAULT
## -------------------------------------------------------------------------
# Default to dropping control messages that aren't recognized to allow
# people to experiment without inadvertently mailbombing news admins. all:*:*:drop
## -------------------------------------------------------------------------
## CHECKGROUPS MESSAGES
## -------------------------------------------------------------------------
# Default to mailing all checkgroups messages to the administrator. checkgroups:*:*:mail checkgroups:
group-admin@isc.org:comp.*|humanities.*|misc.*|news.*|rec.*|sci.*|soc.*|talk.*:verify-news.announce.newgroups
.........
checkgroups:
control@usenet.org.uk:uk.*:verify-uk.net.news.announce
## -------------------------------------------------------------------------
## MISCELLANEOUS CONTROL MESSAGES
## -------------------------------------------------------------------------
# Mostly only used for UUCP feeds, very rarely used these days.
ihave:*:*:drop
sendme:*:*:drop
# Request to send a copy of the newsfeeds file, intended for mapping
# projects. Almost never used for anything other than mailbombing now. sendsys:*:*:log=sendsys
# Request to send the server's path entry. Not particularly useful. senduuname:*:*:log=senduuname
# Request to send the server's version number.
version:*:*:log=version
## -------------------------------------------------------------------------
## NEWGROUP/RMGROUP MESSAGES
## -------------------------------------------------------------------------
## Default (for any group)
newgroup:*:*:mail
rmgroup:*:*:mail
## Special reserved groups
newgroup:*:control|general|junk|test|to:drop rmgroup:*:control|general|junk|test|to:drop
......... newgroup:
group-admin@isc.org:comp.*|humanities.*|misc.*|news.*|rec.*|sci.*|soc.*|talk.*:verify-news.announce.newgroups
rmgroup:
group-admin@isc.org:comp.*|humanities.*|misc.*|news.*|rec.*|sci.*|soc.*|talk.*:verify-news.announce.newgroups
.........
newgroup:
control@usenet.org.uk:uk.*:verify-uk.net.news.announce rmgroup:
control@usenet.org.uk:uk.*:verify-uk.net.news.announce
================================
==============================
Subject: 8. How do I send articles to a moderated group?
Normally, you mail it to a server which keeps an up-to-date list of
moderators, normally to moderators.isc.org which is an MX record pointing to several sites which maintain a complete list of moderators worldwide.
However, you will save one hop if you use usenet.org.uk for groups in uk.*,
and this is recommended.
In INN, I believe the following should work.
uk.*:%
s@usenet.org.uk
*:%
s@moderators.isc.org
==============================
Subject: 9. Who are the moderators of the uk.* groups?
You do not really need this information, unless you want to construct your 'mailpaths' file d-i-y style. But the current list may be inspected at
http://www.usenet.org.uk/moderated.html. Note how they all go through "@usenet.org.uk". This has been done so that any change requested by the moderator can be implemented speedily, without the necessity of negotiating
the details with isc.org.
Separate "-request" addresses are also provided. These are guaranteed to point to a human moderator rather than a robot. Such addresses should be used to contact the moderator directly, as opposed to submitting an article.
==============================
Subject: 10. What other sources of information are there?
You might like to look at the following regular postings to news.admin.misc.
How to become a Usenet site <
ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/usenet/site-setup>
Usenet Software: History and Sources <
ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/usenet/software/part1>
The following Web site is maintained on behalf of the Committee. It contains the official management documents for uk.* as referred to above, the complete set of charters for uk.* groups, and pointers to much other useful
information.
<
https://www.usenet.org.uk>
==============================
Subject: 11. Where can I find an up-to-date list of newsgroups?
A checkgroups message giving the exact current state of the uk.* hierarchy
will be issued by control (at) usenet.org.uk periodically. In between,
for an up-to-date list see
<
https://www.usenet.org.uk/checkgroups> (in 'checkgroups' format); <
https://www.usenet.org.uk/newsgroups.html> (for human readers).
==============================
Subject: 12. PGP signature of control messages
The headers of control messages issued by control (at) usenet.org.uk are authenticated with a PGP signature. See
<
ftp://ftp.isc.org/pub/pgpcontrol/README[.html]>
for technical details, patches for INN, and a list of public keys
used by various control message issuers worldwide. For control messages
issued by control (at) usenet.org.uk the public key is:
-----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----
Version: PGPfreeware 5.0i for non-commercial use
mQCNAjGL0cgAAAEEAJ6p7fQHn139U9zQawLixrExOUrkFhi1yLb8m8fLxmKTprKn ZNM1nnxMSbRyO8vXohXKKs4G1U2jTpaCkSRrbCiJ5VxWB/B31E/p/vrBXqqQ2amq 3gb4Df9DZub0ZtOhHTF/pPjQmXvAv08umjZWpYlXRmUHBlBhMmOfGXkh8vHZAAUR tBR1ay5uZXQubmV3cy5hbm5vdW5jZYkAlQMFEDhCcUxjnxl5IfLx2QEB6e8EAJDt gIkNXdLiyL07lgDBr+Wq/Zckgm70JhNaHWxLPqckMLOJZGPFKlOlKA6W62UrwDWI yktEosLHd8whbPCaMOSbIOX7mmTrIySOKf+rBxhFLlRY+fAQ4h2oEyEWYhJ80wiN GgKgMJC+UqQD/ylMB1VcCsTYuZWEQ18ldKgtTsOZtBc8Y29udHJvbEB1c2VuZXQu b3JnLnVrPokAlQIFEDGL1R1jnxl5IfLx2QEBF/gD/ikHjpmJuG10X3PXA/yciZ0r qqVo01/4q5yy8vHBGGfopfxpqrjGnNtUV4kWluNo0/1uYZm1o7TeqHI6Siv/yWQp +QldN4nED3RPauqCtj5cubmMgryXg2pcCBiY+brHWEr0tBV7cSSOHFipwM55FA22 ctQzQ5nIPZQ+KPC3WjdZiQB8AwUQMvCcUq1e6k0sFfGpAQE6nwMzBdaFclXiv48C aMXBUG8S3bLUtx3u2OBajzpe8G2nJlCKYkCY482p2MjtfCDi7+eYDfqgKMDoGrUM zSfMraDRyoXjNC/nIKf1+R2EFMyaLoC9FWggCKTov/I/2BE2+grvQ7ewQSWEUokA lQIFEDGL1FGemw5PLx059QEBje0EAKx99yOZ0zQ9FjibuEBStP8t0BCsRNqkrVjx O513RBXecgcdXdv9hWn+8LNRZx6JLHv/ZpWsdGXqP3oiqj+LRt7WpHnZ55He/njx 5DAoPAM/TjgTk7arazSjsJuFhcTP7gHitLDoHxVkUfdLX8h4HH9LWhEnrWEx82EY /29z/xQ6iQCVAgUQMYvTeKSiIc7jUXyJAQHLNwP/Qz+g2RRsuSZrJ9L0HAVPLcml oAEGOMFfYJDM/mvxegAYzL8i0HGFbwTH/+E94WSmsWAx1KZ/Z2DYKdI7BUaS8c09 a2OtqOEbCd7QBI37seyxG0rTWNpuE0ZXBo0eiQBg37oIW+Faf/tqJQZnALVsV5LD Kcf+6+MhgS47HWJ6ZjQ=
=iInx
-----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----
==============================
Subject: 13. What other questions are there?
Well, you should tell me that.
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