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This document is intended to be a primer for use by those wishing to create new newsgroups in scout.*, the specific hierarchy for scouts and guides and for which scout.admin or the admin newsgroup in a sub-hierarchies the appropriate place to discuss new newsgroups. It has been adapted from the document "Guidelines on Usenet Newsgroup Names" originally written by David.W.Wright@bnr.co.uk and from "Guidelines on uk.* Newsgroup Names" written by Simon Gray.
Newsgroup names are structured, hierarchical, taxonomic but not definitive. They are intended to help users find what they want and news administrators manage their systems, to the benefit of their users. By understanding each of these concepts, you can understand how to select suitable names for new news groups.
Newsgroup names are structured into parts separated by dots, for example "scout.ch.chat". Each part should consist only of *lower case* letters, digits, "+" and "-", with at least one letter; in the past there was a 14 character limit imposed for each naming component, which is now 20 characters due to improvements in newsgroup server software; however, it is still *recommended* that if possible you keep to the old limit to ensure good propagation of your group on older servers.
Names fall into clear hierarchies - for example all country-related groups for Switzerland are in scout.ch.*; each may be subdivided into second, third, and lower level hierarchies, such as scout.ch.pbs.announce, by adding more parts to the basic name. The first part is the most general (ch = country), the second more specific, and so on. The last part completes the actual group name. As each part implies a further level, words at the same level are included into one part using a hyphen. A hyphen should also be used where multiple words would in normal English be separated by a space - this is clearer than concatenating words together, as in 'science-fiction' rather than 'sciencefiction'.
Understand that the hierarchical system of newsgroup naming does *not* reflect the 'importance' of a newsgroup, nor does it say anything about how many groups are now or in the future 'underneath' that top level hierarchy. It is purely about organisation of newsgroups into similar related subjects - more of which below.
There is a range of top-level hierarchies in scout.*, and the current list of these may be inspected here.
Taxonomy is the science of classifying things - for example species in biology, or books in a library. Group names classify subjects into areas and hierarchies. Getting these right is not easy, for you have to fit in with those already there, and also allow for likely future growth. This second point is especially important; of course, nobody can truly predict the future, but be guided by those who have long and not so long experience on scout.admin, who have seen the growth of scout.* over the years and thus have a 'feel' for what other possible groups your group might inspire.
It must be remembered that there is often no single 'correct' taxonomy for a new newsgroup - for instance, many people regard radio as part of the 'media' whereas others regard what's on the radio as an example of 'art'. Where should a radio newsgroup be - uk.media.radio or uk.culture.arts.radio? If its going to be a completely new newsgroup, then let your gut feelings (plus of course the advice of scout.admin regulars or the sub-hierarchy maintainer) be your guide. See below for what to do if there are already newsgroups on similar topics.
Newsgroup names are inclusive rather than definitive. That is to say, a group name defines an area in which a message may be posted if there is no other group with a better name fit. The name does not define exact limits to the group, eliminating subjects, who do not exactly match the name; rather, it gives the user a guide as to the nature of the intended content of the group.
The group name is often the only clue the user has about the group without reading a selection of articles from the group. It isn't possible for users to read every group to find out which are of interest to them. Similarly, even a very popular group will only be read by 1% of all Netnews users, so the name has to make sense to the 99% who are not reading the group. It should be clear enough to avoid users posting "what is this?" articles, and to ensure that those who *would* like to know more about the subject do recognise the group's purpose and start to read it and join in.
Also, bear in mind that scout.* is propagated globally, and not everybody will know (for example) that a 'Tala' is the shortcut for 'Taschenlampe' (German) which means a torch.
All this leads to some strong guidelines about choosing names:
No site keeps all articles for months. So news administrators have to be selective in which groups they carry and how long they keep the articles of each group (expiry times). So they make use of the hierarchic property, and control news in hierarchies. For example, one may keep scout articles longer than rec, another may decide not to take any of scout.forum.deutsch.* groups as none of their users reads them. This is the other reason hierarchies are so important, and why a new group should always be fitted into an existing hierarchy if at all possible (and in scout.*, the creation of a new top level hierarchy, is a purposely more involved process than creating a new group). Some new group proponents think it does not matter if their group does not fit in to this scheme, assuming that news administrators who don't want it can select it out individually: this is a mistaken view. Every group that a site gets that its users do not read, makes less disk space and so shorter expiry times for the groups they *do* want.
In addition, much news server software stores the articles for the newsgroups in directories corresponding to the hierarchy components - for example, article 218 of scout.admin is often stored in the directory tree as ~/scout/admin/218 (which incidentally is why you cannot have numbers-only as newsgroup name components), which makes for a nice tidy hard drive - can you imagine how difficult it would be to find files on your computer if there were no directories, & everything was in c:\ ?!!
Think about these guidelines before naming your new newsgroup; remember that naming mistakes made in the past when Usenet was much smaller, or now in uncontrolled parts of the net like alt.*, are no reason to make more mistakes now in scout.* (as one mantra states, "the practices of other hierarchies are not our concern") - so do not use these mistakes as excuses to make other mistakes.
And if you still need advice, ask your questions in scout.admin