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| STACS_\'97 14th Symposium on Theoretical Aspects of Computer Science. Hansestadt Lübeck, Germany; 27 February -- 1 March 1997. | | (Swaziland)_University_of_Swaziland Department of Computer Science. | | (Zimbabwe)_University_of_Zimbabwe Computer Science Department. Research interests include: Software Engineering, Operating Systems, Programming Languages, Databases. | | ACM_SIGAda Annual International Conference: The engineering of industrial strength real-time software and distributed systems using Ada and related technologies. Redondo Beach, CA, USA; 16--17 October 1999. | | University_of_the_West_Indies,_Barbados Department of Computer Science, Mathematics and Physics. | | CP\'99 Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming. Alexandria, Virginia, USA; 12--16 October 1999. | | University_of_the_West_Indies,_St__Augustine Department of Mathematics and Computer Science. | | FOCS_99 40th Annual Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science. New York, NY, USA; 17--19 October 1999. | | FOCS_2000 The 41st Annual Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science , Redondo Beach, CA, November 12-14, 2000. | | FoIKS_2000 International Symposium on Foundations of Information and Knowledge Systems. Burg (Spreewald), Germany; 14--17 February 2000. List of open problems. | | FOOL_6 The Sixth International Workshop on Foundations of Object-Oriented Languages. (Following POPL'99). San Antonio, Texas, USA; 23 January 1999. | | FTCS-29 The 29th International Fault-Tolerant Computing Symposium. Madison, Wisconsin, USA; 15--18 June 1999. | | ICME_2000 IEEE International Conference on Multimedia and Expo. New York City, NY, USA; 30 July -- 2 August 2000. | | HotOS-VII Workshop on Hot Topics in Operating Systems. Rio Rico, Arizona, USA; 29--30 March 1999. Digest of proceedings and ordering information. | | Hypertext_99 International Conferences on Hypertext and Hypermedia. Darmstadt, Germany, February 21 - 25, 1999. | | ICCS99 International Conference on Conceptual Structures. Blacksburg, VA, USA; 12--15 July 1999. | | Aachen_\'96 Combining the Fifth International Conference on Algebraic and Logic Programming (ALP); the Eighth International Symposium on Programming Languages Implementations, Logics, and Programs (PLILP); and th | | Information_Outlook_2000_(IO2000)_conference The IO2000 conference is the annual conference of the Australian Computer Society (ACS) Canberra Branch. Friday, 10 November 2000, Manning Clark Theatre, | | Interactive_Publishing_2000 7th European Interactive Publishing 2000 Conference. Zurich, Switzerland, November 15 - 16, 2000. | | IW-MMDBMS\'99 IEEE Workshop on MultiMedia DataBase Management Systems. Blue Mountain Lake, New York, USA; 31 August -- 3 September 1999. | | MD99 IEEE Meta-Data Conference. NIH Campus, Bethesda, Maryland, USA; 6--7 April 1999. | | JCIS_(Joint_Conference_On_Information_Sciences)_2000 Trump Taj Mahal Casino and Resort Atlantic City, NJ USA. February 27-March 3. | | MFCS_2000 Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science. Bratislava, Slovak Republic; 28 August -- 1 September 2000. | | PADL\'99 First International Workshop on Practical Aspects of Declarative Languages. (Co-located with POPL'99), San Antonio, Texas, USA; 18--19 January 1999. | | PKDD\'99 3rd European Conference on Principles and Practice of Knowledge Discovery in Databases. Prague, Czech Republic; 15--18 September 1999. | | PLDI\'99 ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation. Atlanta, Georgia, USA; 1--4 May 1999. | | POPL_99 26th ACM SIGPLAN-SIGACT Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages. Co-located with PADL'99, PEPM'99 and FOOL 6. San Antonio, Texas, USA; 20--22 January 1999. | | RTA99 10th Conference on Rewriting Techniques and Applications. Part of FLoC'99. Trento, Italy; 2--4 July 1999. | | SOSP_1999 17th ACM Symposium on Operating Systems Principles. December 12-15. | | STACS_1999 Symposium on Theoretical Aspects in Computer Science. University of Trier, Germany; 4--6 March 1999. | | NOSSDAV_2000_On-Line_Proceedings On-line copies of papers presented at the 10th International Workshop on Network and Operating System Support on Digital Audio and Video (NOSSDAV), Chapel Hill, NC, June 2000. | | PADL\'00 Workshop on Practical Aspects of Declarative Languages | | POPL_\'00 Principles of Programming Languages. Boston, MA. January 19-21. | | PPDP_2000 2nd International Conference on Principles and Practice of Declarative Programming. Associated with PLI 2000. Montreal, Canada; 20--22 September 2000. | | RTSS_2000 The 21st IEEE Real-Time Systems Symposium and Real-Time Linux Workshop. Disney World, Orlando, Florida, USA; 27--30 November 2000. | | SAC_2000 ACM Symposium on Applied Computing. Villa Olmo, Como, Italy; 19--21 March 2000. | | USENIX 7th USENIX Tcl/Tk Conference. Austin, Tx. February 14-18. | | VL_2000__IEEE_Symposium_on_Visual_Languages Visual and multimedia computer-mediated communication. | | Alma_Technologies Developers of image compression, image processing, bus interface and memory controller IP cores. | | Best_Microcontroller_Projects PIC microcontroller tutorials, resources and projects ranging from simple to advanced designs with schematics and source code. Free for non-commercial use. |
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The User's Guide to the Changing USENETUser's Guide to the Changing UsenetSummary: 1. RFD'sare important. Read them before deciding to ignore them. 2. CFV'sare REALLY important. Read them before deciding to ignore them. 3. To keep up with the changes, read news.announce.newgroups. 4. To discuss new groups, read news.groups. 5. To learn more about USENET, read news.announce.newusers. 6. To learn even more, ask questions. "Should I read this document?"Yes. At some point, you will find that your newsgroup is underscrutiny for change. This is an explanation of what is happening.--> "What will I learn if I do?"This document attempts to explain the process for changes toUSENET newsgroups from the user's viewpoint. It is a supplement to the"How to create a USENET Group" article (also called "The Guidelines"),which is posted regularly to news.announce.newgroups,and is not intended as a guideline for action, only as an explanation.You will find lots of other information in the newsgroupnews.announce.newusers and news.announce.newgroups. Please, please, please, read the material there.Many people have spent many hours putting together this information,and it will answer many questions.If your site doesn't get these groups, talk to your systemadministrator. If you don't know who that is, send mail to 'root' or'usenet' or 'postmaster' -- one of those should connect you to him.--> "USENET groups can change?"Yes. USENET groups are not chiseled in stone. There are requestsfor new newsgroups to cover new topics, or to split one newsgroup intotwo or more selective areas of a topic. For example: rec.aviation used tobe one group. When there got to be too much traffic (too many articles)for many people to be able to keep up, it split into many subgroups that are more specific as to topic.Sometimes newsgroups are moved so that related newsgroups areunder the same hierarchy. For example, most science fiction groups weremoved under the rec.arts.sf hierarchy. This is called a reorganization,or "reorg" for short. These are intended to make it easier for you, thenew user, to find related newsgroups.--> "How do I know when my newsgroup is being considered for a change?"In some cases, the discussion about a newsgroup change starts inthe newsgroup itself. Someone will post a message saying "Hey! I havethis great idea ...". This is good, usually, since it lets theparticipants of the newsgroup hash out the details, or even whether theproposal is a good idea. It doesn't always happen, however. The formal notification that there is discussion about a changecomes in a posting called a Request For Discussion (RFD).This is aposting made to every group that is affected by the proposed change,which also appears in news.groups and news.announce.newgroups. The RFDopens the discussion up to the entire net and to the news administrators(admins).Because it is possible for an RFDto cover several groups,especially for a reorganization, it is not always possible for it tocontain an explicit Subject line referring to your group. The fact thatit was posted to your group is an indication that somebody felt that theproposal affected your group. It may simply be creating a new group thatwill funnel some discussion out of your group, but it may also ask for aa name change. This is important: IF you care about the process of USENET (asopposed to just "I want to read about X"), then READ THE RFDwhen itcomes by. Do NOT decide whether to read it based on the Subject line.If there is a list of proposals, read the entire list. Only then shouldyou decide whether or not you are interested in this RFD.Reread the preceding two paragraphs.Like I said, the RFDstarts the formal process. At that point,all discussion of the change moves to the newsgroup news.groups.--> "Why can't I talk about the change in MY group?"Generally, newsgroup changes don't matter to most of the readersof a group. Prior to the RFD,the only participants in the discussionwill probably be readers of the group. After the RFDis issued, however,the discussion will expand to anyone on the net who is interested.In the past, discussions were held in the newsgroups beingchanged. It generally DID annoy a lot of people. Because of this, discussionswere supposed to be limited to news.groups where the only people annoyed at them are thoseholding discussions about other groups. There is currently a feeling bysome people that this is elitist and that the discussion belongs in thenewsgroups being changed, even if it is off-topic and annoys the peopleusing the group to discuss the topic the group was created to discuss.If you decide that you must discuss the RFD in "your" group, keep inmind that it really isn't your group and that others may object to youbringing in off-topic material. Also keep in mind that you MUSTcrosspost any such discussion to news.groups.--> "Why should admins be involved?"There is one answer to that question: admins control USENET.Admins are the ones who create new groups, they delete old ones, andthey have to deal with the people who ask "where did group Y go?".Before they make these changes, they want to have some certainty thatthe changes are desired, that they make sense, and that the name(s)proposed are reasonable. They do this in two ways: they participate inthe discussion and then the vote. --> "My newsgroup is too noisy, I won't see an RFD!If you want to make sure that you keep abreast of all theproposals, read news.announce.newgroups. This is a very low volumenewsgroup designed for keeping people up-to-date on the process;reporting RFD's, CFV's, and results.Here's a hint: if your group is that noisy, it is ripe for achange; probably a split into two groups. Keep an eye out for an RFD.--> "Ok, I see an RFDI am interested in, what now?"Step 1: subscribe to news.groups. That is where the discussionwill take place. Step 2: discuss the proposal in news.groups. That is all it takes to participate in the discussion. If anyoneasks to see your "USENET Driver's License", tell them to ... well, ignorethem.The discussion phase of the process can last for up to 30 days.It doesn't need to; it can end earlier. Sometime towards the end of the30 days, the proposals will have been clarified and a vote takerselected. Then comes the next step. More on that later.Now, this timeline is what the official guidelines say. An unofficialset of guidelines appears in news.groups (but notnews.announce.newgroups) called "Guidelines for Big Eight NewsgroupCreation". According to this standard, the minimum discussion period is21 days, and it can last indefinitely. (After 120 days, a competingproposal may take its place, and if no RFD appears for 120 days, theproposal is considered to be withdrawn.)Since the fellow who wrote the "Big Eight" guidelines is the one whoruns the show, so to speak, the alternate timeline is more likely to befollowed. --> "I saw one RFD,and a week later there is another. What gives?"RFD'sare not chiseled in stone. Based on the discussion, theymay change. Drastically. Radically. A whole bunch.If you see an RFD,read it. The RFDthat you didn't care aboutlast week may have mutated into something you hate today. Don't decidebased on the Subject: of an RFDwhether it applies to you or not. Readit and THEN decide.Reread the preceding paragraph.--> "All these admins talk about is irrelevant stuff like traffic levelsor name details. Why is silly stuff like that important?"As a user, you do not have to deal with the mechanics of newstransport. Because of that, you aren't as concerned with these detailsas those who "move the news" are.There are valid concerns about names. Technically, some namesare just not good -- they are too long or have goofy characters in themthat some news systems can't handle. Some names mean different thingsto different people. In the early days, when there weren't so manygroups, there was less concern about what to name things. Now thatthere are thousands of groups it is more important that a namecorrectly describe the proposed content of the groups, both to allownew users (you) to find them, and to help all users know what thingsare correct topics for that group.The issue of traffic levels deals with whether it is better toform a newsgroup and broadcast the information all over the world, orto create a mailing list which pinpoints specific users. From pastexperience, this issue has been quantified into the requirements fornumbers of votes cast, but can be discussed prior to the actual vote ifthere is a question whether a vote should be held at all.-->"I don't see many regular readers of my newsgroup talking about this."This can be for several reasons. Maybe they don't care. They might not have read this document, and thus they mighthave missed the RFD.You are free to comment in your newsgroup thatthere is a discussion going on in news.groups and "HEY! wakeup everybody".Don't do this more than once or twice, however, or you will annoy thosewho really don't care. As a friendly gesture to those who don't knowthat news.groups is the proper place for discussion, you should set theFollowup-To: line in your posting to "news.groups" (and mention that youare doing that, so that others who follow-up will be alerted).-->"What's this stuff about a moderator?"Some newsgroups are moderated. That means that there is someonewho is responsible for keeping the group on track and preventingoff-topic posts ("noise") from cluttering the group. This results in avery low noise forum, but it also means that 1) postings are delayeduntil the moderator sees them, and 2) expression of certain ideas may belimited.Generally, those groups that are intended as informational innature are moderated. News.announce.newgroups, where all announcementsof USENET proceedings are posted, is moderated. There is NO discussionin that group, just postings of RFD'setc. Discussions of postings inthat group are held in news.groups, which is not moderated.If you are participating in a discussion concerning a moderatedgroup, you should consider the selection of the moderator carefully.The tone and demeanor of the group will be determined by the person youchoose.-->"Who is this guy 'Robo' the moderator?"Sometimes an RFDwill talk about a robo-moderator. This is really nothing more than aprogram that the moderator uses to automate the process of approvingarticles for the group. When a robomoderator is used, there will probably be adiscussion of the rules that will be used to determine automaticallyapproved articles. Sometimes it is as simple as "everything is acceptedexcept articles from known abusers". Some robomoderators use "keyword"selection; if your article contains a certain word it will be approved.Pay attention to the proposed rules, because they will determine howyou get to use the group. If you don't like them, now is the time todiscuss it.-->"What is the next step?"The next step in the process is the Call For Votes (CFV).This is the formal request for anyone who is interested to vote on theproposal(s). The CFV will be posted to all the same groups that the RFDwas, so if you didn't care about discussing the proposal but you dowant to vote, watch for the CFV.This is important: if you are reading a group, and you see anarticle with "CFV" in it, read it. You might have missed the RFD, or you might have joined after the RFD was posted, or the RFDmight have been lost in transmission. The RFDmight have changed. The proposal itself might have changed without another formal RFDbeing issued.The CFVSubject: won't necessarily mention your newsgroup, forthe same reason that the RFDwon't, so DO NOT decide whether to read the CFVbased on its subject. The fact that it was posted to yournewsgroup means it has something to do with your newsgroup. Read theCFVto see what groups it covers. Only THEN should you decide to skip it.Reread the preceding paragraph.CFVare also posted to news.announce.newgroups.-->"I saw an RFD2 months ago, but I haven't seen a CFV.Why not?"Were you looking closely? :-)Seriously, there might not have been a CFV.The posting of anRFDdoes not mean that there will be a vote, just that there will bediscussion. It is possible that the discussion phase convinced theproponents of the RFDthat no change was necessary, or that there wasn'tenough support to pass the vote. There might also have been so muchdiscussion that no agreement as to exactly what the proposal should bewas arrived at. In that case, the dicsussion leaves news.groups, andmay start again with a new RFD.ORThe CFV may actually have been posted and it didn'tmake it to your server, or it did make it there and you aren't seeingit. If the CFV was actually posted and you can't find it in your group,or in news.announce.newgroups, it is possible that one of the followingsituations exists: Your server is on a very short expiration time and it has alreadyexpired. Articles don't last forever, and admins configure their newsservers to balance longevity vs. storage requirements. Solution:Contact your news admin and ask that news.announce.newgroups not beexpired as fast. Wait for the second posting.You saw it once and your newsreader is not showing you an articlethat you already read, or it was presented to you and you marked it asread without noticing it. Solution: Figure out how to use yoursoftware to look at old articles. Don't trust any button on a webbrowser that has condensed its operation down to one or two words.Fascists have taken control of your news server and aredeliberately harassing you. Solution: Find a different newsserver, do not pass go, do not collect $200. Line all headgear withaluminum foil. Discuss nothing on the telephone.A site between you and where it was posted hiccuped and it waslost. News is pretty reliable, but it ain't perfect.Solution: Wait for the second posting.A site between you and where it was posted is dropping any articlethat is crossposted to some number or more groups. This is how somesites react to news spam. Some sites use a cutoff of 5. Solution: You will have to send mail to the vote takerto get a copy of the CFV, since the next time it is posted it willlikely go through the same filters and certainly will be posted to thesame number of groups.In any of the cases listed above, you can send mail to the vote taker toget a clean, fresh, sanitized for your protection ballot. His or hername can be found in the UVV: Daily "CFVs in Progress" statusreport that can be found in news.groups, at DejaNews, or arelatively recent copy should be available here.The most likely reasons are 1, 2 or 5. Less likely is 4. Never rule out3. If life teaches us anything, it is to NEVER rule out number3.-->"How do I vote?"Read the CFV.It will contain explicit instructions on where tosend email to register your vote. Note that ONLY EMAILed votes count.DO NOT post your vote, it won't count.Once you have voted, you should receive an acknowledgement(ACK) from the vote taker's software. Read it. It may say that the votewasn't understood. If so, correct the problem and vote again.Mail systems are not perfect. The act of sending email does notguarantee receipt by the vote taker. The mail may dissappear without atrace. You may not get a bounce message. The only way of knowing thatyour vote got through is if you get a reply saying your vote gotthrough.If you have some doubt about whether your vote got through, sendmail to the vote taker and ask. It is up to YOU to get the vote to HIM.He doesn't have mental telepathy (well, maybe he does but don't count onit) and can't tell that you voted unless your vote gets through.ONLY if you have REAL TROUBLE getting your vote to the votetaker, AND you have asked the system administrator at your own site forhelp, should you post something to news.groups saying you are havingtrouble. Don't post your vote, just the fact that you need helpgetting through. And ONLY after asking for help locally.-->"I voted, can I ask others to vote?"With the advent of the USENET Volunteer Votetakers, there is only onemain restriction on what can be posted about a vote. You can askothers to vote, and you can say why they should vote a certain way,but the only person who may post the CFV is the votetaker.One limitation that still exists is in the pointers to the CFV sent tomailing lists. Since the UVV usually delegates this task to one of theproponents, the proponent who sends this pointer must not campaign forvotes, only provide a pointer to the CFV. Informing users of relatedmailing lists is a courtesy to those users in case they have a realinterest in the group. They are not intended as a source of non-USENETsympathy votes.-->"The vote ended today, where are the results?"The results of the vote are checked for duplicate or obviouslybogus votes, then tallied and sent to the moderator ofnews.announce.newgroups. He will post the results after a modicum ofreview. This may take several days, or longer if he is out of town.Eventually, the results will appear in news.groups,news.announce.newgroups, and anywhere the CFVwas posted originally.(If the CFVis reposted by a user to other groups, they will not receivethe result notification.) This starts the next step in the process.--> "What is the next step?"A lot of yelling and screaming. :-)Actually, the next step in the process is the 5 dayverification delay. The vote result contains a list of everyone whovoted and how they voted. Look for your vote there. If your vote is recorded incorrectly, send mail to the vote takerand post something to news.groups. If your vote is missing, and you havean ACK for it, do the same. If your vote is missing, and you don't havesome proof that it got through, there isn't much you can do. You can saythat your vote wasn't counted, but lacking proof that it got through itprobably won't ever be counted. Like I said, the responsibility forgetting the vote to the vote taker is YOURS, not his.Please remember, email is not perfect, nor are vote takers.If your vote doesn't show up in the final list of voters, it is probablybecause it was lost in the mail, not because the vote taker isdeliberately dumping votes.-->"What ARE all those silly rules about 2/3 yes and phase of the moonor whatever it is?"For a vote to pass, it must have twice as many YES votes as NOvotes, and at least 100 more YES votes than NO.These requirements were implemented to give the admins a goodindication that there wasn't a problem with creating the group (not alot of opposition to it), and that there would be enough interest thatit should be carried via news instead of a mailing list (lots of YESvotes). -->"The vote passed, what happens next?"If there are no irregularities in the voting process, the changeswill be started following the 5 day delay. For group creation, anewgroup message will be issued, and admins will create the group.For a renaming, a newgroup message creating the group under thenew name will appear very soon. After a few months, an rmgroup (deletegroup) message will be sent, and the old group will go away. Your adminwill probably create the new group right away, and redirect the oldgroup to the new one so you don't lose messages.At this point, there really isn't anything you, as a user, needto do. If you are really interested in the changes, you might mail anote to your admin asking him to look for the control messages thatannounce the actual group creation.--> "The vote didn't pass. What now?"Well, as far as admins are concerned, nothing. They won't createany new groups.Users have two options. Those who proposed the idea in thefirst place may decide to try again. They may still think the changeis a good idea. When they lose a vote, though, they must wait 6 monthsbefore bringing the idea up as an RFDagain. Keep an eye out for RFD's,though, since a different proposal may arise in the interim.-->"The vote didn't pass, can I send email to those who voted 'no' askingwhy?"No. It is very bad karma to use the voter list as a source of email addresses for any reason, even if you think your reasonis so great that nobody could possibly object. This is true whether youare asking why they voted no, why they voted yes, if they have gottenthe free stamps they were promised for voting, or anything else. Don't let the term SPAM confuse you. While sending mail to the votersmay not be spam, the fact that it is not spam does not make it corrector appropriate to do it.--> "There was a lot of yelling and screaming. The vote passed but someadmins aren't creating the group. I'm confused. Doesn't a passing votemean that a group is created?"Well, sort of. Admins run USENET. The vote is a method that they use to decidewhether a group should be created. If some of them think that the votewas bogus they may decide not to honor it. There isn't a lot that youcan do to force them to honor a vote they didn't like. That is why it isA Good Thing for a vote to follow not only the letter of the guidelines,but the precedent of earlier votes. In other words, the vote isn't really a vote in the same sense that youare used to. It is only an opinion poll. It has no enforcementmechanism.--> "How do I start the newsgroup creation process?"Are you sure you want to? (That is a serious question.)Read news.groups for a year. Watch how other people do it. Lookfor the votes that don't have a lot of yelling and screaming about themand remember what they did. Remember what the yelling and screaming wasabout and DON'T do that.A good place to find links to more information is at "Creating NewNewsgroups".Then ask someone who has done it for help.As an alternative, consider creating a mailing list. It is mucheasier than creating a USENET group, and can work just as well orbetter. Many USENET newsgroups began as mailing lists. When the mailinglist grows larger it can be replaced by a newsgroup. One benefit tostarting this way is that you will have some concrete evidence thatthere is substantial interest in the topic.-->"How will I remember all of this?"You aren't expected to. Just remember the points from thesummary all the way at the top of this article and you will be ok. Alsoremember that this, and several other informational postings, are madeon a regular basis to news.announce.newusers. Last update: 7 July 1999 |
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