Local and other hierarchies listed in control.ctl

[Adam H. Kerman]

Last night, I went through control.ctl. I looked at every hierarchy I
didn't recognize as either international, language, or regional.

These are the broad groupings of hierarchies that I use. You may not
agree. If you don't agree, I still think it would be helpful to come to
a consensus on how to group hierarchies.

Please note carefully how I am using LOCAL and REGIONAL.

NOT USENET

Local: Contains newsgroups that are not intended to be part of the
Usenet network, whose distributions are intended to be local to a
particular News site or a specific group of related servers that peer
only with each other for the purpose of distributing these articles.
Control messages that escape to non-related servers should not be
processed.

Private: Contains newsgroups that are not intended to be part of the
Usenet network, whose distributions are limited to News servers peering
with each other that have permission to be part of such a private
network.

USENET

International: Contains newsgroups that are for general discssion
without usually being related to a geographical area. This includes Big
8 newsgroups.

Regional: Contains newsgroups that are for general discssion in relation
to a geographical area without a limitation on distribution of articles
or participation to that geographical area. uk.* is an example.

Language: Discussion is in a particular language that isn't English. May
be international or regional or sometimes mixed. There is no limitation
on distribution or participation to areas in which the language is
primarily spoken.

MAY BE USENET OR NOT USENET

Institutional: A catch-all for newsgroups created in which discussion is
related to a university or a company. Newsgroups for corporations intended
for self support among customers are in this category. Newsgroups
created to support users of a News site or an ISP are in this category.

Going through control.ctl, there are quite a few more LOCAL hierarchies
than I recalled. I don't know how consistently the term LOCAL was used
or if tale always knew for a fact that these were not Usenet newsgroups
or was just making assumptions.

Russ, to the extent that these hierarchies are known to be LOCAL,
commenting them out in control.ctl would not be controversial.

Similarly, there's nothing controversial about commenting out PRIVATE
hierarchies, if that is a known status.

I found hierarchies that are gated from mailing lists. I vaguely recall
that there used to be an FAQ posted as a cron job that didn't appear to
be maintained with a lengthy list of these. I'm not sure why just a
handful of these got listed in control.ctl.

If a News site creates these, it would sure be nice to know what mailing
lists still exist. I suppose these largely exist on the Usenet side
years after the mailing lists were taken down.

Maybe there's nothing controversial about commenting out gated
hierarchies in control.ctl or even delisting them.

I noted three hierarchies that are listed as LOCAL but appear to be
REGIONAL. I couldn't figure out how to categorize BDA, and I've got
question marks next to about a dozen or so.

PGP indicates that control.ctl notes that authentication is used but the
key isn't necessarily listed in control.ctl.

To the extent that the status of newsgroups in these hierarchies can be
confirmed, I don't think it would be controversial to comment them out
entirely. Any hierarchy properly categorized as INTERNATIONAL, REGIONAL,
or LANGUAGE is part of Usenet and should not be commented out.

If my list is helpful, could someone eyeball it and let me know what
I've gotten wrong or fill in missing information.

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

-- > local (should be institutional?)
ACS & OSU
ARC
BACKBONE
BEST
BIRK
CAIS
CD-ONLINE
CENTRAL
CHAVEN
CMU
CU
CUHK
DUKE
HARVARD
IBMNET
ICONZ
KRST
MCMASTER
MCOM (defunct?)
METROPOLIS
NAS
NASA
NCF
NETINS
NEWS4US
PLANET
PRIMA
RPI
SDSU
SU
TELE
TERMVAKT
UT
UTEXAS
UTWENTE
UVA
UWARWICK
WORLDONLINE
WPI
YORK

-- > (should be institutional)
AIOE (PGP)
ARKANE
BIONET (PGP)
CALSTATE
CARLETON
COMPUTER42
CPCUIIA
DEMON
EFN & EUG (historic but not defunct)
EHIME-U
ETERNAL-SEPTEMBER (PGP)
FIDO FIDO.BELG FIDO.GER FODI7
FLORA
GIT
GNU (PGP)
GWU
HACKTIC (historic but not defunct)
HAMSTER
HIV
HUMANITYQUEST (historic but not defunct)
IDOCTRA
ISU (PGP)
JLUG
K12
KANTO
LAW
MAUS (PGP)
MEDLUX
MENSA (PGP)
METOCEAN
MICROSOFT (defunct)
NAGASAKI-U
NCTU
NERSC
NETSCAPE (widely created)
NIAS (?)
PIN
PIPEX
PSU
ROCKSOLID (PGP)
SACHSNET (?)
SCOUT
SFNET (?)
SHAMASH
STAROFFICE
SUNET
SURFNET
SWNET (?)
TAMU
TCFN
TRIANGLE
TUM
TW.K-12
UCB (PGP)
UCD
UMICH
UMN
UO
UTA
UW
UWO
VGC (?)
VMSNET
WADAI (?)
X-PRIVAT
XS4ALL
Z-NETZ (PGP)

-- > (no clue)
BDA

-- > (gated mailing lists)
BIT
FA
FJ (should be listed as gated?)
GRISBI (PGP) (should be listed as gated, also institutional)
LINUX
PGSQL (PGP)

-- > (private)
BOFH
CERN
CL
CLARI
FUR
GNUU
KA
NIPPON
NLO (PGP)
NNTPWORLD (PGP)
OPENNEWS
OPENWATCOM
OPERA
PERL
SSLUG
SZAF
ULM

-- > (incorrectly listed as local? should be regional?)
CMI (CMI is airport code for UofI Willard Airport)
KWNET
MANAWATU

[Jason Evans]

Hi Adam,

triangle

This used to be a local hierarchy for the triangle area of NC (Raleigh
Durham chapel hill).

[Adam H. Kerman]

Post by Jason Evans
Hi Adam,

triangle

This used to be a local hierarchy for the triangle area of NC (Raleigh
Durham chapel hill).

Thank you. I'll take it off the institutional list. It's a defunct
regional hierarchy?

[Jason Evans]

Post by Adam H. Kerman
Thank you. I'll take it off the institutional list. It's a defunct
regional hierarchy?

Probably. I haven't seen anything on topic there in years.

[Thomas Hochstein]

Post by Adam H. Kerman
-- > (private)

[...]

Post by Adam H. Kerman
KA

[...]

Post by Adam H. Kerman
ULM

Those are regional hierarchies for the cities of Karlsruhe and Ulm
(and the neighbouring areas).

ka.* has a peering policy demanding that each peer has to peer with a
"core site", but that policy has never really been enforced, and the
hierarchy is mostly available in the same way as any other regional
hierarchies. According to your specification, it's "regional" for all
intents and purposes.

ulm.* is a bit different; it's "private" as in "mostly [1] only
carried by news.in-ulm.de", so mostly fits the "private" description.

-thh

[1] Many servers seem to carry the groups, but I'm not sure if they
are really peering with the "home" server.

[Adam H. Kerman]

Post by Thomas Hochstein

Post by Adam H. Kerman
-- > (private)

[...]

Post by Adam H. Kerman
KA

[...]

Post by Adam H. Kerman
ULM

Those are regional hierarchies for the cities of Karlsruhe and Ulm
(and the neighbouring areas).
ka.* has a peering policy demanding that each peer has to peer with a
"core site", but that policy has never really been enforced, and the
hierarchy is mostly available in the same way as any other regional
hierarchies. According to your specification, it's "regional" for all
intents and purposes.
ulm.* is a bit different; it's "private" as in "mostly [1] only
carried by news.in-ulm.de", so mostly fits the "private" description.
-thh
[1] Many servers seem to carry the groups, but I'm not sure if they
are really peering with the "home" server.

Thank you. As no special permission is required, then they should not be
listed as private. Regional sounds like a better designation.

[Rink]

Post by Adam H. Kerman

Post by Thomas Hochstein

Post by Adam H. Kerman
-- > (private)

[...]

Post by Adam H. Kerman
KA

[...]

Post by Adam H. Kerman
ULM

Those are regional hierarchies for the cities of Karlsruhe and Ulm
(and the neighbouring areas).
ka.* has a peering policy demanding that each peer has to peer with a
"core site", but that policy has never really been enforced, and the
hierarchy is mostly available in the same way as any other regional
hierarchies. According to your specification, it's "regional" for all
intents and purposes.
ulm.* is a bit different; it's "private" as in "mostly [1] only
carried by news.in-ulm.de", so mostly fits the "private" description.
-thh
[1] Many servers seem to carry the groups, but I'm not sure if they
are really peering with the "home" server.

Thank you. As no special permission is required, then they should not be
listed as private. Regional sounds like a better designation.

12 ulm.* groups are available on eternal-september
8 of them are empty,
two *.misc groups with the last message in 2012 (going back to 2008)
and two *.test groups with only test messages in 2021.
So these 12 newsgroups are not alive...
No ulm.* groups on aioe and neodome

These three newsservers have no newsgroups of ka.*

I see a lot of regional hierarchies from Germany.
(bln.* = Berlin, hamburg.*, muenster.*, hannover.*. kassel.*, kiel.*,
muc.* = München, nrw.* = Nordrhein-Westfalen, rhein.*, ruhr.*,
saar.*, braunschweig.*, luebeck.*, wolfsburg.*, and so on).
But only a few newsgroups are alive (I haven't checked them all).
The only newsgroup I follow is bln.verkehr, because there are
also messages about trains and other public transport.

Rink

[Adam H. Kerman]

Post by Rink

Post by Adam H. Kerman

Post by Thomas Hochstein

Post by Adam H. Kerman
-- > (private)

[...]

Post by Adam H. Kerman
KA

[...]

Post by Adam H. Kerman
ULM

Those are regional hierarchies for the cities of Karlsruhe and Ulm
(and the neighbouring areas).
ka.* has a peering policy demanding that each peer has to peer with a
"core site", but that policy has never really been enforced, and the
hierarchy is mostly available in the same way as any other regional
hierarchies. According to your specification, it's "regional" for all
intents and purposes.
ulm.* is a bit different; it's "private" as in "mostly [1] only
carried by news.in-ulm.de", so mostly fits the "private" description.
-thh
[1] Many servers seem to carry the groups, but I'm not sure if they
are really peering with the "home" server.

Thank you. As no special permission is required, then they should not be
listed as private. Regional sounds like a better designation.

12 ulm.* groups are available on eternal-september
8 of them are empty,
two *.misc groups with the last message in 2012 (going back to 2008)
and two *.test groups with only test messages in 2021.
So these 12 newsgroups are not alive...
No ulm.* groups on aioe and neodome
These three newsservers have no newsgroups of ka.*
I see a lot of regional hierarchies from Germany.
(bln.* = Berlin, hamburg.*, muenster.*, hannover.*. kassel.*, kiel.*,
muc.* = MÃŒnchen, nrw.* = Nordrhein-Westfalen, rhein.*, ruhr.*,
saar.*, braunschweig.*, luebeck.*, wolfsburg.*, and so on).
But only a few newsgroups are alive (I haven't checked them all).
The only newsgroup I follow is bln.verkehr, because there are
also messages about trains and other public transport.

Thank you. I'll update the list with your notes.

[Julien ÉLIE]

Hi Adam,

Post by Adam H. Kerman
MICROSOFT (defunct)

This hierarchy is not yet defunct. Some newsgroups are still active.

Thanks for your review of the list.