Composing and Posting a Control (newgroup) Message

Do I really need to go through alt.config first?

The "canonical" advice on how to create a new alt.* newsgroup begins with posting a group proposal to alt.config. This advice dates back many years, to a time when Usenet was a different place than it is now.

We do not require that a group be proposed in alt.config before we will carry it, and most other major sites dropped that requirement long ago. In years past, an alt.config proposal and discussion was considered a requirement when creating a new alt.* newsgroup, but alt.config is no longer relevant today.

If you skip alt.config, your newgroup message is likely to receive a couple of rmgroup messages in response. These, too, can be safely ignored.

However, within the body of your control message you should still include a description of what the group is to be used for, a justification for why it needs to be created, and any traffic or readership statistics you have that show this newsgroup is likely to be actively used. It is this material that a news admin will look at when deciding whether to act on your control message.

Newsgroup names

The name of your newsgroup must consist entirely of lowercase letters, digits, hyphens, and the dots that separate components. The first component should be "alt" for groups in the alt.* hierarchy, of course. If the group is meant to carry binary traffic (files), the second component must be "binaries". Although the alt.* hierarchy does not impose strict naming requirements beyond this, it is a good idea to name your group in the standard hierarchial fashion, subdividing by topic, so that groups for similar topics will be grouped together.

Creating your Control Message

Subject

The first five characters of the "Subject:" line should be "cmsg " (including a space), followed by the name of the newsgroup you are creating. Having your "Subject" formatted correctly is not a strict technical requirement anymore, but it is strongly recommended for compatibility with older news servers.

Example:
Subject: cmsg newgroup alt.video.laserdisc

"For your newsgroups file:" information

This information should be in every newgroup message. It contains the descriptive text that many newsreaders will display to users as extra information to help them decide if they want to subscribe to the newsgroup. The description should be meaningful, as it is part of the way you will be advertising the newsgroup to prospective readers. The description should fit with the newsgroup name on one line (80 characters), otherwise it will display unattractively in many news reading programs. For some newsgroups with particularly long names, this may not be reasonable, however, so it is not an absolute requirement.

The actual format of such an inclusion consists of two lines (with no text immediately before or after). The first is the phrase "For your newsgroups file:", while the second line is the newsgroup name, one or more spaces or tabs, and the description. Both lines should have no other text or spaces before them on the same line.

Example:
For your newsgroups file:
alt.video.laserdisc Discussion of LaserDisc hardware and software.

Charter

Every newgroup message should contain a description of what the newsgroup is supposed to be for, commonly referred to as its charter. Ideally you should write this before proposing the newsgroup on alt.config (if you have done this), and adjust it according to recommendations given there.

One or two short paragraphs is usually sufficient for a charter. As part of the charter, you may also include pointers to more information on the topic of the newsgroup, such as web pages, mailing lists, or ftp sites.

You should also keep a copy of the charter, as it makes an excellent starting point when creating a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) document for your new newsgroup.

Example:
This newsgroup is designed for discussion about LaserDisc players, problems/complaints about them, and movie selections available for them.

The "Control" header

You must include a special "Control" header in your newgroup message; this is what makes a message a control message as opposed to a regular post. Not all software is capable of including such a header. All control messages must include this header or they will not work at all.

The "Control" header must be comprised of the word "newgroup" (note, not "newsgroup" - no S), followed by the name of the newsgroup.

Example:
Control: newgroup alt.video.laserdisc

The "Subject" header will be identical to the "Control" header except that the "Control" header lacks the leading "cmsg" declaration.

The "Approved" header

The "Approved" header should contain your email address, or that of the person who is sending it for you (i.e. a friend or your news admin, if applicable). This header is required for all control messages, but since there is no central authority for group creation in the alt.* hierarchy, alt.* group control messages are not required to be approved by any special person, so the "Approved" header can merely contain your address. (Control messages for groups in managed hierarchies will have other requirements for approval, which is why this header exists.)

Example:
Approved: me@nowhere.invalid

The official document describing the requirements for the ISC control message archive can be found here.

Moderation (optional)

If you would like to have the newsgroup you are creating moderated, all of the above requirements and advice still apply, and there are a few additional things you need to know. First off, running a moderated newsgroup is often tough work, and you will need to have a good understanding of how both news and mail operate. If you don't understand how moderated groups work and know how you intend to operate the group's moderation, you should not consider creating a moderated newsgroup. Honestly, if you need the advice on this page, you should not try this; you will only end up with a non-working, dead newsgroup.

There are two additional requirements for creating a control message for a moderated alt newsgroup. First, you should provide both submission and contact email addresses in the body of the message. The submission address is where postings are mailed for approval, and the contact address is where other moderator-related mail, such as questions or comments, should be sent. These are typically included immediately following the "For your newsgroups file" section, and are in a form resembling the following:

Moderator submission address: alt.video.laserdisc.moderated@isc.org
Moderator contact address: me@nowhere.invalid

Second, you must append the word "moderated" to the "Control" header of your message (and to the "Subject" header too). This is what will actually indicate to the news software that this newsgroup is to be moderated, so it is an absolute technical requirement. If you send a control message by mistake without this, your group will very likely never be set up properly across Usenet, no matter how many subsequent control messages you send properly.

However, it is very important to note that the above is not sufficient to set up a moderated newsgroup. Simply including the submission address in the control message is not enough to make submissions get forwarded to that address. You must, after sending your control message, have your address registered for the group with the moderators-request@isc.org maintainers. Doing this is outside the scope of this document, but is an absolute technical requirement without which your newsgroup will be forever devoid of any traffic. It will not happen automatically as a result of sending the control message.

Booster messages

A "booster" message is essentially exactly the same as a newgroup message; you are just sending another newgroup message so that sites that either did not see or ignored the first message will create the group the second time around. When sending a booster newgroup, you should add a short paragraph at the beginning of the body of the message, explaining that this is a booster message, and including information such as when the group was first created.

Posting your Control Message

Control messages are posted just like any other news article. Under normal circumstances, you will want to post the control message to alt.config and, if you like, to the newsgroup you're creating. You should not post it to the group you are creating only, as this will hurt propagation of the control message (many sites don't transit posts to groups they do not already carry). The control message, once posted, should appear automatically in the newsgroup 'control.newgroup' (if it was formatted correctly) shortly after you've posted it. It will not appear in the groups that actually appear in the Newsgroups header, so don't worry if you don't see it there.

After you have posted the Control message, check ftp.isc.org to see if your control message has been appropriately archived there. An example of a control message currently archived at ftp.isc.org:

ftp://ftp.isc.org/pub/usenet/control/alt/alt.video.laserdisc.gz

From root@vtserf.cc.vt.edu Tue Apr 27 16:06:19 1993
Path: uunet!vtserf.cc.vt.edu!vtserf.cc.vt.edu!root
Date: 27 Apr 1993 15:21:21 EDT
From: root@vtserf.cc.vt.edu
Subject: cmsg newgroup alt.video.laserdisc
Control: newgroup alt.video.laserdisc
Newsgroups: alt.video.laserdisc.ctl
Message-ID: 
Approved: root
Distribution: world
Lines: 22
Xref: uunet control:616870

For your newsgroups file:
alt.video.laserdisc    Discussion of LaserDisc hardware and software

Request the newsgroup to be added to our servers

We do not automatically process newgroup control messages in the alt.* hierarchy. So, in order to get your new group to appear on our servers, you should ask us to add it. You can request we add the newsgroup either by email to Support or by posting a request in the newsgroup supernews.support.

Additional Support Topics:

Newsreader Configuration
FAQs
Adding New Newsgroups
General Support Information