There are already quite a few Belgian newsgroups, but there will always be a question for new newsgroups, and therefore Tom De Voeght wrote the following short manual regarding the official procedure for the creation of new BE.* newsgroups:

Step 1

Are you really sure of what you're about to do?
Are there no other newsgroups in the BE.*-hierarchy that are making your proposal unnecessary?
Are you really convinced people will be interested?

Step 2

Read the official procedures on creating a newsgroup in the be.* hierarchy. This is an outdated text, but still contains some good info.

Step 3

Get into contact with the votetaker of the BE.*-hierarchy.
Right at this moment this is mr. Tom De Voeght, who is acting as the official votetaker of the BE.*-hierarchy.
Attention: this is a non-paid voluntary work!
E-Mail address: tdv@pandora.be.

Step 4

Create a chapter and an RFD (Request For Discussion).
The purpose of a RFD is to inform the people about your plan. Any person wishing to do so,can react by posting an opinion.
You can find examples on the web by visiting the usenet-archive of Google.

You can also click here in order to use the RFD of the newsgroup BE.FINANCE as an example.

After discussion with the votetaker about the desired period of the RFD and the CFV (Call For Votes),you can sent both RFD and CFV to be.announce.
(The fastest method is sending to Tom De Voeght, who is the moderator for this newsgroup)
You have to cross-post to be.misc and eventually to other relevant groups (max. 4).
The Followup-To header has to be set to be.misc.

Step 5

Once your RFD showed no real problems,you can proceed to the CFV-step.
Here too you can find examples by surfing to Google.

Anyway, if you don't, you can take the CFV of BE.FINANCE as an example.

Once your CFV is completed, the votetaker will post it in be.announce, together with the weekly voting results.
For more information on the voting, click here.

Step 6

If your proposal has been rejected, the procedure will stop for at least 6 months.
When your proposal has been accepted, the votetaker will send a message containing RFD and CFV to the official be.*-administrator, Stef Van Dessel.
The votetaker will also send a complete list of all voters and their preferences to the administrator, and ends this procedure by posting the official end-result in be.announce.

More questions ?

This is a very short manual, so maybe there are still some unanswered questions. In that case you can always send an e-mail to Tom De Voeght, using the e-mail address tdv@pandora.be. Do keep in mind that Tom is a volunteer, and therefore will not always answer promptly, so be patient.