I don't know whether these particular questions are in fact "Frequently Asked", but I certainly believe that they should be.
Comments and suggestions for future editions to chl@clerew.man.ac.uk please.
This FAQ is archived at
<http://www.usenet.org.uk/newsadmins.html> and at
<ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/uk/newsadmins-faq>
Three of these documents were accepted on 7 Aug 95 following a vote conducted in uk.net.news, with the results, respectively, of
(93 yes : 13 no)Essentially, they provide for a Committee to be elected each October, with a person known as Control, answerable to the Committee, to oversee the process of group creation.
(91 yes : 13 no)
(76 yes : 23 no)
A Mentors document was added on 13 Jul 2000 (17 yes : 8 no) and abolished on 14 June 2010 following a Fast-Track.
The Committee elected in October 2021 comprises
For official purposes Control may be reached at control (at) usenet.org.uk. It is required that all RFDs and CFVs should be posted to uk.net.news.announce in accordance with the Guidelines document, and it is advised that all those responsible for the administration of news servers in the UK should subscribe to that group.
Many large news administrators have indicated that they will in future honour all and only newgroup and rmgroup control messages for the uk.* hierarchy issued by control (at) usenet.org.uk, and they urge all other news administrators to adopt that same policy.
But to be serious, it is a domain name set up to facilitate communication with the Committee, in such a manner that the relevant officers can be reached even if their identities change. Currently, the following services are available.
These hierarchies were formed at about the same time as uk.*, but their equivalents of control and committee had all ceased operation by around 2002, and their websites are now unreachable.
Their groups continue to exist and are still in use to varying extents, but they are running on auto-pilot and no arrangements for creation and removal of groups are in place.
It is possible to automate the acceptance of these control messages issued by control (at) usenet.org.uk, and it is always safe to do so if you first verify the PGP signatures with which they are authenticated (if you are unable to do that, it is recommended that at least 'rmgroup's and 'checkgroups' be inspected manually before acceptance - there are not so many of those, anyway).
If you run INN, then the following 'control.ctl' will achieve the necessary effects. Note that this example also shows the correct way to handle control messages for the "Big-8".
## control.ctl - Access control for control messages. ## Format: ##: : : ## ## Control message or "all" if it applies to all control ## messages. ## Pattern that must match the From line. ## Pattern that must match the newsgroup being newgroup'd ## or rmgroup'd (ignored for other messages). ## What to do: ## doit Perform action ## drop Ignore message ## log One line to error log ## mail Send mail to admin ## verify-pgp_userid Do PGP verification on user. ## All actions except drop and mail can be given a log ## location by following the action with an = and the ## log ("mail" says to mail the admin, an empty location ## tosses the log information, and a relative path xxx ## logs to $LOG/xxx.log). ## ## The *last* matching entry is used. See the expire.ctl(5) man page for ## complete information. ## ------------------------------------------------------------------------- ## DEFAULT ## ------------------------------------------------------------------------- # Default to dropping control messages that aren't recognized to allow # people to experiment without inadvertently mailbombing news admins. all:*:*:drop ## ------------------------------------------------------------------------- ## CHECKGROUPS MESSAGES ## ------------------------------------------------------------------------- # Default to mailing all checkgroups messages to the administrator. checkgroups:*:*:mail checkgroups:group-admin@isc.org:comp.*|humanities.*|misc.*|news.*|rec.*|sci.*|soc.*|talk.*:verify-news.announce.newgroups ......... checkgroups:control@usenet.org.uk:uk.*:verify-uk.net.news.announce ## ------------------------------------------------------------------------- ## MISCELLANEOUS CONTROL MESSAGES ## ------------------------------------------------------------------------- # Mostly only used for UUCP feeds, very rarely used these days. ihave:*:*:drop sendme:*:*:drop # Request to send a copy of the newsfeeds file, intended for mapping # projects. Almost never used for anything other than mailbombing now. sendsys:*:*:log=sendsys # Request to send the server's path entry. Not particularly useful. senduuname:*:*:log=senduuname # Request to send the server's version number. version:*:*:log=version ## ------------------------------------------------------------------------- ## NEWGROUP/RMGROUP MESSAGES ## ------------------------------------------------------------------------- ## Default (for any group) newgroup:*:*:mail rmgroup:*:*:mail ## Special reserved groups newgroup:*:control|general|junk|test|to:drop rmgroup:*:control|general|junk|test|to:drop ......... newgroup:group-admin@isc.org:comp.*|humanities.*|misc.*|news.*|rec.*|sci.*|soc.*|talk.*:verify-news.announce.newgroups rmgroup:group-admin@isc.org:comp.*|humanities.*|misc.*|news.*|rec.*|sci.*|soc.*|talk.*:verify-news.announce.newgroups ......... newgroup:control@usenet.org.uk:uk.*:verify-uk.net.news.announce rmgroup:control@usenet.org.uk:uk.*:verify-uk.net.news.announce
In INN, I believe the following should work.
uk.*:%s@usenet.org.uk *:%s@moderators.isc.org
Separate "-request" addresses are also provided. These are guaranteed to point to a human moderator rather than a robot. Such addresses should be used to contact the moderator directly, as opposed to submitting an article.
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