Except for local news hierarchies (cern.www.talk, hal.mlist.www-talk),
no there's no newsgroup in "the big seven" hierarchies that mirrors
this list.
<rant> (but I'll try to stay positive.)
I hope it stays that way. Currently, folks have to do at least a
_little_ digging around and investigating before they find this list.
I think that's a good thing. I think folks should exhaust the
resources available to them before making requests of others. Folks
should find and read the Boutell's excellent WWW FAQ, the documentation
for their browser, the documentation for their server, etc., as well
as contacting their local system administrator before sending mail
to this list.
(Does the subscription acknowledgement message sent out by the
mail robot for this list tell folks about such resources?)
I actually get long-distance phone calls from folks wanting to know
how to do stuff like transparent gifs and server-side includes. Go
figure.
What I would like to know is how those folks got so far as to know
that they need to do transparent gifs and server-side includes without
finding out about things like the FAQ archive at ftp://rtfm.mit.edu,
let alone the documentation for the software they use (their browser,
and if they're authoring, their server.)
I have some clues: for example, the old newsreaders like rn and such
would try to scare the pee out of you if you tried to actually post
something to usenet. Are you sure? Do you realize you're using
bandwidth and diskspace on machines all over the world? Have you
spell-checked your post? Are you familiar with USENET posting rules?
(and you had to type YES, not just y, and you had to do it in
upper-case. You had to pay attention.)
In contrast, Netscape lets you post with one click of a button. Not so
much as an "are you sure" dialog with a link to USENET lore. No check
to make sure that your original text is larger than the text you're
quoting. I understand that the America Online news interface barely
distinguishes between replying by mail and posting a followup.
It's a good thing that a web browser can give you point-and-click
access to the vast resources of the internet. It would be even better
if that same interface to those resources would make some attempt to
familiarize users with the rules and guidelines for using those
resources.
Dan