$Id: newsmaster,v 1.6 1996/04/21 20:29:19 edmonds Exp $ This document is formatted in Minimal Digest Format. If you are reading this in news or mail, and your reader has digest handling functionality, you should be able to use it to move quickly between sections -- consult your user manual for further information. This document may be freely retransmitted in Usenet or email; permission to reproduce in any other media should be requested from the author, Brian Edmonds . The latest edition of this FAQ can be found on the web at: * http://www.cs.ubc.ca/spider/edmonds/usenet/newsmaster.txt Thanks to Bill Hazelrig and for ideas and suggestions in writing this FAQ. ------------------------------ Subject: Table of Contents 1: How do I get my site to carry a new alt group? 2: What if my site won't carry a new alt group? ------------------------------ Subject: How do I get my site to carry a new alt group? If your site is not running on auto-pilot, then the odds are very good that you only subscribe to alt groups which your news admin thought looked useful, and/or that people have asked for. If you find that you cannot subscribe to an alt group that others are talking about, then you need to send email to your news admin and ask him/her to subscribe the group locally. Try and include as much information as you can on what the group is about, and where you heard about it. This email should look something like the following: > To: newsmaster@your.local.site > Subject: please subscribe group alt.blah.blah.blah > > I would like to read the blahing group alt.blah.blah.blah, which I > heard about in the newsgroup foo.bar.baz. Unfortunately, we don't > seem to subscribe to it locally. Could you please add it to our local > subscription so that I can check it out? Thanks. There is actually no standard email address at which to reach your news admin. In addition to newsmaster, both news and usenet are in common use, and any or all of these may work at your site. If mail to one bounces, try each of the others in turn; if none work, send mail to postmaster (or contact customer support) and ask what the email address is to contact the news admin. If your site is a number of hops away from the main Usenet backbone sites, then you still may not receive any articles in the group if the sites that feed you news aren't passing them on. If after a few days, you still aren't receiving any articles in the group, this may be your problem. Check with your local news admin to make sure that the group you want is included in the news that your feed sites are sending you. If so, then it will be considerably more work to get the group. If you're up for the challenge, keep reading. In this situation, you may want to just admit defeat, but if you're hell-bent on reading the group, it may still be possible. Check out the Path header on news you receive. It is composed of the names of all the sites your news passes through, in order, with the most recent sites closer to the beginning. Try sending mail to the news admin at the first few sites, and explain to them that you're interested in reading a certain group, but it seems not to be propagating to your site. Ask them if they could take a minute to check their feed and see if they are passing the group on. Then you wait. If you get replies, and the articles start to flow, congratulations, but don't get your hopes up. If a couple weeks pass with no replies, you may want to try sending the mail again, just to let them know you're serious. Be careful not to mail them too often, however, or you'll just be annoying, and one or more of them may actively ignore you, or possibly even complain to your local admin. ------------------------------ Subject: What if my site won't carry a new alt group? If you don't have the option of switching service providers, your best bet is to get an account on a freenet system that does carry the group and telnet to there to read it. Usually you will have to submit an application by snail mail, but most accept applications from anyone. Check on one of your local newsgroups if there is a freenet in your geographical area. If you can't find one there, you might want to try one of the following sites: acca.nmsu.edu launchpad.unc.edu freenet.carleton.edu ------------------------------ -- Brian Edmonds $Date: 1996/04/21 20:29:19 $