🚀 go-pugleaf

I am teaching CSED 402 in an online environment for the second time at
UBC. We use www pages and email to communicate but I would like to have
a usenet discussion group for general class discussions. 

I asked UBC to create a group for me; they did, and it worked fine but
only students signed on to the UBC computer could see it. Many of my
students had other providers around the province. I asked UBC to export
the discussion to the other providers, but they declined. I understand
they have good reason not to want to do this (although I personally do
not understand these reasons). I arranged for a HyperNews reader to be
operated by UBC Distance Learning, but this was was slow and hard to
manage. I really prefer the normal newsgroup.

If you (all) agree to create this newsgroup, I would appreciate a rather
flat hierarchy to start. That is, I don't think we should begin with
bc.dist-ed.courses.ubc.csed.402 which might be your first inclination. A
long address is hard to remember and handle for beginning users and
extra punctuation (the minus sign) is difficult for them to parse. A
hierarch like this "demands" that SFU, UVic, OLI, and the colleges, and
even other UBC departments have their own directories to assert their
presence in the distance education arena. While I have no objection to
their presence, I don't want to proliferate directories unless they are
actually needed.

I have read the Usenet Newsgroup Creation Companion but I guess that the
general newsgroup-creation procedures are not warranted here. So I am
uncertain how one goes about creating a newsgroup in the bc.* hierarchy.
I would appreciate any assistance.

--
Marv Westrom <westrom@ubc.ca>
University of British Columbia, Canada.