Homepage of sfnet newsgroups
Sfnet is an administered Finnish usenet hierarchy. The newsgroup creation and sfnet policy is discussed in sfnet.ryhmat+listat. The newsgroups are created and removed by the sfnet coordinators (currently Hannu-Matti Järvinen, Kalle Kivimaa, and Tuuli Saarikoski).
The sfnet newagroups generally exist for discussion in the Finnish language. Therefore the group descriptions are available only in Finnish.
Many people active in sfnet can speak and write English rather fluently. If you have a specific question (e.g. how to rent a cottage in Lapland for one week) feel free to ask it. People in sfnet.ryhmat+listat are happy to help you to find the correct group. There is also a group sfnet.keskustelu.foreigners intended for foreigners living or visiting Finland.
Sfnet has a home page at http://www.cs.tut.fi/sfnet/ and the checkgroups file can be downloaded from http://www.cs.tut.fi/sfnet/sfnet.checkgroups.txt.
We are following the current status of sites carrying sfnet groups. The statistics are on page http://www.cs.tut.fi/sfnet/ryhmapeitto. The page is in Finnish, but if your news server has red columns, something is not up to date. Hints: "Puuttuvia" - "Missing", "Ylimääräisiä" - "Extra", "Virheellisesti moderoituja" - "Mistakenly moderated", "Virheellisesti moderoimattomia" - "Mistakenly not moderated".
Control messages.
The control messages are sent from sfnet@korppi.cs.tut.fi or sfnet@cs.tut.fi. You should set this address to create, delete or check (checkgroup) the sfnet groups. The control messages are signed with PGP key 6933A636 (fingerprint DE 79 33 C2 D3 59 D1 28 44 E5 6A 0C B6 E3 0E 53 69 33 A6 36. The key is signed by coordinator Kalle Kivimaa).
What is the spam/binary policy?
Commercial advertisements and binary messages are not allowed. Excessive multipostings with Breidbart Index of at least about six (BI=6) and binary messages may be cancelled by cancelbots.
Are there other Finnish hierarchies?
There is also uncoordinated hierarchy finet. If sfnet would be like Big 8 then finet would be like alt. For more information of finet visit http://www.iki.fi/kaip/finet/.