The alt.discuss.no-rules hierarchy has been removed

The alt.discuss.no-rules hierarchy has been deleted and the mechanism for creating new alt.discuss.no-rules newsgroups has been removed. This action was taken because newsgroups were being created whose existence was perceived as a potential legal liability for WebTV Networks.

This action does not affect the rest of the alt.discuss hierarchy or the a.d newsgroup creation system in any way.

An automated system has been created to allow readers of the alt.discuss newsgroups to create new newsgroups in the alt.discuss hierarchy. There are two sets of rules for newsgroup creation. Which rules apply depend on whether the newsgroup will be in the "regular" alt.discuss hierarchy or in the alt.discuss.no-rules hierarchy. This article describes the system for the "no-rules" hierarchy. The rules for the "regular" alt.discuss hierarchy are described in a separate article. WARNING: THIS IS AN AUTOMATED SYSTEM. IT IS STUPID. IF YOU DON'T FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS EXACTLY, YOUR MAIL WILL BE IGNORED.

Creating a new alt.discuss.no-rules newsgroup
The steps in creating a new alt.discuss newsgroup are:
Proposing a new newsgroup
Cancelling a newsgroup proposal
And while we're at it...
Deleting an existing newsgroup

Proposing a new alt.discuss.no-rules newsgroup

To create a new alt.discuss.no-rules newsgroup, someone must "propose" it. This is done by sending email to advotes@vote.munitions.com with a Subject line of "propose alt.discuss.no-rules.group-name", i.e., if you wanted to propose the creation of alt.discuss.no-rules.lightbulbs, you would send in email with a Subject of

Subject: propose alt.discuss.no-rules.lightbulbs

Do not include quotes around the subject. Do not put a period at the end of the subject line. "propose" MUST be the first thing on the Subject line. It doesn't matter whether it's upper case or lower case or a mixture - PROPOSE, Propose, propose and PrOpOsE will do the same thing. The next thing in the Subject MUST be the newsgroup name and it MUST begin with alt.discuss.no-rules. Only letters, numbers, periods and hyphens are allowed in newsgroup names. The newsgroup name, including the "alt.discuss.no-rules." part, must not be more than 90 characters long. If you ignore any of these rules, your proposal will be thrown away with no notice to you.

If an alt.discuss.no-rules newsgroup proposal meets the above requirements, the newsgroup will be created approximately an hour after the proposal is received. Due to server software limitations, it will generally not be visible to WebTV subscribers until the day after it is created.

Cancelling an alt.discuss.no-rules newsgroup proposal

The person who proposed a new alt.discuss.no-rules newsgroup (and only that person, or more accurately, that account name) can cancel that alt.discuss.no-rules newsgroup proposal. You have one hour after the proposal is received to send in the cancel request. Cancel requests received after the group has been created will be ignored. A no-rules newsgroup proposal is cancelled by sending email to advotes@vote.munitions.com with a Subject line containing "cancel alt.discuss.no-rules.group-name". If you decide that alt.discuss.no-rules.lightbulbs isn't a good name for the newsgroup, you can cancel the proposal by sending in email with a Subject line of

Subject: cancel alt.discuss.no-rules.lightbulbs

Deleting an existing alt.discuss newsgroup
There is no way to request deletion of an existing alt.discuss.no-rules newsgroup. Any a.d.n-r newsgroup which has not had any articles in it for 10 consecutive days will be deleted automatically.

WARNING: email replies to this message or to any other message originating from "nobody" are automatically discarded without being read. Questions and comments about this voting system should be posted to alt.discuss.config.