From Newsgroup: alt.config

History:

alt.usenet.reposts was created by a control message on 22 May 1995. It
was never deleted via a control message according to the isc.org archives
and it is currently a part of the isc.org newsgroup list but with an unfortunate description. However it is not carried by many new servers.
The current description is "Use alt.best.of.internet instead." "internet"
is too broad and also it has been requested multiple times to be deleted.

This is a request for server admins to add a.u.r as an existing newsgroup
to their lists if they are not already.

One more thing, the description below has been altered to remove a line referring to alt.usenet.reposts.d which has been deleted and to increase
the number of existing newsgroups from over 10000 to over 45000.

----

For your newsgroups file:
alt.usenet.reposts Reposts of funny, interesting, or thought
provoking usenet articles

Description: The newsgroup alt.usenet.reposts (AUR) was created to
contain articles that people have read in other newsgroups and which other people might find amusing or interesting: there are over 45,000 groups out there, and even if you wanted to, you couldn't read every one. Instead,
you can read AUR, and read about the violent end of flame wars, newbieisms
too clueless for words, witty responses and other articles that a wider audience might find interesting.

Charter: Alt.Usenet.Reposts (AUR) is dedicated to giving people a
place to repost funny, entertaining, intelligent, thought-provoking, or otherwise interesting articles from usenet newsgroups so that all usenet
users can have the chance to read these articles which they might
otherwise miss.
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From Newsgroup: alt.config

Jason Evans <jsevans@mailfence.com> wrote:

History:

alt.usenet.reposts was created by a control message on 22 May 1995.

The terminology is a big deal because the word "creation" has always misled proponents into thinking that newgrouping is all he has to do. Because
the proponent is expected to send his own control message and then follow
up publicizing the group asking would-be users to request its creation
locally, a newgroup message doesn't create a newsgroup. In the past,
we've had proponents complain here that they can't post to the group on
their own server, but that's because they failed to follow up with their
own News administrator to request creation locally.

That's just the date of newgrouping, not creation.

It was never deleted via a control message according to the isc.org archives >and it is currently a part of the isc.org newsgroup list but with an >unfortunate description.

There are no servers known to process rmgroup messages in alt
automatically. Trusted rmgroupers were long before my time, and Jay
Denebeim who played with rmgroups after they left has been gone for a
couple of decades too.

A News administrator would treat rmgroups in alt.* like trolls, which
they are, and refuse to process them.

However it is not carried by many new servers.
The current description is "Use alt.best.of.internet instead." "internet"
is too broad and also it has been requested multiple times to be deleted.

This is a request for server admins to add a.u.r as an existing newsgroup
to their lists if they are not already.

One more thing, the description below has been altered to remove a line >referring to alt.usenet.reposts.d which has been deleted and to increase
the number of existing newsgroups from over 10000 to over 45000.

----

For your newsgroups file:
alt.usenet.reposts Reposts of funny, interesting, or thought
provoking usenet articles

What you are doing is called retrochartering. It's really not considered
to be legitimate. Why? There were a few instances in the '90s in which a
few people in specific newsgroups carried out vendettas by changing
charters back and forth to charter thump and generally declare each
other off topic.

However, there are no rules, just recommendations. So, if you're going
to do it, would you please get the syntax of the newsgroups file line correct?

group.name<tab>Brief description.

You SHOULD NOT substitute a series of spaces for the tab character.
However, INN will replace it with a tab character.

The entire line MUST NOT have a line break. The entire line SHOULD be 79 characters or less, assuming an 8-position tab. Traditionally, it ends
in a period.

(It's 79 and not 80 characters because some terminals used to stack
characters in positions 80 and later in the 80th position instead of
wrapping, and some terminals inartfully indicated the line boundary in
position 80 as well, stacking it on the 80th character. With 79
characters, it's always readable.)

A well-written brief description is a phrase made up of key words that
DO NOT repeat words in the group name. If a user is searching the
newsgroups, then he might more easily hit upon this newsgroup.

Description: The newsgroup alt.usenet.reposts (AUR) was created to
contain articles that people have read in other newsgroups and which other >people might find amusing or interesting: there are over 45,000 groups out >there, and even if you wanted to, you couldn't read every one. Instead,
you can read AUR, and read about the violent end of flame wars, newbieisms >too clueless for words, witty responses and other articles that a wider >audience might find interesting.

Charter: Alt.Usenet.Reposts (AUR) is dedicated to giving people a
place to repost funny, entertaining, intelligent, thought-provoking, or >otherwise interesting articles from usenet newsgroups so that all usenet >users can have the chance to read these articles which they might
otherwise miss.

Posting to alt.config is not an effective way to publicize reviving this newsgroup. I'd just mention that you are trying to revive the newsgroup
in a .sigfile, asking people to request its creation and read it.
ANYWHERE you find a nostalgic thread, post a followup to mention what
you are trying to do.

I should also point out that all we do in alt.config is discuss
charters. And there is no "we"; I'm probably the last one who might make
a comment. Prior to the three Mozilla replacement newsgroups, it had
been at least four years since a serious proponent stopped by.

For the most part, News administrators don't read nor participate in
this newsgroup. Well, Bruce Esquibel does, but he's got just a handful
of users left on RIPCO and he's mostly here to flame me as he's hated my
guts for a long time. He'll be along shortly to do so.

Grant stopped by a few days ago to announce that he'd created another unnewgrouped newsgroup the day it was proposed here; the proponent never bothered to newgroup it.

Such is the state of alt.* these days.
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From Newsgroup: alt.config

Hi Adam,

I hope you're doing well.

On Fri, 02 Jul 2021 14:22:48 +0000, Adam H. Kerman wrote:

The terminology is a big deal because the word "creation" has always
misled proponents into thinking that newgrouping is all he has to do.
Because the proponent is expected to send his own control message and
then follow up publicizing the group asking would-be users to request
its creation locally, a newgroup message doesn't create a newsgroup. In
the past,

I'm not going to argue with you on this point because you probably know
more than I do, but I can give you an example where this kind of thing
thing does happen. When the control messages for the new mozilla support groups were sent out, my server automatically added them server to my
active and newsgroups files. I was going to add these groups manually but
I was surprised that they were already there. Anyway, what I'm getting at
is that it looks like with the current version of INN, a control file is really is all you need unless your server is set to ignore them.

It was never deleted via a control message according to the isc.org >>archives and it is currently a part of the isc.org newsgroup list but
with an unfortunate description.

There are no servers known to process rmgroup messages in alt
automatically. Trusted rmgroupers were long before my time, and Jay
Denebeim who played with rmgroups after they left has been gone for a
couple of decades too.

My point here is that I'm not trying to create a new group. I'm just
asking server admins to add it to their list of newsgroups.

What you are doing is called retrochartering. It's really not considered
to be legitimate. Why? There were a few instances in the '90s in which a
few people in specific newsgroups carried out vendettas by changing
charters back and forth to charter thump and generally declare each
other off topic.

The charter itself is not being touched. I think it's great the way it is. However, the description talks about a dependent newsgroup that I have no desire to recreate. Maybe that's bad form according to good newsgroup housekeeping, but is it really that big of a deal when the desire is just
to get new activity on an otherwise defunct group?

group.name<tab>Brief description.

You SHOULD NOT substitute a series of spaces for the tab character.
However, INN will replace it with a tab character.

I literally just copied and pasted it from the archive. It looks like the
text files in the isc archives use spaces instead of tabs.

Posting to alt.config is not an effective way to publicize reviving this newsgroup. I'd just mention that you are trying to revive the newsgroup
in a .sigfile, asking people to request its creation and read it.
ANYWHERE you find a nostalgic thread, post a followup to mention what
you are trying to do.

I'll take your suggestion and I'll also advertise it in
alt.folklore.computer if the occasion comes up. That group is almost completely nostalgia, though seemingly mostly for old hardware.

I originally posted about this in alt.fan.usenet. That group is sort of
the unofficial home of the r/usenet subreddit on the actual Usenet. Some
of the folks there are really interested in Usenet history like I am.
Someone there tried to get eternal-september to carry the group. It took a while and they do now, but one of the objections is why would they carry
it if wasn't discussed in alt.config first? Since I have some free time
this week, I took the time to write up this article explaining what this newsgroup is and the fact that it isn't just something new.

I should also point out that all we do in alt.config is discuss
charters. And there is no "we"; I'm probably the last one who might make
a comment. Prior to the three Mozilla replacement newsgroups, it had
been at least four years since a serious proponent stopped by.

I get that. For a long time, alt.config had an even worse spam problem
than news.groups. It's good to see that it at least has a little bit of on- topic activity.

Such is the state of alt.* these days.

Oh well, I still prefer alt.* more than free.*. At least there are signs
of real life here. Now if we could only get people to follow through with their suggestions for new Big-8 groups, that would make me very happy.
--- Synchronet 3.21d-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.config

Jason Evans <jsevans@mailfence.com> wrote:

Description: The newsgroup alt.usenet.reposts (AUR) was created to
contain articles that people have read in other newsgroups and which other people might find amusing or interesting: there are over 45,000 groups out there, and even if you wanted to, you couldn't read every one. Instead,
you can read AUR, and read about the violent end of flame wars, newbieisms too clueless for words, witty responses and other articles that a wider audience might find interesting.

This I think is where your logic falls apart.

There might be 45,000 news groups out there (we're at almost 40,000 here)
but I think you can read all of them and probably have quite a bit of time
left over to read War and Peace.

There is barely 50MB of usenet a day and only around 10-12K posts.

Not really seeing much activity where a "best of" is warranted anymore.

I know what you are talking about though, when that group was created, even spending 5 or 6 hours a day looking around still made me use c (whatever the catch-up key was) to mark all of them read in certain groups. Certain groups needed to have an exception in the expire routine to clear space faster.

These days? Pffft. I'm not even sure expire runs on our box anymore.

What is being posted where so that it needs to be pointed out as a
highlight? rec.guns? alt.fan.rush-limbaugh? The only half assed semi-popular group I read is rec.arts.tv and that has been dwindling down in posts. And I can't think of any content in there that needs to be pointed out as "good"
and reposted.

This whole request is weird.

-bruce
bje@ripco.com


--- Synchronet 3.21d-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.config

Jason Evans <jsevans@mailfence.com> wrote:

On Fri, 02 Jul 2021 14:22:48 +0000, Adam H. Kerman wrote:

. . . my server automatically added . . .

Shh. You're not supposed to let the technical trolls know this!

I'm glad you did that, though.

. . .

The charter itself is not being touched. I think it's great the way it is. >However, the description talks about a dependent newsgroup that I have no >desire to recreate. Maybe that's bad form according to good newsgroup >housekeeping, but is it really that big of a deal when the desire is just
to get new activity on an otherwise defunct group?

Your motives are pure. I just don't think anyone who already created the
group is going to change the description.

I'm just noting that retrochartering was a problem at one time and it
shouldn't become a regular thing.

We used to try to emphasize to proponents how big a deal it was to get the charter right in the initial newgroup message because it's not practical
to get a do-over of the errors.

group.name<tab>Brief description.

You SHOULD NOT substitute a series of spaces for the tab character. >>However, INN will replace it with a tab character.

I literally just copied and pasted it from the archive. It looks like the >text files in the isc archives use spaces instead of tabs.

Right. Some day, somebody will explain why so many text editors and
copy/paste make it difficult to enter a tab character.

Please check and double check that the group name is consistent with the newgroup command and that the line is 79 characters or less without a
line break. That's the important bit on the syntax.

I apologize for sounding negative. I really appreciate the effort you
are making in getting an existing group working again, a far more
worthwhile effort than the vast majority of groups proposed in the last
decade.
--- Synchronet 3.21d-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.config

bje@ripco.com wrote:

Jason Evans <jsevans@mailfence.com> wrote:

Description: The newsgroup alt.usenet.reposts (AUR) was created to
contain articles that people have read in other newsgroups and which other >> people might find amusing or interesting: there are over 45,000 groups out >> there, and even if you wanted to, you couldn't read every one. Instead,
you can read AUR, and read about the violent end of flame wars, newbieisms >> too clueless for words, witty responses and other articles that a wider
audience might find interesting.

This I think is where your logic falls apart.

There might be 45,000 news groups out there (we're at almost 40,000 here)
but I think you can read all of them and probably have quite a bit of time left over to read War and Peace.

There is barely 50MB of usenet a day and only around 10-12K posts.

That reads to me like an argument in the group's favour. Regardless
of the trend being down, I'm nowhere near making a dent in reading
though 10-12K posts each day. I only chose to spend time reading
alt.config because it's the weekend.

Not really seeing much activity where a "best of" is warranted anymore.

I know what you are talking about though, when that group was created, even spending 5 or 6 hours a day looking around still made me use c (whatever the catch-up key was) to mark all of them read in certain groups.

I average around 1/2hr reading newsgroups on a weekday, and only
infrequently check a lot of groups, regularly marking all unread
posts as read on leaving. Often I find very interesting posts that
I could have easily missed. I don't have any confidence that
alt.usenet.reposts would help me personally to find them, but
if you're looking at post volume alone then it's still an argument
in the group's favour in my opinion.

What is being posted where so that it needs to be pointed out as a
highlight? rec.guns? alt.fan.rush-limbaugh? The only half assed semi-popular group I read is rec.arts.tv and that has been dwindling down in posts. And I can't think of any content in there that needs to be pointed out as "good" and reposted.

Well I save posts that I think are "good", but I wouldn't expect
other people to find most of them outstanding, which is my reason
for doubting that the group would be helpful except to a lot of
people with very broad but very similar interests. Maybe those
people exist though?
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