Usenet Guide
Member sites are provided with a free Usenet or Netnews feed. It is one of the most active Internet applications, distributing as many as 150,000 articles to over 7,000 discussion topics daily.
Using MSLN's Central News Server
While it is possible to set up your own local server, it is time and resource intensive. The MSLN Network plan assumes that MSLN sites will opt to use the central MSLN server. When your site is added to the MSLN network, your site automatically obtains access to Netnews. By default this access is read-only.
Who has access to Usenet
Anyone at your site can use Usenet once you have installed a client onto the local machines or on a local server. You can choose to provide read-only access to Netnews or allow posting as well. If you allow posting at your site, anyone with an e-mail id will be able to post.
Acceptable Use of Usenet
As technical coordinator, you are responsible for educating your users in acceptable use of Netnews. Have an acceptable use policy in place that covers Netnews and make sure your users are aware of what's expected of them. To learn more about problems you might encounter in administering Usenet, see: Non-technical Issues of Internet Service at MSLN Sites.
Newsfeed Content
A number of groups have been removed from the feed due to potentially objectionable material. Additional groups could be filtered if a sizable number of sites collaborate to develop a list that might apply to all of them.
Posting
Upon the request of the Site's technical coordinator, MSLN will allow each site to POST news. Before requesting that your site be allowed to post, we strongly recommend the following:
- Posting permission should be requested only after the proper administrators at the site have been apprised of the responsibilities of posting news articles to the Internet.
- Posting permission should be requested only after mail ids have been set up for all people who are going to post. It should be understood that posts without an Internet mail id in the header will be rejected by the server.