Various kinds of newsgroup descriptions are maintained in different places around the Internet. There are three main places you can look for newsgroup descriptions:
- Charters. Some newsgroups regularly post a description to the group that describes its intention. These descriptions are posted by the people involved with the newsgroup creation and/or administration. If the group has such a description, it almost always includes the word “charter”, so you can quickly find it by searching the newsgroupfor that word. An interesting collection of Charters and FAQ’s for moderated newsgroups collected by JumpJet can be found here.
- RFD. You can check to see if the group has an original “Request For Discussion” description in the news.announce.newgroups postings.
- Descriptions. Many newsgroups have short descriptions at newsgroup review sites, although these are of varying quality. Sites that contain newsgroup reviews include the following: