Various kinds of newsgroup descriptions are maintained
in different places around the Internet. There are
three main places you can look for newsgroup descriptions:
- Charters. Some newsgroups regularly
post a description to the group that describes its intention. These descriptions
are
posted by the people involved with the newsgroup creation and/or administration.
If the group has such a description, it almost always includes the word "charter",
so you can quickly find it by searching the newsgroup
for that word.
An interesting collection of Charters and FAQ's for moderated
newsgroups collected by JumpJet
can be found here.
- RFD. You can check to
see if the group
has an original "Request For Discussion" description in the archive of all news.announce.newgroups
postings from late 1989 to March 1996.
- Descriptions. Many newsgroups have short descriptions
at newsgroup review sites, although these are of varying quality. Sites
that contain newsgroup reviews include the following:
