Internet history, design, advanced use, help, security, important features…

Descriptions

mod_charter_or_FAQ

(collected by “JumpJet”, source unknown)

“At one time I operated a large public NetNews server, unusually focussed on serving those residing in the Southern Hemisphere. If you have visited a NetNews newsgroup on the Internet recently, you will notice that it has changed from being an online discussion forum to being a file-sharing network under the alt.binaries.* hierarchy. A lot of great newsgroups are in their death stages; traffic on such newsgroups is either all-spam, or is non-existent.

“A few newsgroups have attempted to slow the spam by switching to being a “moderated” newsgroup. As a news server administrator, I was mystified why most of these newsgroups didn’t make their Charters or FAQs more readily available (users cannot effectively participate in group discussions unless they are familiar with the rules of conduct for the discussion group). To make it easier on my patrons, I collected together in one place all of the Charters or Faqs that I could find for all of the moderated newsgroups I was carrying (a surprisingly difficult task I was to discover).

“Although I no longer run a NetNews server, I feel that the collection of Moderated Newsgrops Charters or Faqs I made is still helpful, and so I offer this (frozen-in-time) collection for your edification. Charters or Faqs are in folders labeled with the name of the newsgroup hierarchy in which they reside, and each Charter or Faq is labeled using the full name of the newsgroup they represent. Each text document was written by the authorized spokespersons for their discussion group.”