alt.hackers.discuss creation

Article: 8574 of alt.hackers
From: gregc@msn.fullfeed.com (Greg Corey)
Newsgroups: alt.hackers
Subject: alt.hackers.discuss creation
Date: Thu, 14 Sep 1995 17:46:57 GMT
Organization: CPU Wizards
Lines: 89
Approved: U.S.D.A. Choice -- Here's the beef!
Message-ID: 439m92$97m@fullfeed.msn.fullfeed.com
NNTP-Posting-Host: cpuw.msn.fullfeed.com
X-Newsreader: Forte Free Agent 1.0.82
Status: RO

Hi folks.  Some good news and some better news.

A new group, alt.hackers.discuss has been formed.  The purpose of this (also
self-moderated) group is to provide a more free-flowing forum of ideas
without the requirement of an obhack.  As it will take a few days for the
newsgroup to get propagated, your server may not have it yet.  If you would
like to speed propagation, there is a note for how you can send a booster
newgroup in my OBHack.  Suffice to say if you're not REAL comfortable doing
so, please don't.  It has to be done exactly right or propagation problems
WILL occur.

I will be ginning up a FAQ for that group in the next couple of days and
will present it here for your input.  I will continue to encourage the use
of alt.hackers to post hacks and comments/questions about hacks.  I believe
alt.hackers.discuss should focus on the future of hacking and other hacker
(as opposed to hack) issues -- IE: the people, not the thing.  I am not,
however, an all-knowing all-powerful being, and these are just my thoughts.
I am very much interested in hearing dissenting thoughts.  THIS IS YOUR
NEWSGROUP (well, newsgroups now!) so please, if you have a thought, state
it.  Email is fine if you don't wish to include an OBHack.

OBsoyouwanttoconvince100,000sysadminsthatalt.hackers.discussisagoodideaHACK:

After alt.hackers had the discussion of alt.hackers.d, I went to alt.config,
asked about making it, asked if there were any objections.  Turns out that
the .d extension is a convention that some sysadmins (I had never heard of
this before) use to mean an unmoderated discussion group of it's moderated
parent group.  IE:  alt.foo.bar.d would be the unmoderated discussion group
of the moderated group alt.foo.bar.

Anyway, after clearing that up (apparently nobody minds .discuss), I finally
had to get the syntax right, which was a major pain finding bits and peices
of information everywhere.  Apparently self-moderation is not something that
is real well known about... and even the immortal Jef P. had trouble with
it.  Someone finally helped me out by sending me Jef P's initial newgroup
control message for alt.hackers.  Is this a hack?  Well, it was a heck of a
lot harder than figuring out how to post here, so I'm going to say yes.

If you wish to help propagate the group more quickly, you can send a booster
newgroup message to your local server.  I will explain how to do this, with
one warning:  PLEASE DON'T DO THIS IF YOU DON'T KNOW EXACTLY HOW TO DO IT!

If you issue the newgroup incorrectly, it can cause bad newsgroup
propagation.  Please follow the example EXACTLY and DON'T DO IT if you're
not REAL comfortable with how to do so.

Everything within the control message block MUST BE IN YOUR post.  The first
4 lines are header lines, not message body lines.  All of them must be
present or it will not work.

*****BEGIN INCLUDED CONTROL MESSAGE*****
Newsgroups:  alt.config, alt.hackers.discuss
Subject: cmsg newgroup alt.hackers.discuss moderated (booster)
Approved:  Your email address.  Should be IDENTICAL to your From: field.
Control:  newgroup alt.hackers.discuss moderated


This newsgroup is self-moderated.  It should be marked moderated in the
active file, but with no moderator's address in the mailpaths file.
If you have some problem with this, please send email to
gregc@msn.fullfeed.com.  Check the groups alt.hackers and alt.dev.null for
examples of self-moderated groups.

Group submission address:
Moderator contact address:

For your newsgroups file:
alt.hackers.discuss           A self-moderated hackers discussion group

alt.hackers.discuss is a self-moderated hackers discussion group.  Its
purpose is to provide hackers from alt.hackers a place for more free-form
discussion without the restriction of an OBHack (see alt.hackers FAQ).  The
purpose of the self-moderation is to require posters to know how to forge an
"Approved:" header.  Therefore not be net-spammers or 12 year old
"Kuhl rad
warez, d00d!" type poster.  RFC reaction on alt.hackers was positive with
one dissenting vote.  Only objection from alt.config was that alt.hackers.d
(the originally discussed name) would normally indicate an unmoderated
discussion group of the moderated alt.hackers.  As a result, the name has
been changed to alt.hackers.discuss.

Please send information requests to gregc@msn.fullfeed.com

*****END INCLUDED CONTROL MESSAGE*****


 -- Greg Corey         | All opinions are my own, no warranty made or
gregc@msn.fullfeed.com | implied.  Send complaints to god@heaven.org

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