Usenet 1994 October/usenetsourcesnewsgroupsinfomagicoctober1994disk1.iso/answers/news-answers/guidelines

Internet Message Format | 1994-09-19 | 41.5 KB

Path: bloom-beacon.mit.edu!senator-bedfellow.mit.edu!senator-bedfellow.mit.edu!news-answers-request
From: [e-mail] (the *.answers moderation team)
Newsgroups: news.answers,alt.answers,comp.answers,de.answers,misc.answers,rec.answers,sci.answers,soc.answers,talk.answers
Subject: *.answers submission guidelines
Supersedes: <news-answers/[e-mail]>
Followup-To: poster
Date: 19 Sep 1994 09:40:18 GMT
Organization: Massachvsetts Institvte of Technology
Lines: 916
Approved: [e-mail]
Distribution: world
Expires: 2 Nov 1994 09:39:49 GMT
Message-ID: <news-answers/[e-mail]>
Reply-To: [e-mail] (the *.answers moderation team)
NNTP-Posting-Host: bloom-picayune.mit.edu
Originator: [e-mail]
Xref: bloom-beacon.mit.edu news.answers:25949 alt.answers:4523 comp.answers:7340 de.answers:155 misc.answers:892 rec.answers:7411 sci.answers:1583 soc.answers:1706 talk.answers:353

Archive-name: news-answers/guidelines
Version: $Id: guidelines,v 1.123 1994/09/07 21:33:00 pshuang Exp $
Posting-Frequency: monthly


In order to submit an FAQ posting to the news.answers newsgroup (and
to zero or more of the other *.answers newsgroups (alt.answers,
comp.answers, de.answers, misc.answers, rec.answers, sci.answers,
soc.answers, talk.answers) along with it), you should first modify the
header of your posting to conform to the guidelines given below, in
section I.  Then, you should submit your posting to us using the
instructions given below, in section II.

Once your posting is approved, you will post it directly to
news.answers and other *.answers newsgroups yourself; i.e., after
approval, you no longer have to go through us at all to post.  This is
explained in more detail below.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. Submission guidelines
 A. Why the guidelines?
  1. Appropriateness
  2. Usefulness to people
  3. Automatic archiving
 B. What the guidelines DON'T specify
 C. Required header fields
  1. The normal header
   a. Newsgroups (Required)
   b. Subject (Required)
   c. Followup-To (Required) and Reply-To (Optional)
   d. Supersedes, Expires, References (Optional)
   e. Summary (Optional)
  2. The auxiliary header
   a. Archive-name (Required)
   b. Other archive names (Optional)
   c. Posting-Frequency (Optional)
   d. Last-modified, Version (Optional)
  3. Sample FAQ headers
 D. Posting frequency
 E. Mailing lists for FAQ maintainers
 F. List of Periodic Informational Postings
 G. Article approval
 H. Checklist
II. Submission instructions
III. Once your posting is approved
   A. Transfer an FAQ to a new maintainer
   B. Change an FAQ's posting frequency
   C. Change an FAQ's header(s)
      1. Subject line
      2. Newsgroups line
      3. From line, without changing maintainers
      4. Archive-name line
      5. Followup-To line
      6. Other headers
   D. Add postings to or delete postings from an FAQ
      1. Split up a single-part FAQ
      2. Add a new part to a FAQ which already has multiple parts
      3. Delete a part from a multi-part FAQ
      4. Add a diff posting
      5. Terminate an FAQ (i.e., stop posting it forever)
   E. Create a new FAQ
IV. This posting
V. Getting the "List of Periodic Informational Postings"

======================================================================


I. Submission guidelines

 A. Why the guidelines?

    There are three main reasons for the guidelines:

  1. Appropriateness

     Only periodic informational postings that are intended to be read
     by people belong in *.answers.  The guidelines are meant to
     prevent other types of postings, including discussion of periodic
     informational postings, from appearing in the group.

  2. Usefulness to people

     The newsgroup should be as useful as possible to the people who
     read it.  Requirements such as effective "Subject:" and
     "Summary:" lines (see below) further this goal.

  3. Automatic archiving

     One of the main points for having *.answers newsgroups is that
     they can be archived automatically in order to build up a
     database of periodic informational postings.  Requirements such
     as the "Archive-name:" line further that goal.

 B. What the guidelines DON'T specify

    These guidelines DO NOT specify a specific, required format for
    the bodies of FAQ postings.  Postings in *.answers are not
    required to adhere to "Digest Message Format" format (Internet RFC
    1153), or MIME (RFC 1341), or HTML, or SGML, or any other text
    format, standard or otherwise.

    This omission is intentional.  Forcing all *.answers postings to
    adhere to a specific format would dissuade many FAQ maintainers
    from submitting their postings to *.answers.  Such a result would
    be in direct contradiction to the chartered purpose of *.answers;
    therefore, FAQ maintainers are free to choose whatever format they
    want (assuming that it is human-readable) for the bodies of their
    postings.

    These guidelines also DO NOT specify lower or upper limits for the
    size of an acceptable FAQ posting.  However, a pragmatic lower limit
    is set by the requirement that the articles be useful to people.  As
    for a pragmatic upper limit, FAQ maintainers may wish to consider
    that some part of their audience may not be able to access very
    large articles at their sites due to intermediary software problems
    (64KB is a common magic number), so postings larger than that may
    not be able to be read by many people.

 C. Required header fields

    There are two "headers" in a *.answers posting.  The first is
    the normal header that any article posted to the USENET has.  The
    second header, the "auxiliary header," is separated from the first
    by one or more blank lines.  As far as the News software is
    concerned, the auxiliary header is just part of the body of the
    article; however, *.answers requires some information in it.

    The requirements for each of the two headers are discussed in
    detail below.  Required headers are marked with "(Required)",
    while optional ones are marked with "(Optional)".

    You may wish to refer to section 3 for a full set of sample
    headers while reading the detailed descriptions and explanations
    of the required and optional headers.  The headers at the very top
    of this document can also serve as a sample.

  1. The normal header

   a. Newsgroups (Required)

      We need to know exactly what will appear in the Newsgroups line
      of the posting.

      In addition to news.answers, your posting should be cross-posted
      to the other *.answers newsgroups of hierarchies in which it is
      posted.  For example, a posting that is normally posted in both
      rec.music.makers.synth and comp.sys.ibm.pc.soundcard should be
      posted to both rec.answers and comp.answers in addition to
      news.answers.  Note that postings to any of the *.answers
      newsgroups MUST be posted in news.answers, regardless of what
      other *.answers newsgroups they also appear in.

      There is one exception to the above rule of always crossposting
      to the corresponding *.answers groups: postings to newsgroups
      which go to a non-international hierarchy in a different
      language.  Such an article should not go into the corresponding
      *.answers group.  At present, the only such case is de.answers,
      which is for German-language periodic informational postings
      only.  For example, an English-language FAQ may be posted to a
      de.* group if the maintainer feels it is useful there, but
      should not be not cross-posted to de.answers.

      Although the order of newsgroups on the line is not important
      from the point of view of the news software, we prefer to have
      news.answers listed last.  The other *.answers newsgroups should
      be listed directly before news.answers.  Listing the primary
      newsgroup(s) first improves the accuracy of newsgroup volume
      statistics, provides better key information for index lists and
      catalogues, and minimizes accidental postings to the *.answers
      newsgroups from buggy newsreaders.

      Example:

       Newsgroups: comp.sys.foo,comp.answers,news.answers

      Note that your Newsgroups line should NOT contain only *.answers
      groups.  FAQ postings should be cross-posted to *.answers from
      their home newsgroups, rather than being posted separately to
      *.answers.

      However, if you get approval for *.answers cross-posting in the
      middle of your "posting cycle," and you do not wish to wait
      until the next scheduled posting time to cross-post to
      *.answers, then you can post your FAQ only to *.answers.  If you
      choose to do this, please make sure to let us know you are going
      to, and please do not do it more than once.

   b. Subject (Required)

      The subject line of your posting should have some meaning
      outside of its home newsgroup(s).  For example, instead of just
      "FAQ," you might have "<x> FAQ", where "<x>" is the name of the
      newsgroup or the topic being discussed.

      Furthermore, important information should appear near the
      beginning of the subject line, so that news readers that display
      article summaries don't cut off the important information.  For
      example, instead of "Frequently Asked Questions about <x>," use
      "<x> Frequently asked Questions."

      Please note that most archivers treat the subject as
      case-sensitive -- it must always be capitalized in exactly the
      same way.

      For postings which are being split into multiple parts, you
      should indicate in each posting's Subject line which part that
      particular posting is, and how many parts total there are.  For
      this purpose, simple Arabic numerals are prefered over Roman
      numerals because Arabic numerals are more easily sorted and
      manipulated by software. (See section III.D for more information
      on splitting existing FAQs.)

      Example:

       Subject: comp.sys.foo Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ), Part 1/2
       Subject: comp.sys.foo Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ), Part 2/2

   c. Followup-To (Required) and Reply-To (Optional)

      Your posting must have a "Followup-To:" line in the header that
      directs followups to somewhere other than *.answers.  You may
      choose to direct followups back to the home newsgroup(s) of the
      FAQ, or to direct followups to the author of the FAQ, in which
      case "Followup-To: poster" is sufficient.  That means that you
      actually put the word "poster" there, as specified in the RFC
      which describes the format of Usenet postings.  Do NOT put an
      E-mail address in the "Followup-To:" field.

      If you forget the "Followup-To:" and we get mailed followups to
      your FAQ, we're going to get peeved at you.

      Furthermore, your posting must have a valid E-mail reply address
      in the header, either in the "From:" field, or if not in "From:"
      then in "Reply-To:".

      Example:

       From: [e-mail] (Joe R. Programmer)
       Followup-To: comp.sys.foo
       Reply-To: [e-mail] (FAQ Comments address)

      In this example, "guru" apparently wants mail about the FAQ to
      go to a different address than the rest of his mail.  We've
      shown the "From:" header, because the version of the FAQ that
      you forward to us should show the "From:" header just as it will
      appear when the article is actually posted.

   d. Supersedes, Expires, References (Optional)

      It is a good idea to use "Supersedes:" and "Expires:" header
      lines to make sure that each version of your FAQ stays around
      until the next time it is posted.  A useful tool for this is the
      Perl FAQ poster written by Jonathan Kamens.  It is available
      from rtfm.mit.edu, via anonymous ftp in the file
      /pub/post_faq/post_faq.shar, or via mail server (send mail to
      [e-mail] with "send post_faq/post_faq.shar" in
      the body).

      Post_faq takes an article with its static headers (i.e., the
      headers that don't change each time the article is posted)
      included, adds dynamic headers to it, and posts the article.
      Another utility, Ian Kluft's auto-faq package (which is also
      written in Perl) provides more functionality, including
      automatic building and insertion of all headers.  If you are
      looking for something with a high level of automation to
      assist you in your FAQ maintenance and posting, you might want
      to try auto-faq instead of post_faq.  The latest version is 3.2
      and is available via anonymous FTP from charon.amdahl.com in
      files:

      /pub/faq/auto-faq32.part1.gz
      /pub/faq/auto-faq32.part2.gz
      /pub/faq/auto-faq32.part3.gz

      (Note: It's strongly encouraged that you use version 3.x or
      later as previous versions have an identified bug in
      formatting dates, such as in the Expires header.)  For further
      assistance, send E-mail to [e-mail].

      Furthermore, if you are posting a multi-part FAQ posting or a
      series of related FAQ postings, it is a good idea to add a
      "References:" line to all of the postings except the first one,
      making the contents of that line the Message-ID of the first
      posting in the series.  If you do this, then people who use
      threaded news readers will be able to manipulate the entire
      series as a single thread, including (for example) killing the
      entire thread if they're not interested or saving the entire
      thread to a file with one command.  The perl FAQ posting tools
      mentioned above support an option for doing this.

      Example:

       Expires: Fri, 1 May 1992 00:00:00 GMT
       Supersedes: <foo-faq/[e-mail]>
       References: <foo-faq/[e-mail]>

      The date in the "Expires:" header should be far enough into the
      future that a new version of the FAQ will be posted before the
      one you're posting now expires.  We've shown all three headers in the
      format the post_faq script would use.

   e. Summary (Optional)

      You are encouraged to put a summary of the contents of your
      article in the Summary field of the header.  Try to describe
      what your FAQ discusses, and aim your description at someone who
      may not actually be directly interested in the topic covered by
      your FAQ.  There have been discussions about using the Summary
      fields of the FAQ postings in *.answers to construct a short
      "catalog" of the information available through news.answers, so
      think of the Summary field as a "catalog entry" for your FAQ.

      Note that header fields (except for the Newsgroups field) are
      allowed to span multiple lines, as long as the continuation
      lines after the first start with whitespace (at least one space
      or tab character).

      Example:

       Summary: This posting contains a list of Frequently Asked
               Questions (and their answers) about Foo computers.  It
               should be read by anyone who wishes to post to the
               comp.sys.foo newsgroup.

  2. The auxiliary header

     The auxiliary header looks like the main message header (i.e.
     "Field-name: field-value"), but is separated from the main
     message header by a blank line, as well as followed by a blank
     line separating it from the rest of the body of the message.

     The auxiliary header of this posting is:

     Archive-name: news-answers/guidelines
     Version: $Id: guidelines,v 1.123 1994/09/07 21:33:00 pshuang Exp $
     Posting-Frequency: monthly

   a. Archive-name (Required)

      In order to be cross-posted into *.answers, your posting must
      include an auxiliary header with an "Archive-name:" field.

      The purpose of the archive name is two-fold.  First of all, it
      specifies where the FAQ should be stored in archives of the
      *.answers newsgroups.  Second, it should give people, even
      people who do not read the home newsgroup of the FAQ, a pretty
      good idea of what's in it.  Therefore, abbreviations which will
      only be recognized by people already familiar with the topic
      covered by the FAQ should be avoided if possible.

      The archive name should be composed of one or more one-word
      (i.e., no spaces) components, separated by slashes.  Each
      component should be 14 characters or less in length, if
      possible, but this is not a strict requirement; if 14 characters
      isn't enough, then each component should be unique in the first
      14 characters (i.e., two archive names should never be identical
      after their components are all truncated to 14 characters).
      Avoid periods in the archive name, because some operating
      systems choke on them; if you must have word separators, use
      hyphens or underscores rather than periods.  Please note that
      most archivers treat the archive name as case-sensitive -- it
      must always be capitalized in exactly the same way.

      The archive namespace is hierarchical; for example, there are a
      number of lists of bookstores in the "books/stores" directory of
      the namespace, and all of their archive names start with
      "books/stores/".  Avoid using slashes in your archive name
      unless you are taking advantage of the hierarchical nature of
      the namespace, i.e., unless you have multiple related FAQ
      postings which should appear in a single directory in the
      archive namespace.

      Multi-part FAQs should be named "name/part1", "name/part2", etc.
      Alternatively, if the parts of the FAQ are split by topic rather
      than by size, then you can use short topic names rather than
      "part1", "part2", etc.

      If you post a diff for your FAQ, it should be named "name/diff".
      If you post multiple diffs for a multi-part FAQ, they should be
      named "name/diff1", "name/diff2", etc. (if you want to use just
      one diff for a multi-part FAQ, you can just use "name/diff" as
      its name).  If you post a diff to a one-part posting, then the
      original FAQ should be named "name/part1" (or "name/faq", or
      whatever else you think is appropriate, as long as we approve
      it) and the diff should be named "name/diff".

      Consider these examples:

        Topic                                   Archive name(s)
        -----------------------------------     ------------------------------
        comp.ai FAQ                             ai-faq/part1
                                                ai-faq/part2
                                                ai-faq/part3
        rec.travel.air FAQs, various topics     air-travel/bucket-shops
                                                air-travel/cheap-tickets/part1
                                                air-travel/cheap-tickets/part2
                                                air-travel/faq
                                                air-travel/jetlag-prevention
                                                air-travel/na-airport-codes
                                                air-travel/world-airport-codes
        soc.culture.esperanto FAQ               esperanto-faq

      Please pick the archive name that you would like to use for your
      posting, and include the "Archive-name:" line with that archive
      name in it, when submitting to *.answers.  If there is some
      problem with it, or if we would like to suggest an alternate
      name, we will let you know.

      Example:

       Archive-name: foo-faq/part2

      If your posting already has an "Archive-name:" line which is not
      a valid *.answers archive name and you do not want to change it,
      or if you want the "Archive-name:" line you add to contain the
      name of a file in your own archives rather than in the
      news.answers archives, you can use a
      "News-answers-archive-name:" header line instead.

   b. Other archive names (Optional)

      The software which builds the FAQ archive on rtfm.mit.edu (see
      the "Introduction to the *.answers newsgroups" posting for more
      information about it) automatically uses the "Archive-name:"
      line to determine the file name in which to save an FAQ, when
      saving it in any of the "answers" newsgroups (news.answers,
      rec.aviation.answers, etc.).

      Furthermore, if you have a field of the form
      "Newsgroup-name-archive-name: name" in your FAQ's auxiliary
      header (see the example below), the specified archive name will
      be used to save in the specified newsgroup.  Such a
      newsgroup-specific archive name overrides any generic
      "Archive-name:" line.

      When an archive name for an FAQ cannot be determined in either
      of the ways mentioned above, the Subject line of the posting
      (with some minor modifications) is used as its file name.

      For example, if you have this in your normal header:

       Newsgroups: comp.foo,comp.bar,comp.answers,news.answers
       Subject: comp.sys.foo Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ), Part 2/2

      and this in your auxiliary header:

       Archive-name: foo-faq/part2
       Comp-bar-archive-name: bar-faq/part2

      then the posting will be saved as "foo-faq/part2" in comp.answers
      and news.answers (because they are both "answers" newsgroups and
      will use the Archive-name line), as "bar-faq/part2" in comp.bar,
      and as "comp.sys.foo_Frequently_Asked_Questions_(FAQ),_Part_2/2"
      in comp.foo.

      If you do decide to specify additional archive names in your
      posting, please obey the guidelines for archive names given
      above.

   c. Posting-Frequency (Optional)

      A "Posting-Frequency" field in the auxiliary header can give
      the reader a good idea of how often your FAQ is posted, for example
      "every 14 days" or "monthly" (see section D, below).

      Example:

       Posting-Frequency: monthly

      If you specify this field, it will be automatically copied into
      the "List of Periodic Informational Postings".

   d. Last-modified, Version (Optional)

      You can have other fields in the auxiliary header, if you want.
      Two common ones are "Last-modified:" and "Version:". You may put
      any text you want in these fields, in any format you wish.

      Example:

       Last-modified: 1992/03/25
       Version: 2.5

  3. Sample FAQ headers

     Putting together the examples we"ve given above, here is what the
     headers of part 2 of your posting (or, at least, the ones you
     submit to us) might look like:

     From: [e-mail] (Joe R. Programmer)
     Newsgroups: comp.sys.foo,comp.answers,news.answers
     Subject: comp.sys.foo Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ), Part 2/2
     Followup-To: comp.sys.foo
     Reply-To: [e-mail] (FAQ Comments address)
     Summary: This posting contains a list of Frequently Asked
             Questions (and their answers) about Foo computers.  It
             should be read by anyone who wishes to post to the
             comp.sys.foo newsgroup.
     Expires: Fri, 1 May 1992 00:00:00 GMT
     Supersedes: <foo-faq/[e-mail]>
     References: <foo-faq/[e-mail]>

     Archive-name: foo-faq/part2
     Posting-Frequency: monthly
     Last-modified: 1992/03/25
     Version: 2.5

     Note that the blank line separating the normal header from the
     auxiliary header must be completely blank, i.e., no tabs or
     spaces, and that there must also be one or more completely blank
     lines after the auxiliary header.

     Of course, you can include in the posting header any of the other
     standard USENET header fields that have not been discussed here.

 D. Posting frequency

    The frequency at which you choose to post your FAQ is left to your
    discretion.  Some FAQ maintainers find that a monthly posting,
    with an Expires header to prevent each posting from going away
    before its replacement is posted, is sufficient.  Some other
    newsgroups are so busy that a weekly posting of the FAQ is needed.
    Another possibility is to post the complete FAQ relatively
    infrequently, while posting a shorter pointer to it (e.g.,
    providing instructions for getting it from archives) more
    frequently.

    If you choose to post your FAQ more frequently than once per
    month, you might want to consider not cross-posting it to
    *.answers every time you post.  Although it may be necessary to
    post the FAQ in its home newsgroup often, it is probably not
    necessary to post it in *.answers as frequently.

    Note, however, that if you do this, you can't use Supersedes every
    time you post your FAQ, since a posting in just the FAQ's home
    newsgroup should not supersede the posting in both the home
    newsgroup and *.answers.  Therefore, unless you're willing to have
    two copies of your FAQ in your home newsgroup at all times, you
    should always cross-post to *.answers (or use the system mentioned
    above, cross-posting the full FAQ to *.answers and a more frequent
    pointer posting just in its home newsgroup).

    When submitting your FAQ, please be sure to let us know the
    frequency at which you intend to post it to its home newsgroup, as
    well as the frequency at which you intend to cross-post it to
    *.answers (if different).  The best way for this is to put this
    information into the "Posting-Frequency" field of the auxiliary
    header.

 E. Mailing lists for FAQ maintainers

    Maintainers of FAQs are strongly urged to join the faq-maintainers
    mailing list, which is used for discussion about the *.answers
    newsgroups and the maintenance of USENET FAQs.  Anyone is allowed
    to subscribe to these mailing lists -- in particular, you may
    subscribe before you even submit your FAQ to us.

    If you don't want to be on the discussion list, you may wish to
    join the faq-maintainers-announce list, which will be used only
    for announcements, instead.  Note that subscribers to the
    faq-maintainers list automatically receive all messages sent to
    faq-maintainers-announce.

    Traffic on faq-maintainers tends to come in bursts -- it averages
    three to four messages per week, but during a burst there may be as
    many as several dozen messages in a single day, and in between such
    bursts, there may be weeks of no messages at all.

    Traffic on faq-maintainers-announce is very low (it is not unheard
    of for six months to pass with no messages sent to the list).

    When submitting your FAQ, make sure to let us know whether or not
    you want to be on one of the lists, or if you are already
    subscribed. (If you do not, we will ask you if you wish to
    subscribe, so you might as well tell us :). It is best to let us
    know in separate email, rather than including it in the body of
    your FAQ when you first submit it, lest we not notice it in the
    body of your FAQ. All other administrative requests related
    directly to the faq-maintainers or faq-maintainers-announce mailing
    lists should be sent to [e-mail].

 F. List of Periodic Informational Postings

    Unless you tell us otherwise, we will add any postings submitted
    to *.answers to the "List of Periodic Informational Postings"
    (LoPIP) articles which appear in news.answers and news.lists.

    If you do not have copies of the LoPIP postings and would like to
    get them, to see what they're like or to check if your FAQ is
    already listed, see the instructions at the end of this message.

 G. Article approval

    Once all of the other issues listed in this posting are resolved,
    you will be given approval to cross-post your FAQ to *.answers.
    You will have to indicate in the header of your posting that such
    approval has been given, or the posting will be mailed to us
    instead of posted.

    Note that we are intentionally being somewhat vague about what
    this entails.  When we approve your posting for *.answers, we will
    provide more specific instructions.

 H. Checklist

    Following is a checklist for your *.answers submission.  Please
    go through all the questions; if you answer "no" to any of
    them, look at the relevant section of this article again, and
    correct your submission accordingly.

        Does the posting have a message header?
        Does the posting have a Newsgroups line?
        Does the Newsgroups line contain at least one newsgroup other
                than the *.answers newsgroups?
        Does the Newsgroups line contain news.answers?
        Are the *.answers newsgroups listed last on the Newsgroups
                line (with news.answers last of all)?
        Does the Newsgroups line contain all relevant *.answers
                newsgroups?
        Does the Newsgroups line contain only relevant *.answers
                newsgroups?
        Does the posting have a Subject line?
        Is the Subject line informative?
        Is important information on the Subject line near the
                beginning of the line?
        Does the posting have a Followup-To line?
        Does the Followup-To line omit all the *.answers newsgroups?
        Does the posting have a From or Reply-To line with a valid
                email address?
        Does the posting have an Archive-name line?
        Is the auxiliary header separated from the body of your
                posting by a blank line?
        Is the auxiliary header separated from the main header by a
                blank line?
        Is the Archive-name line valid?
        Have you told us the frequency of your posting?
        Have you told us whether you want to be on faq-maintainers or
                faq-maintainers-announce?

II. Submission instructions

   If you have a posting which you wish to submit to *.answers, you
   should first read the guidelines listed above and modify your
   posting to conform to them.  Then, you should submit it by posting
   it to the news.answers newsgroup, assuming that the software on the
   poster's site works properly and will forward the posting to the
   news.answers moderator, or by mailing it to the news.answers
   submission address, [e-mail].  ONLY SUBMISSIONS SHOULD
   BE MAILED TO THAT ADDRESS.  If there is some commentary or
   explanation that needs to be made, it should be mailed in a
   separate message to [e-mail], which is the
   moderator contact address for any *.answers-related business.

   If you post the FAQ to both *.answers and one or more other
   moderated groups, you need separate approval from each of the
   moderators.  Wait for approval from each of them (including us)
   before actually posting.  In this case, you should send in the
   FAQ to us via e-mail, because the submission will be sent via
   e-mail to the first moderated group which appears in the
   Newsgroup line.

   Please submit the FAQ in a form as close as possible to how it
   appears when you post it normally.  This means that you should
   include a complete header, with at the very least the Subject line
   you normally use.  We very much prefer you actually posting the
   message to *.answers as you would post it normally, including the
   cross-posted newsgroups, but omitting the moderation approval
   header line that would cause the article to actually be posted
   rather than mailed to us; this way, we will get to see exactly how
   the article will look when it is actually posted in *.answers.
   Also, if your FAQ does not say somewhere near the top how often it
   is posted, then please let us know the frequency in separate
   E-mail.

   Note that if you do not indicate moderator approval in the header
   of your posting, it will NOT be posted to any newsgroup, even if
   you list other newsgroups on the Newsgroups line besides *.answers
   groups.  Therefore, you CAN and SHOULD place all Newsgroups to
   which you intend to post in the Newsgroups line, in the order you
   intend them to be in when you post.

   We will respond, by agreeing that the FAQ belongs in *.answers
   as-is, or by asking you to make minor modifications to it in order
   to make it acceptable, or by rejecting it as inappropriate for
   *.answers.  If you are asked to make modifications, please do so
   and resubmit the posting to us just as you did the first time.

   We are all volunteers, doing *.answers moderation in our spare
   time.  Therefore, we can't always process submissions and other
   *.answers-related correspondence immediately.  Please don't
   write to us asking whether we received your submission until at
   least a week after you submitted it.

   Once an FAQ has been approved for *.answers, you will post it
   directly to the group yourself, by indicating in the header of the
   message that it was approved by the *.answers moderator, as
   described above.

   If possible, try to avoid posting your FAQ at a "predictable"
   time.  For example, if you have decided to post it monthly, don't
   automatically decide to post it on the first of every month.  This
   causes a flood of FAQs in *.answers (and on the net in general) at
   certain times of months, and this flood is big enough to overwhelm
   some smaller sites and many readers of *.answers.  Therefore,
   rather than picking the "obvious" time to post, pick some other,
   random time during the month to do your posting.

   If you have trouble posting your FAQ once it has been approved,
   because your site won't let you post to a moderated newsgroup,
   because you don't have good posting access, or because of any other
   reason, feel free to get in touch with us and we'll try to help.
   Alternatively, you can use the FAQ server which we run to help
   solve such problems; you mail your FAQ or FAQs to it, and it posts
   them periodically automatically.  For more information about the
   FAQ server, send mail to [e-mail] with "help"
   (without the quotes) in the Subject of your message.


III. Once your posting is approved

   The following is a list of some situations which might occur after
   your FAQ has been approved for *.answers, and what you need to do
   for each one.

   Note that if none of these situations occur, the *.answers
   moderators will expect you to continue posting your FAQ regularly,
   and there is no need to resubmit your FAQ just because you are
   regularly revising its *CONTENTS*.

   A. Transfer an FAQ to a new maintainer

      The old maintainer should inform [e-mail] of
      the change in maintainers.  The new maintainer should read this
      document (i.e., the "*.answers submission guidelines") and
      inform [e-mail] that he has done so.
      Furthermore, the new maintainer should resubmit the FAQ even if
      there are no header changes planned except for the From and/or
      Reply-To lines, since we'd like to confirm that the new
      maintainer's news server doesn't munge headers.  The new
      maintainer should wait for reapproval before posting.

   B. Change an FAQ's posting frequency

      Inform [e-mail] of the new frequency, unless
      you have a "Posting-Frequency" field in your auxiliary header;
      in that case, just change that field.  You do not need to await
      reapproval from us.

   C. Change an FAQ's header(s)

      1. Subject line

         Inform [e-mail] of the new Subject line,
         or resubmit the entire FAQ to [e-mail]; in either
         case, wait for reapproval before posting.

      2. Newsgroups line

         Inform [e-mail] of the new Newsgroups
         line, or resubmit the entire FAQ to [e-mail]; in
         either case, wait for reapproval before posting.

      3. From line, WITHOUT CHANGING MAINTAINERS

         If the new From line obviously refers to the same individual
         as the old one, you don't have to do anything.  If it's not
         obvious that the new From line refers to the same individual,
         inform [e-mail] and wait for reapproval
         before posting.

      4. Archive-name line

         Inform [e-mail] and wait for reapproval
         before posting.

      5. Followup-To line

         As long as it exists and doesn't contain any *.answers
         newsgroups in it, you don't have to do anything if you change
         its contents.

      6. Other headers

         As long as you don't change the overall structure of your
         headers (e.g., make sure you keep an auxiliary header with
         the Archive-name line in it), you don't have to do anything
         about changes to other headers.

   D. Add postings to or delete postings from an FAQ

      1. Split up a single-part FAQ

         Submit all the parts to [e-mail], with archive names
         in the format "foo-faq/part1", "foo-faq/part2", etc.  Wait for
         approval before posting.

      2. Add a new part to a FAQ which already has multiple parts

         Submit the new part to [e-mail], or inform
         [e-mail] if the new part's headers are
         consistent with the other parts (e.g., if your Subject lines
         are in the form "foo FAQ part * of *" and your archive names
         look like "foo-faq/part*", and you add a new part which looks
         just like the others except for a new part number, you don't
         have to resubmit the new part or resubmit all the other parts
         because you changed the "of *" number in their Subject
         lines).  Either way, wait for approval before posting with
         the new part or parts.

      3. Delete a part from a multi-part FAQ

         Inform [e-mail].  Wait for approval
         before posting.

      4. Add a diff posting

         Submit it to [e-mail].  If you already have a
         multi-part FAQ, choose the archive name to be consistent with
         the other ones. If your archive names look like "foo-faq/part*",
         the diff posting should have the archive name "foo-faq/diff".  If
         your FAQ had only one part before the change, add "/part1" to the
         archive name (e.g. "foo-faq/part1"), and submit both the FAQ and
         the diff posting.  Wait for reapproval before posting the diff.

      5. Terminate an FAQ (i.e., stop posting it forever)

         Inform [e-mail].

   E. Create a new FAQ

      Submit it to *.answers following the guidelines in sections I
      and II above, just like you submitted your previous FAQ(s).


IV. This posting

   Comments about, suggestions about or corrections to this posting
   are welcomed.  If you would like to ask us to change this posting
   in some way, the method we appreciate most is for you to actually
   make the desired modifications to a copy of the posting, and then
   to send us the modified posting, or a context diff between the
   posted version and your modified version (if you do the latter,
   make sure to include in your mail the "Version:" line from the
   posted version).  Submitting changes in this way makes dealing with
   them easier for us and helps to avoid misunderstandings about what
   you are suggesting.

   The following people provided feedback and helped to make this
   posting more readable and useful:

     Stan Brown <[e-mail]>
     L. Detweiler <[e-mail]>
     Aydin Edguer <[e-mail]>
     Mark Eckenwiler <[e-mail]>
     [e-mail]
     Cindy Tittle Moore <[e-mail]>
     Steven D. Ourada <[e-mail]>
     Edward Reid <[e-mail]>
     Ken Shirriff <[e-mail]>
     Dan Tilque <[e-mail]>
     Bill Wohler <[e-mail]>
     Lars Aas <[e-mail]>


V. Getting the "List of Periodic Informational Postings"

   There are eight "List of Periodic Informational Postings"
   postings:

    Subject: List of Periodic Informational Postings, Part 1/8
    Subject: List of Periodic Informational Postings, Part 2/8
    Subject: List of Periodic Informational Postings, Part 3/8
    Subject: List of Periodic Informational Postings, Part 4/8
    Subject: List of Periodic Informational Postings, Part 5/8
    Subject: List of Periodic Informational Postings, Part 6/8
    Subject: List of Periodic Informational Postings, Part 7/8
    Subject: List of Periodic Informational Postings, Part 8/8
    Newsgroups: news.lists,news.answers

   They are available in the indicated USENET newsgroups, or via
   anonymous ftp from rtfm.mit.edu (18.181.0.24) in the files:

    /pub/usenet/news.answers/periodic-postings/part1
    /pub/usenet/news.answers/periodic-postings/part2
    /pub/usenet/news.answers/periodic-postings/part3
    /pub/usenet/news.answers/periodic-postings/part4
    /pub/usenet/news.answers/periodic-postings/part5
    /pub/usenet/news.answers/periodic-postings/part6
    /pub/usenet/news.answers/periodic-postings/part7
    /pub/usenet/news.answers/periodic-postings/part8

   They are also available from [e-mail] by sending a
   mail message containing any or all of:

    send usenet/news.answers/periodic-postings/part1
    send usenet/news.answers/periodic-postings/part2
    send usenet/news.answers/periodic-postings/part3
    send usenet/news.answers/periodic-postings/part4
    send usenet/news.answers/periodic-postings/part5
    send usenet/news.answers/periodic-postings/part6
    send usenet/news.answers/periodic-postings/part7
    send usenet/news.answers/periodic-postings/part8

   If you want to find out more about the mail server, send a message
   to it containing "help".

--
                [e-mail] (Ping Huang)
                [e-mail] (Jonathan I. Kamens)
                [e-mail] (Thomas Koenig)
                [e-mail] (Aliza R. Panitz)
                [e-mail] (Paul W. Schleck)

                        -- the *.answers moderation team