Last Updated: 29 October 2000 (updated section 11, archives of the newsgroup)
The moderated newsgroup comp.infosystems.www.announce exists so people can publicize non-commercial Web-based resources of potentially worldwide interest. There are a lot of submissions so we don't do reposts without good reason. That's the FAQ in a nutshell. The details are below.
New policy on notification: Many people are using deliberately malformed return addresses these days to avoid spam. This practice makes it impossible for the moderator to return most defective submissions to senders. If your posting to comp.infosystems.www.announce does not appear within a few days, there is probably a good reason for it. Check the FAQ items below.
comp.infosystems.www.announce (moderated) is a Usenet newsgroup. Readers unfamiliar with Usenet newsgroups, moderated or otherwise, should read the Usenet newsgroups news.announce.newusers and news.newusers.questions before reading or posting to this one. As with any other moderated Usenet newsgroup, the moderator has the final say in posting decisions.
The purpose of the group is to announce the following events specifically related to the World-Wide Web:
This group does NOT post the following types of announcements:
It does not count as non-commercial if you are distributing a limited demo or "lite" version of software whose full version costs more than US$30 to register or which is only free to certain categories of user. It also doesn't count as non-commercial if you have a small freebie on an otherwise fully commercial site.
Subject lines must have meaningful content. Don't just write "Cool Site!" or "Check this out!" because the moderator will ignore the announcement.
The moderator will tidy up Subject lines if necessary. Words like "announce," "online," "WWW" or "website" are redundant and many Subject lines are misleading or vague. The moderator also reserves exclusive use of asterisks to indicate administrative messages on the newsgroup.
This policy isn't arbitrary. There's so much noise on Usenet these days that people are likely to skip your announcement unless the subject line is an accurate indicator of the contents. Also, writing a good subject line means people will be able to find your posting in the archives (or on DejaNews) after it has expired from Usenet.
Make it easy for your intended public to find your site! If you've made a terrific site about the Great Mongolian Railway, how will other railway buffs find the posting if you've written a subject line like "Check this out!" ?
Announcements should include an ID word in caps in the Subject: line if possible. Examples include:
| ARCHIVE | ENTERTAINMENT | LAW | RELIGION |
| ART | ENVIRONMENT | MAGAZINE | SCIENCE |
| BOOK | FAQ | MISC | SERVER |
| BROWSER | FICTION | MUSIC | SILLY |
| COLLECTION | GAMES | NEWS | SOFTWARE |
| CULTURE | HEALTH | PERSONAL | SPORTS |
| ECONOMY | HUMANITIES | POLITICS | TRANSPORTATION |
| EDUCATION | JOURNAL | REFERENCE | UPDATE |
You should READ THE NEWSGROUP to see how keywords are being used in practice.
Although the general aim of the newsgroup is to be of worldwide relevance, sometimes useful resources are posted which only apply to certain geographic areas. If this is true of your website, it is polite and reasonable to put 'U.S.' or 'U.K.' or the like in your Subject line.
All announcements of a new or changed URL should be presented in the following format:
http://vader.boutell.com/~grant/charter.html
Note that the 'http://' is necessary for most newsreading software to recognize the URL as a web link.
Announcements should be plain-text and contain no HTML. All text should be word-wrapped under 80 characters per line for proper display on Usenet.
DO NOT FORGET YOUR URL. This newsgroup sees numerous announcements which include no URL at all. These are thrown away.
The announcement should be short and to the point. Announcements over 75 lines long will be sent back or edited. The author's signature should be four lines or shorter; the moderator will trim longer signatures and throw out ascii pictures, cute quotations, and URLs for other pages not addressed by the announcement itself.
Announcers should not include surveys, polls, application forms, or the like in their posts. Those features belong on your website, not in your announcement.
The moderator encourages people to make their websites available to as many people as possible. Sites which need specific browser versions or proprietary plugins to be accessed are regarded as dubious at best. Announcements for sites which have limited access for whatever reason will be discarded.
Language: This newsgroup is internationally distributed and aims to have global interest. Posters are encouraged to use English so that more readers can understand their announcement. However, posters may use a different language if they wish, especially if the resource they are announcing is in a language other than English.
Announcements which do not follow the format specified will not appear in the newsgroup.
Unless a poster specifies otherwise, follow-ups are automatically set to go to comp.infosystems.www.misc. Follow-ups directed to other newsgroups will be honored at the moderator's discretion. The moderator will not forward or post follow-ups sent accidentally to comp.infosystems.www.announce or which get sent to email addresses unrelated to newsgroup business.
The cross-posting of articles outside comp.infosystems.www.announce is seldom warranted. Additional newsgroups in the Newsgroups line are likely to be deleted so that your posting will appear in comp.infosystems.www.announce only.
Otherwise, announcers can send their messages via email directly to <www-announce@boutell.com>. Questions about announcements should go to the group's moderator, Kate McDonnell, at <www-announce-request@boutell.com>.
Please note that we will not post announcements which come from, or appear to come from, third parties who have found a cool site and want to tell the world. Announcements should be made by someone who is involved in the creation or administration of a site so that the resulting hits are not a surprise to the site maintainers.
Please avoid the "I found this cool site!" ploy if the site is actually yours.
When a person posts to a moderated newsgroup like comp.infosystems.www.announce, the post goes automatically into the moderator's mailbox. From there, either a human being or a robo-moderating program will approve the post and send it to the newsgroup.
In the case of comp.infosystems.www.announce, the human being has to edit Subject: lines, check URLs, trim excessive signature files, verify that the post is appropriate for the group and then queue articles for posting. This process takes real time, and the moderator has other work to do. Furthermore, the moderator has a window of "24 to 48 hours" to post announcements (to allow for weekends and holidays -- see below).
Once the moderator approves an announcement and posts it, the message is propagated through Usenet, which can take anywhere from three minutes to three days. This propagation time is beyond the moderator's control, as are any line or network outages.
In the case of moderated newsgroups, the cancel article must be approved, just as the original article was approved, by the moderator.
Cancel the article from your news software as you normally would, but keep in mind that the cancel request has to wait for the moderator's attention just as the regular articles do. The moderator will try to take care of cancels first if any arrive, but strongly recommends that articles be proofread carefully before posting.
People are keen on their own sites and often want to post and repost repetitive announcements. This practice is discouraged. Sites will not be reposted frivolously, and no matter how often you issue updates, nothing will ever be announced more often than once a month. Legitimate reasons for reposting include:
The entire history of comp.infosystems.www.announce is online and searchable at <URL:http://www.ibiblio.org/ciwa-bin/query>. Thanks to the guys at ibiblio.org (ex Metalab) for their ongoing support.
Other sources:
There is no known listserv for the newsgroup (if you maintain one, please send e-mail to <www-announce-request@boutell.com> and let the moderator know).
Moderator is Kate McDonnell, <www-announce@boutell.com>. Backup moderator is M. L. Grant, <grant@boutell.com>.
The moderator edits posts for (1) occasional grammar, spelling, and punctuation errors; (2) improvement, according to the moderator's opinion, of Subject: lines; and (3) syntactic requirements as stated in this document (e.g., removal of HTML, etc.) -- but not for content of posts. In other words, the moderator re-publishes the information posted to the newsgroup but does not write it or edit it for content, except for articles posted under the moderator's name. The moderator claims no responsibility for the accuracy, safety, legality, completeness, or morality of the resources announced. The choice to access or not to access any page is left to the user at all times; such is the nature of the World-Wide Web.