Start Your Own Newsgroup

If you are interested in starting a newsgroup, don't try it alone the first time around. Find someone who has been through the process before. Many arcane customs and rules have sprung up around creating new newsgroups.

Let's say you are a cactus aficionado and want to start a newsgroup at rec.gardens.cactus. The process you would go through is as follows:

1.A formal Request for Discussion (RFD) is posted to news.announce.newgroup and any other newsgroups related to the topic.

2.Interested people will discuss the name of the group, where it should go in the hierarchy, and whether your group is really necessary. If there is no agreement on these issues at the end of 30 days, the discussion will be taken to e-mail, where the idea may eventually be killed, or the participant will come back with a new proposal and make a new Request for Discussion.

3.Once the name, place, and purpose of the group are decided, a Call for Votes CFV) is posted to news.announce.newsgroups and other related groups. The voting period will be more than 20 days, but less than 30. Votes are sent via e-mail to a list moderator.

4.At the end of the voting period, the results are posted to news.announce.newsgroup.

5.A mandatory five day waiting period after the vote is posted allows for correction of any errors in or discussion of the vote count.

6.If there are no serious objections and if there were 100 more "yes" votes than "no" votes, and if at least two-thirds of the total number of votes were "yes" votes, the group will be created, and the moderator will send out an announcement.

7.If the proposal fails, a new RFD can be proposed after a six month waiting period and the whole process begins again.

Last update: Jan 6, 2008