On 18 Nov 1994, a colleague wrote to the bionet.software.www group:
> I have posted what I thought were legitimate requests to this group
> with the leading [Q], etc. They have not appeared. Can one of the
> moderators provide guidance and/or a group FAQ and/or other
> appropriate docs?
>
Unfortunately, postings like this one still occur several times a month.
We refer to the introductory posting (19-Aug-1994) at
http://www.ch.embnet.org/bio-www/archive/intro_biosci.html stating
"The BIO-WWW/bionet.software.www newsgroup is ready for operation. PLEASE
NOTE that many USENET sites do not allow automatic creation of new USENET
groups! If you do not see bionet.software.www in your newsreader within
another day or two, ask your news system administrator to act on our
"newgroup" message to enable the group at your site. We have already done
several tests and are certain that the group is currently propagating
around the network. If he/she can not find the newsgroup message, have
them retrieve the bionet checkgroups message from the anonymous FTP area
on net.bio.net in pub/BIOSCI/doc/bionet-checkgroups-msg. This file
contains the latest list of bionet USENET newsgroups and can be used to
update your bionet distribution. If the newgroup did not arrive at your
site, it may also be necessary for your news administrator to contact the
upstream computer site providing you with your newsfeed and determine if
they acted on the newgroup message."
We mirror the bionet.software.www group into a W3 server at the URL
http://www.ch.embnet.org/bio-www/info.html and keep all archives there,
sorted for various areas and chronologically listed. Our newsfeed is
very well organized but please keep in mind that (1) moderation and, in
particular, HTML editing is a humanly performed process (as such, it is
reliable and therefore superior) and (2) NEWS is a store-and-forward
medium and it might happen that your newsfeed is delayed for a day or two
in rare cases.
Regards
Reinhard Doelz
Chris Wadley
bionet.software.www. Moderation
