[FTLFAQS.TXT] Mon Jun 5 03:28:00 EST 1995 FTL processes and handles Usenet *.answers newsgroups slightly differently than normal newsgroup processing. Those differences are documented here: The answers newsgroups (news.answers, sci.answers, alt.answers, etc) are moderated groups for the posting of FAQ (frequently asked questions and answers to them) on thousands of subjects. Also, many newsgroups require users to read the related FAQ for the newsgroup before posting. Incoming FAQ's are automatically posted both to the source newsgroups (news.answers, etc) and as downloadable files. The downloadable files are maintained for 31 days (files over 31 days old are deleted). The file description contains the summary information from the FAQ and a banner which can be used to ignore such postings (if using Robocomm or some other such automated system). The banner appears as: [ftl/faq/news.answers] The filenames of the posted zip files and the text files within are of little significance. The filenaming scheme is HHMMSSHHH.nn for the text file and HHMMSSHHH.zip for the zip file where HH = hour, MM = minute, SS = seconds, HHH = hundredths of when the file was processed. Duplicates will not appear (the system will keep retrying filenames until an unused one is found). However, duplicates will appear from month to month since once a file is 31 days old, it is deleted and therefor no longer a dup. If you wish to keep downloaded FAQ's, you should rename them to something more meaningful and be careful of duplicates. If you have any questions or problems, please leave a note in conference 7 (Support) on FTL (404-292-8761 = main hunt group).