perlfaq2: What are the Perl newsgroups on Usenet? Where do I post questions?

* expanded the discussion on the death of comp.lang.perl, but
made it subserviant to the real answer (the existing groups).


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 =head2 What are the Perl newsgroups on Usenet?  Where do I post
questions?
 
-The now defunct comp.lang.perl newsgroup has been superseded by the
-following groups:
+Several groups devoted to the Perl language are on Usenet:
 
     comp.lang.perl.announce            Moderated announcement group
-    comp.lang.perl.misc                Very busy group about Perl in
general
-    comp.lang.perl.moderated            Moderated discussion group
+    comp.lang.perl.misc                High traffic general Perl
discussion
+    comp.lang.perl.moderated        Moderated discussion group
     comp.lang.perl.modules             Use and development of Perl
modules
     comp.lang.perl.tk                  Using Tk (and X) from Perl
 
     comp.infosystems.www.authoring.cgi         Writing CGI scripts for
the Web.
 
-There is also a Usenet gateway to Perl mailing lists sponsored by
perl.org at
-nntp://nntp.perl.org , a web interface to the same lists at
-http://nntp.perl.org/group/ and these lists are also available under
the
-C<perl.*> hierarchy at http://groups.google.com . Other groups are
listed at
-http://lists.perl.org/ ( also known as http://lists.cpan.org/ ).
+Some years ago, comp.lang.perl was divided into those groups, and
+comp.lang.perl itself officially removed.  While that group may still
+be found on some news servers, it is unwise to use it, because
+postings there will not appear on news servers which honour the
+official list of group names.  Use comp.lang.perl.misc for topics
+which do not have a more-appropriate specific group.
 
-A nice place to ask questions is the PerlMonks site,
http://www.perlmonks.org/
+There is also a Usenet gateway to Perl mailing lists sponsored by
+perl.org at nntp://nntp.perl.org , a web interface to the same lists
+at http://nntp.perl.org/group/ and these lists are also available
+under the C<perl.*> hierarchy at http://groups.google.com . Other
+groups are listed at http://lists.perl.org/ ( also known as
+http://lists.cpan.org/ ).
+
+A nice place to ask questions is the PerlMonks site, 
+http://www.perlmonks.org/ , or the Perl Beginners mailing list
+http://lists.perl.org/showlist.cgi?name=beginners .
 
 Note that none of the above are supposed to write your code for you:
 asking questions about particular problems or general advice is fine,

-- 
brian d foy, [email protected]