Use Mail, Don't Post a Follow-up. One of the biggest problems we have on the network is that when someone asks a question, many people send out identical answers. When this happens, dozens of identical answers pour through the net. Mail your answer to the person and suggest that they summarize to the network. This way the net will only see a single copy of the answers, no matter how many people answer the question. If you post a question, please remind people to send you the answers by mail and at least offer to summarize them to the network. Read All Follow-ups and Don't Repeat What Has Already Been Said. Before you submit a follow-up to a message, read the rest of the messages in the newsgroup to see whether someone has already said what you want to say. If someone has, don't repeat it. Check the Headers When Following Up. The news software has provisions to specify that follow-ups to an article should go to a specific set of newsgroups -- possibly different from the newsgroups to which the original article was posted. Sometimes the groups chosen for follow-ups are totally inappropriate, especially as a thread of discussion changes with repeated postings. You should carefully check the groups and distributions given in the header and edit them as appropriate. If you change the groups named in the header, or if you direct follow-ups to a particular group, say so in the body of the message -- not everyone reads the headers of postings. Be Careful About Copyrights and Licenses. Once something is posted onto the network, it is *probably* in the public domain unless you own the appropriate rights (most notably, if you wrote the thing yourself) and you post it with a valid copyright notice; a court would have to decide the specifics and there are arguments for both sides of the issue. Now that the US has ratified the Berne convention, the issue is even murkier (if you are a poster in the US). For all practical purposes, though, assume that you effectively give up the copyright if you don't put in a notice. Of course, the *information* becomes public, so you mustn't post trade secrets that way. When posting material to the network, keep in mind that material that is UNIX-related may be restricted by the license you or your company signed with AT&T and be careful not to violate it. You should also be aware that posting movie reviews, song lyrics, or anything else published under a copyright could cause you, your company, or members of the net community to be held liable for damages, so we highly recommend caution in using this material. Cite Appropriate References. If you are using facts to support a cause, state where they came from. Don't take someone else's ideas and use them as your own. You don't want someone pretending that your ideas are theirs; show them the same respect. Mark or Rotate Answers and Spoilers. When you post something (like a movie review that discusses a detail of the plot) which might spoil a surprise for other people, please mark your message with a warning so that they can skip the message. Another alternative would be to use the "rot13" protocol to encrypt the message so it cannot be read accidentally. When you post a message with a spoiler in it make sure the word "spoiler" is part of the "Subject:" line. Spelling Flames Considered Harmful. Every few months a plague descends on Usenet called the spelling flame. It starts out when someone posts an article correcting the spelling or grammar in some article. The immediate result seems to be for everyone on the net to turn into a 6th grade English teacher and pick apart each other's postings for a few weeks. This is not productive and tends to cause people who used to be friends to get angry with each other. It is important to remember that we all make mistakes, and that there are many users on the net who use English as a second language. There are also a number of people who suffer from dyslexia and who have difficulty noticing their spelling mistakes. If you feel that you must make a comment on the quality of a posting, please do so by mail, not on the network. Don't Overdo Signatures. Signatures are nice, and many people can have a signature added to their postings automatically by placing it in a file called "$HOME/.signature". Don't overdo it. Signatures can tell the world something about you, but keep them short. A signature that is longer than the message itself is considered to be in bad taste. The main purpose of a signature is to help people locate you, not to tell your life story. Every signature should include at least your return address relative to a major, known site on the network and a proper domain-format address. Your system administrator can give this to you. Some news posters attempt to enforce a 4 line limit on signature files -- an amount that should be more than sufficient to provide a return address and attribution. Limit Line Length and Avoid Control Characters. Try to keep your text in a generic format. Many (if not most) of the people reading Usenet do so from 80 column terminals or from workstations with 80 column terminal windows. Try to keep your lines of text to less than 80 characters for optimal readability. If people quote part of your article in a followup, short lines will probably show up better, too. Also realize that there are many, many different forms of terminals in use. If you enter special control characters in your message, it may result in your message being unreadable on some terminal types; a character sequence that causes reverse video on your screen may result in a keyboard lock and graphics mode on someone else's terminal. You should also try to avoid the use of tabs, too, since they may also be interpreted differently on terminals other than your own. Please do not use Usenet as a resource for homework assignments. Usenet is not a resource for homework or class assignments. A common new user reaction to learning of all these people out there holding discussions is to view them as a great resource for gathering information for reports and papers. Trouble is, after seeing a few hundred such requests, most people get tired of them, and won't reply anyway. Certainly not in the expected or hoped-for numbers. Posting student questionnaires automatically brands you a "newbie" and does not usually garner much more than a tiny number of replies. Further, some of those replies are likely to be incorrect. Instead, read the group of interest for a while, and find out what the main "threads" are - what are people discussing? Are there any themes you can discover? Are there different schools of thought? Only post something after you've followed the group for a few weeks, after you have read the Frequently Asked Questions posting if the group has one, and if you still have a question or opinion that others will probably find interesting. If you have something interesting to contribute, you'll find that you gain almost instant acceptance, and your posting will generate a large number of follow-up postings. Use these in your research; it is a far more efficient (and accepted) way to learn about the group than to follow that first instinct and post a simple questionnaire. Please do not use Usenet as an advertising medium. Advertisements on Usenet are rarely appreciated. In general, the louder or more inappropriate the ad is, the more antagonism it will stir up. The accompanying posting "Rules for posting to Usenet" has more on this in the section about "Announcement of professional products or services". Try the biz.* hierarchies instead. Avoid posting to multiple newsgroups. Few things annoy Usenet readers as much as multiple copies of a posting appearing in multiple newsgroups. (called 'spamming' for historical reasons) A posting that is cross-posted (i.e lists multiple newsgroups on the Newsgroups: header line) to a few appropriate newsgroups is fine, but even with cross-posts, restraint is advised. For a cross-post, you may want to set the Followup-To: header line to the most suitable group for the rest of the discussion. Summary of Things to Remember Never forget that the person on the other side is human. Don't blame system admins for their users' behavior. Never assume that a person is speaking for their organization. Be careful what you say about others. Be brief. Your postings reflect upon you; be proud of them. Use descriptive titles Think about your audience. Be careful with humor and sarcasm. Only post a message once. Please rotate material with questionable content. Summarize what you are following up. Use mail, don't post a follow-up. Read all follow-ups and don't repeat what has already been said. Double-check follow-up newsgroups and distributions. Be careful about copyrights and licenses. Cite appropriate references. When summarizing, summarize. Mark or rotate answers or spoilers. Spelling flames considered harmful. Don't overdo signatures. Limit line length and avoid control characters. Please do not use Usenet as a resource for homework assignments. Please do not use Usenet as an advertising medium. Avoid posting to multiple newsgroups. (*)UNIX is a registered trademark of X/Open. ----------- This document is in the public domain and may be reproduced or excerpted by anyone wishing to do so. Advertising on Usenet 1. Introduction 2. Philosophy of Usenet 3. How to do it 4. How not to do it 5. Conclusion 6. Afterword: Advertising on the Internet Introduction: ------------- Advertising on Usenet is a frequently misunderstood subject. The purpose of this message is to explain some Usenet conventions regarding advertising to new users and, hopefully, spare everyone involved a lot of needless worry. Philosophy of Usenet: --------------------- Usenet started out in 1980 as a UNIX network linking sites which needed to talk about and receive prompt updates on UNIX system configuration and other UNIX questions, but almost immediately expanded to include forums on science fiction, humans and computers, and other subjects. In the decade and a half since the creation of Usenet, a very strong onus *against* advertising in Usenet discussion groups has grown up. Advertising is widely seen as an 'off-topic' intrusion into the discussions of any particular newsgroup (newsgroup is the Usenet word for discussion group or bulletin board). If everyone disregarded the particular topics each newsgroup is intended to cover, and simply posted whatever they want wherever they want, the entire system would break down. Since no one is in charge of Usenet, and therefore no one can enforce the custom of staying on-topic in any given newsgroup, it falls on each user to help preserve the culture of open discussion and free speech that Usenet has come to embody by not posting off-topic material in any newsgroup. This, of course, includes advertising. Advertising is by far the most pervasive form of off-topic posting, and therefore, gets most of the heat. If an analogy will help you to visualize the situation, imagine a meeting at your workplace or school. People are discussing a certain issue -- for example, getting new sidewalks installed downtown or getting new schoolbooks for the elementary school. In the midst of the discussions on the new sidewalks or textbooks, someone walks into the room, clears their throat, and begins to read an ad for a local restaurant. When the person finishes, he or she leaves without waiting for comment. Now imagine if this happened over and over again each time you tried to hold a meeting. Very little would get done. It's disruptive; it has nothing to do with the reason the meeting was called; and worst, you're taking up their time and not paying for it. On Usenet, you see, if you wander into a newsgroup and post an ad for your company in a discussion group, you're not paying for anything but the time it took you to post it -- but thousands of computer systems around the world are paying to receive it along with all their other Usenet messages, and paying to store it, and so forth. Is it any wonder people get testy when some people ignore the no-advertising convention and make sites around the world pay to receive advertising in a place it's not supposed to be anyway? That's not to say that advertising is absolutely banned from Usenet. It's not. It's only banned when it's off-topic. This means that it's considered extremely rude to post the same ad over and over to a bunch of discussion groups without regard for what those groups are supposed to be about, but on the other hand, it's perfectly all right to advertise in places where your advertisement would be on-topic. One suggestion, though: when you advertise in relevant groups, try to keep the hype down. Sales pitches are disliked; actual facts are not. How to do it: ------------- There are many newsgroups directly involved in selling. Most of them are located in the misc.forsale hierarchy, and most of those are related to computer buying and selling. If you have an item to sell which is in no way associated with computers, try misc.forsale.non-computer (or misc.forsale, which misc.forsale.non-computer will officially replace in a few months). Here are all the misc.forsale groups: misc.forsale General items for sale misc.forsale.computers.d Discussion of misc.forsale.computers.*. misc.forsale.computers.discussion Discussions only about items for sale. misc.forsale.computers.mac Apple Macintosh related computer items. misc.forsale.computers.mac-specific.cards.misc Macintosh expansion cards. misc.forsale.computers.mac-specific.cards.video Macintosh video cards. misc.forsale.computers.mac-specific.misc Other Macintosh equipment. misc.forsale.computers.mac-specific.portables Portable Macintosh systems. misc.forsale.computers.mac-specific.software Macintosh software. misc.forsale.computers.mac-specific.systems Complete Macintosh systems. misc.forsale.computers.memory Memory chips & modules for sale & wanted. misc.forsale.computers.modems Modems for sale and wanted. misc.forsale.computers.monitors Monitors and displays for sale and wanted. misc.forsale.computers.net-hardware Networking hardware for sale & wanted. misc.forsale.computers.other Selling miscellaneous computer stuff. misc.forsale.computers.other.misc Miscellaneous other equipment. misc.forsale.computers.other.software Software for other systems. misc.forsale.computers.other.systems Complete other types of systems. misc.forsale.computers.pc-clone IBM PC related computer items. misc.forsale.computers.pc-specific.audio PC audio equipment. misc.forsale.computers.pc-specific.cards.misc PC expansion cards. misc.forsale.computers.pc-specific.cards.video PC video cards.