From ankh.iia.org!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!math.ohio-state.edu!deshaw.com!do-not-use-path-to-reply Sun Aug 28 11:11:57 1994
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Date: Sun, 28 Aug 1994 08:00:07 GMT
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From: netannounce@deshaw.com (Mark Moraes)
Subject: Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette
Newsgroups: news.announce.newusers,news.answers
Reply-To: brad@clarinet.com
Followup-To: news.newusers.questions
Approved: netannounce@deshaw.com (Mark Moraes)
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Xref: ankh.iia.org news.announce.newusers:255 news.answers:10086

Original-author: brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton)
Archive-name: emily-postnews/part1
Last-change: 12 July 1994 by netannounce@deshaw.com (Mark Moraes)
Changes-posted-to: news.misc,news.answers

**NOTE: this is intended to be satirical.  If you do not recognize
  it as such, consult a doctor or professional comedian.  The
  recommendations in this article should recognized for what
  they are -- admonitions about what NOT to do.


			"Dear Emily Postnews"

	Emily Postnews, foremost authority on proper net behaviour,
	gives her advice on how to act on the net.

============================================================================

Dear Miss Postnews: How long should my signature be? -- verbose@noisy

A: Dear Verbose: Please try and make your signature as long as you
can.  It's much more important than your article, of course, so try
to have more lines of signature than actual text.

Try to include a large graphic made of ASCII characters, plus lots of
cute quotes and slogans.  People will never tire of reading these
pearls of wisdom again and again, and you will soon become personally
associated with the joy each reader feels at seeing yet another
delightful repeat of your signature.

Be sure as well to include a complete map of USENET with each
signature, to show how anybody can get mail to you from any site in
the world.  Be sure to include Internet gateways as well.  Also tell
people on your own site how to mail to you.  Give independent
addresses for Internet, UUCP, and BITNET, even if they're all the
same.

Aside from your reply address, include your full name, company and
organization.  It's just common courtesy -- after all, in some
newsreaders people have to type an *entire* keystroke to go back to
the top of your article to see this information in the header.

By all means include your phone number and street address in every
single article.  People are always responding to usenet articles with
phone calls and letters.  It would be silly to go to the extra trouble
of including this information only in articles that need a response by
conventional channels!
				------
Dear Emily: Today I posted an article and forgot to include my
signature.  What should I do?  -- forgetful@myvax

A: Dear Forgetful: Rush to your terminal right away and post an
article that says, "Oops, I forgot to post my signature with that last
article.  Here it is."

Since most people will have forgotten your earlier article,
(particularly since it dared to be so boring as to not have a nice,
juicy signature) this will remind them of it.  Besides, people care
much more about the signature anyway.  See the previous letter for
more important details.

Also, be sure to include your signature TWICE in each article.  That
way you're sure people will read it.

				------
Dear Ms. Postnews: I couldn't get mail through to somebody on another
site.  What should I do? -- eager@beaver.dam

A: Dear Eager: No problem, just post your message to a group that a
lot of people read.  Say, "This is for John Smith.  I couldn't get
mail through so I'm posting it.  All others please ignore."

This way tens of thousands of people will spend a few seconds scanning
over and ignoring your article, using up over 16 man-hours their
collective time, but you will be saved the terrible trouble of
checking through Usenet maps or looking for alternate routes.  Just
think, if you couldn't distribute your message to 30,000 other
computers, you might actually have to (gasp) call directory assistance
for 60 cents, or even phone the person.  This can cost as much as a
few DOLLARS (!) for a 5 minute call!

And certainly it's better to spend 10 to 20 dollars of other people's
money distributing the message then for you to have to waste $9 on an
overnight letter, or even 29 cents on a stamp!

Don't forget.  The world will end if your message doesn't get through,
so post it as many places as you can.

				------
Q: What about a test message?

A: It is important, when testing, to test the entire net.  Never test
merely a subnet distribution when the whole net can be done.  Also put
"please ignore" on your test messages, since we all know that
everybody always skips a message with a line like that.  Don't use a
subject like "My sex is female but I demand to be addressed as male."
because such articles are read in depth by all USEnauts.

				------
Q: Somebody just posted that Roman Polanski directed Star Wars.  What
should I do?

A: Post the correct answer at once!  We can't have people go on
believing that!  Very good of you to spot this.  You'll probably be
the only one to make the correction, so post as soon as you can.  No
time to lose, so certainly don't wait a day, or check to see if
somebody else has made the correction.

And it's not good enough to send the message by mail.  Since you're
the only one who really knows that it was Francis Coppola, you have to
inform the whole net right away!

				------
Q: I read an article that said, "reply by mail, I'll summarize."  What
should I do?

A: Post your response to the whole net.  That request applies only to
dumb people who don't have something interesting to say.  Your
postings are much more worthwhile than other people's, so it would be
a waste to reply by mail.

				------
Q: I collected replies to an article I wrote, and now it's time to
summarize.  What should I do?

A: Simply concatenate all the articles together into a big file and
post that.  On USENET, this is known as a summary.  It lets people
read all the replies without annoying newsreaders getting in the way.
Do the same when summarizing a vote.

				------
Q: I saw a long article that I wish to rebut carefully, what should I
do?

A: Include the entire text with your article, particularly the
signature, and include your comments closely packed between the lines.
Be sure to post, and not mail, even though your article looks like a
reply to the original.  Everybody *loves* to read those long
point-by-point debates, especially when they evolve into name-calling
and lots of "Is too!" -- "Is not!" -- "Is too, twizot!" exchanges.

Be sure to follow-up everything, and never let another person get in
the last word on a net debate.  Why, if people let other people have
the last word, then discussions would actually stop!  Remember, other
net readers aren't nearly as clever as you, and if somebody posts
something wrong, the readers can't possibly realize that on their own
without your elucidations.  If somebody gets insulting in their net
postings, the best response is to get right down to their level and
fire a return salvo.  When I read one net person make an insulting
attack on another, I always immediately take it as gospel unless a
rebuttal is posted.  It never makes me think less of the insulter, so
it's your duty to respond.

				------
Q: How can I choose what groups to post in?

A: Pick as many as you can, so that you get the widest audience.
After all, the net exists to give you an audience.  Ignore those who
suggest you should only use groups where you think the article is
highly appropriate.  Pick all groups where anybody might even be
slightly interested.

Always make sure followups go to all the groups.  In the rare event
that you post a followup which contains something original, make sure
you expand the list of groups.  Never include a "Followup-to:" line in
the header, since some people might miss part of the valuable
discussion in the fringe groups.

				------
Q: How about an example?

A: Ok.  Let's say you want to report that Gretzky has been traded from
the Oilers to the Kings.  Now right away you might think
rec.sport.hockey would be enough.  WRONG.  Many more people might be
interested.  This is a big trade!  Since it's a NEWS article, it
belongs in the news.* hierarchy as well.  If you are a news admin, or
there is one on your machine, try news.admin.  If not, use news.misc.

The Oilers are probably interested in geology, so try sci.geo.fluids.
He is a big star, so post to sci.astro, and sci.space because they are
also interested in stars.  And of course comp.dcom.telecom because he
was born in the birthplace of the telephone.  And because he's
Canadian, post to soc.culture.Ontario.southwestern.  But that group
doesn't exist, so cross-post to news.groups suggesting it should be
created.  With this many groups of interest, your article will be
quite bizarre, so post to talk.bizarre as well.  (And post to
comp.std.mumps, since they hardly get any articles there, and a "comp"
group will propagate your article further.)

You may also find it is more fun to post the article once in each
group.  If you list all the newsgroups in the same article, some
newsreaders will only show the the article to the reader once!  Don't
tolerate this.

				------
Q: How do I create a newsgroup?

A: The easiest way goes something like "inews -C newgroup ....", and
while that will stir up lots of conversation about your new newsgroup,
it might not be enough.

First post a message in news.groups describing the group.  This is a
"call for discussion."  (If you see a call for discussion, immediately
post a one line message saying that you like or dislike the group.)
When proposing the group, pick a name with a TLA (three-letter
acronym) that will be understood only by "in" readers of the group.

After the call for discussion, post the call for flames, followed by a
call for arguments about the name and a call for run-on puns.
Eventually make a call for "votes." USENET is a democracy, so voters
can now all post their votes to ensure they get to all 30,000 machines
instead of just the person counting. Every few days post a long
summary of all the votes so that people can complain about bad mailers
and double votes.  It means you'll be more popular and get lots of
mail.  At the end of 21 days you can post the vote results so that
people can argue about all the technical violations of the guidelines
you made.  Blame them on the moderator-of-the-week for
news.announce.newgroups.  Then your group might be created.

To liven up discussion, choose a good cross-match for your hierarchy
and group.  For example, comp.race.formula1 or soc.vlsi.design would
be good group names.  If you want your group created quickly, include
an interesting word like "sex" or "activism."  To avoid limiting
discussion, make the name as broad as possible, and don't forget that
TLA.

If possible, count votes from a leaf site with a once-a-week polled
connection to botswanavax.  Schedule the vote during your relay site's
head crash if possible.

Under no circumstances use the trial group method, because it
eliminates the discussion, flame, pun, voting and guideline-violation
accusation phases, thus taking all the fun out of it.  To create an
ALT group, simply issue the creation command.  Then issue an rmgroup
and some more newgroup messages to save other netters the trouble of
doing that part.

				------
Q: I cant spell worth a dam.  I hope your going too tell me what to
do?

A: Don't worry about how your articles look.  Remember it's the
message that counts, not the way it's presented.  Ignore the fact that
sloppy spelling in a purely written forum sends out the same silent
messages that soiled clothing would when addressing an audience.

				------
Q: How should I pick a subject for my articles?

A: Keep it short and meaningless.  That way people will be forced to
actually read your article to find out what's in it.  This means a
bigger audience for you, and we all know that's what the net is for.
If you do a followup, be sure and keep the same subject, even if it's
totally meaningless and not part of the same discussion.  If you
don't, you won't catch all the people who are looking for stuff on the
original topic, and that means less audience for you.

				------
Q: What sort of tone should I take in my article?

A: Be as outrageous as possible.  If you don't say outlandish things,
and fill your article with libelous insults of net people, you may not
stick out enough in the flood of articles to get a response.  The more
insane your posting looks, the more likely it is that you'll get lots
of followups.  The net is here, after all, so that you can get lots of
attention.

If your article is polite, reasoned and to the point, you may only get
mailed replies.  Yuck!

				------
Q: The posting software suggested I had too long a signature and too
many lines of included text in my article.  What's the best course?

A: Such restrictions were put in the software for no reason at all, so
don't even try to figure out why they might apply to your article.
Turns out most people search the net to find nice articles that
consist of the complete text of an earlier article plus a few lines.

In order to help these people, fill your article with dummy original
lines to get past the restrictions.  Everybody will thank you for it.

For your signature, I know it's tough, but you will have to read it in
with the editor.  Do this twice to make sure it's firmly in there.  By
the way, to show your support for the free distribution of
information, be sure to include a copyright message forbidding
transmission of your article to sites whose USENET politics you don't
like.

Also, if you do have a lot of free time and want to trim down the text
in your article, be sure to delete some of the attribution lines so
that it looks like the original author of -- say -- a plea for world
peace actually wrote the followup calling for the nuking of Bermuda.

				------
Q: They just announced on the radio that the United States has invaded
Iraq.  Should I post?

A: Of course.  The net can reach people in as few as 3 to 5 days.
It's the perfect way to inform people about such news events long
after the broadcast networks have covered them.  As you are probably
the only person to have heard the news on the radio, be sure to post
as soon as you can.

				------
Q: I have this great joke.  You see, these three strings walk into a
bar...

A: Oh dear.  Don't spoil it for me.  Submit it to rec.humor, and post
it to the moderator of rec.humor.funny at the same time.  I'm sure
he's never seen that joke.

				------
Q: What computer should I buy?  An Atari ST or an Amiga?

A: Cross post that question to the Atari and Amiga groups.  It's an
interesting and novel question that I am sure they would love to
investigate in those groups.  In fact, post your question at once,
to as many technical groups as you can think of, concluding your
request with the line "Please reply by mail, as I do not follow this
group."  (No one will find such a statement impertinent; remember,
the net is a resource to help you.)

There is no need to read the groups in advance or examine the
"frequently asked question" lists to see if the topic has already
been dealt with.  Any such warnings are for people without your
innate sense of netiquette, and whose uninspired questions are bound
to be repetitive.  Your question is sure to be unique; no point
checking the list to see if the answer might be there already.  How
could it be, when you only just thought of the question?

				------
Q: What about other important questions?  How should I know when to
post?

A: Always post them.  It would be a big waste of your time to find a
knowledgeable user in one of the groups and ask through private mail
if the topic has already come up.  Much easier to bother thousands of
people with the same question.

				------
Q: Somebody just posted a query to the net, and I want to get the
answer too.  What should I do?

A: Immediately post a following, including the complete text of the
query.  At the bottom add, "Me too!"  If somebody else has done this,
follow up their article and add "Me three," or whatever number is
appropriate.  Don't forget your full signature.  After all, if you
just mail the original poster and ask for a copy of the answers, you
will simply clutter the poster's mailbox, and save people who do
answer the question the joyful duty of noting all the "me (n)s" and
sending off all the multiple copies.

				------
Q: What is the measure of a worthwhile group?

A: Why, it's Volume, Volume, Volume.  Any group that has lots of noise
in it must be good.  Remember, the higher the volume of material in a
group, the higher percentage of useful, factual and insightful
articles you will find.  In fact, if a group can't demonstrate a high
enough volume, it should be deleted from the net.

				------
Q: Emily, I'm having a serious disagreement with somebody on the net.
I tried complaints to his sysadmin, organizing mail campaigns, called
for his removal from the net and phoning his employer to get him
fired.  Everybody laughed at me.  What can I do?

A: Go to the daily papers.  Most modern reporters are top-notch
computer experts who will understand the net, and your problems,
perfectly.  They will print careful, reasoned stories without any
errors at all, and surely represent the situation properly to the
public.  The public will also all act wisely, as they are also fully
cognizant of the subtle nature of net society.

Papers never sensationalize or distort, so be sure to point out things
like racism and sexism wherever they might exist.  Be sure as well
that they understand that all things on the net, particularly insults,
are meant literally.  Link what transpires on the net to the causes of
the Holocaust, if possible.  If regular papers won't take the story,
go to a tabloid paper -- they are always interested in good stories.

By arranging all this free publicity for the net, you'll become very
well known.  People on the net will wait in eager anticipation for
your every posting, and refer to you constantly.  You'll get more mail
than you ever dreamed possible -- the ultimate in net success.

				------
Q: What does foobar stand for?

A: It stands for you, dear.

---
Christian_Paulus <chris@yoda.fdn.org> has a a french translation of
''Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette''.

You can find this text on:

	ftp://ftp.fdn.fr/FDN/Doc/Emily-Postnews-repond-a-vos-questions
	
or on the World Wide Web:

	http://www.fdn.fr/fdn/doc-misc/Emily-Postnews.html
 	
An ascii version is monthly posted in newsgroups fr.news.misc and fdn.misc

From ankh.iia.org!uunet!spool.mu.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!math.ohio-state.edu!deshaw.com!do-not-use-path-to-reply Sun Aug 28 11:11:57 1994
Path: ankh.iia.org!uunet!spool.mu.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!math.ohio-state.edu!deshaw.com!do-not-use-path-to-reply
Date: Sun, 28 Aug 1994 08:00:14 GMT
Supersedes: <CuEwwB.GKr@deshaw.com>
Expires: Wed, 28 Sep 1994 08:00:14 GMT
Message-ID: <Cv8JKE.2z3@deshaw.com>
From: netannounce@deshaw.com (Mark Moraes)
Subject: A Primer on How to Work With the Usenet Community
Newsgroups: news.announce.newusers,news.answers
Followup-To: news.newusers.questions
Approved: netannounce@deshaw.com (Mark Moraes)
Lines: 421
Xref: ankh.iia.org news.announce.newusers:256 news.answers:10088

Archive-name: usenet-primer/part1
Original-author: chuq@apple.COM (Chuq Von Rospach)
Comment: enhanced & edited until 5/93 by spaf@cs.purdue.edu (Gene Spafford)
Last-change: 5 July 1994 by netannounce@deshaw.com (Mark Moraes)
Changes-posted-to: news.misc,news.answers


              A Primer on How to Work With the USENET Community
                             Chuq Von Rospach 



  *** You now have access to Usenet, a network of thousands of
  computers.  Other documents or your system administrator will provide
  detailed technical documentation.  This message describes the Usenet
  culture and customs that have developed over time.  All new users should
  read this message to find out how Usenet works. ***
  *** (Old users could read it, too, to refresh their memories.)  ***

  USENET is a large collection of computers that share data with each
  other.  It is the people on these computers that make USENET worth
  the effort to read and maintain, and for USENET to function properly
  those people must be able to interact in productive ways.  This
  document is intended as a guide to using the net in ways that will
  be pleasant and productive for everyone.

  This document is not intended to teach you how to use USENET.
  Instead, it is a guide to using it politely, effectively and
  efficiently.  Communication by computer is new to almost everybody,
  and there are certain aspects that can make it a frustrating
  experience until you get used to them.  This document should help
  you avoid the worst traps.

  The easiest way to learn how to use USENET is to watch how others
  use it.  Start reading the news and try to figure out what people
  are doing and why.  After a couple of weeks you will start
  understanding why certain things are done and what things shouldn't
  be done.  There are documents available describing the technical
  details of how to use the software.  These are different depending
  on which programs you use to access the news.  You can get copies of
  these from your system administrator.  If you do not know who that
  person is, they can be contacted on most systems by mailing to
  account "usenet".


           Never Forget that the Person on the Other Side is Human.

  Because your interaction with the network is through a computer it is easy
  to forget that there are people "out there." Situations arise where
  emotions erupt into a verbal free-for-all that can lead to hurt feelings.

  Please remember that people all over the world are reading your words.  Do
  not attack people if you cannot persuade them with your presentation of
  the facts.  Screaming, cursing, and abusing others only serves to make
  people think less of you and less willing to help you when you need it.

  If you are upset at something or someone, wait until you have had a
  chance to calm down and think about it.  A cup of (decaf!) coffee or
  a good night's sleep works wonders on your perspective.  Hasty words
  create more problems than they solve.  Try not to say anything to
  others you would not say to them in person in a room full of people.

	    Don't Blame System Admins for their Users' Behavior.

  Sometimes, you may find it necessary to write to a system administrator
  about something concerning his or her site.  Maybe it is a case of the
  software not working, or a control message escaped, or maybe one of the
  users at that site has done something you feel requires comment.  No matter
  how steamed you may be, be polite to the sysadmin -- he or she may not have
  any idea of what you are going to say, and may not have any part in the
  incidents involved.  By being civil and temperate, you are more likely to
  obtain their courteous attention and assistance.

      Never assume that a person is speaking for their organization.

  Many people who post to Usenet do so from machines at their office or
  school.  Despite that, never assume that the person is speaking for the
  organization that they are posting their articles from (unless the
  person explicitly says so).  Some people put explicit disclaimers to
  this effect in their messages, but this is a good general rule.  If you
  find an article offensive, consider taking it up with the person
  directly, or ignoring it.  Learn about "kill files" in your newsreader,
  and other techniques for ignoring people whose postings you find
  offensive.

		    Be Careful What You Say About Others.

  Please remember -- you read netnews; so do as many as 3,000,000 other
  people.  This group quite possibly includes your boss, your friend's
  boss, your girl friend's brother's best friend and one of your
  father's beer buddies.  Information posted on the net can come back
  to haunt you or the person you are talking about.

  Think twice before you post personal information about yourself or
  others.  This applies especially strongly to groups like soc.singles
  and alt.sex but even postings in groups like talk.politics.misc have
  included information about the personal life of third parties that
  could get them into serious trouble if it got into the wrong hands.

				  Be Brief.

  Never say in ten words what you can say in fewer.  Say it succinctly and
  it will have a greater impact.  Remember that the longer you make your
  article, the fewer people will bother to read it.  

	     Your Postings Reflect Upon You -- Be Proud of Them.

  Most people on USENET will know you only by what you say and how well you
  say it.  They may someday be your co-workers or friends.  Take some time
  to make sure each posting is something that will not embarrass you later.
  Minimize your spelling errors and make sure that the article is easy to
  read and understand.  Writing is an art and to do it well requires
  practice.  Since much of how people judge you on the net is based on your
  writing, such time is well spent.

			   Use Descriptive Titles.

  The subject line of an article is there to enable a person with a limited
  amount of time to decide whether or not to read your article.  Tell people
  what the article is about before they read it.  A title like "Car for
  Sale" to rec.autos does not help as much as "66 MG Midget for sale:
  Beaverton OR." Don't expect people to read your article to find out what
  it is about because many of them won't bother.  Some sites truncate the
  length of the subject line to 40 characters so keep your subjects short
  and to the point.

			 Think About Your Audience.

  When you post an article, think about the people you are trying to
  reach.  Asking UNIX(*) questions on rec.autos will not reach as many
  of the people you want to reach as if you asked them on
  comp.unix.questions or comp.unix.internals.  Try to get the most
  appropriate audience for your message, not the widest.

  It is considered bad form to post both to misc.misc, soc.net-people,
  or misc.wanted and to some other newsgroup.  If it belongs in that
  other newsgroup, it does not belong in misc.misc, soc.net-people,
  or misc.wanted.  

  If your message is of interest to a limited geographic area (apartments,
  car sales, meetings, concerts, etc...), restrict the distribution of the
  message to your local area.  Some areas have special newsgroups with
  geographical limitations, and the recent versions of the news software
  allow you to limit the distribution of material sent to world-wide
  newsgroups.  Check with your system administrator to see what newsgroups
  are available and how to use them.

  If you want to try a test of something, do not use a world-wide newsgroup!
  Messages in misc.misc that say "This is a test" are likely to cause
  large numbers of caustic messages to flow into your mailbox.  There are
  newsgroups that are local to your computer or area that should be used.
  Your system administrator can tell you what they are.  

  Be familiar with the group you are posting to before you post!  You 
  shouldn't post to groups you do not read, or post to groups you've
  only read a few articles from -- you may not be familiar with the on-going
  conventions and themes of the group.  One normally does not join
  a conversation by just walking up and talking.  Instead, you listen
  first and then join in if you have something pertinent to contribute.

		     Be Careful with Humor and Sarcasm.

  Without the voice inflections and body language of personal
  communications, it is easy for a remark meant to be funny to be
  misinterpreted.  Subtle humor tends to get lost, so take steps to make
  sure that people realize you are trying to be funny.  The net has
  developed a symbol called the smiley face.  It looks like ":-)" and points
  out sections of articles with humorous intent.  No matter how broad the
  humor or satire, it is safer to remind people that you are being funny.

  But also be aware that quite frequently satire is posted without any
  explicit indications.  If an article outrages you strongly, you
  should ask yourself if it just may have been unmarked satire.
  Several self-proclaimed connoisseurs refuse to use smiley faces, so
  take heed or you may make a temporary fool of yourself.

			  Only Post a Message Once.

  Avoid posting messages to more than one newsgroup unless you are sure
  it is appropriate.  If you do post to multiple newsgroups, do not
  post to each group separately.  Instead, specify all the groups on a
  single copy of the message.  This reduces network overhead and lets
  people who subscribe to more than one of those groups see the message
  once instead of having to wade through each copy.

	      Please Rotate Messages With Questionable Content.

  Certain newsgroups (such as rec.humor) have messages in them that may
  be offensive to some people.  To make sure that these messages are
  not read unless they are explicitly requested, these messages should
  be encrypted.  The standard encryption method is to rotate each
  letter by thirteen characters so that an "a" becomes an "n".  This is
  known on the network as "rot13" and when you rotate a message the
  word "rot13" should be in the "Subject:" line.  Most of the software
  used to read usenet articles have some way of encrypting and
  decrypting messages.  Your system administrator can tell you how the
  software on your system works, or you can use the Unix command "tr
  [a-z][A-Z] [n-z][a-m][N-Z][A-M]". (Note that some versions of Unix
  don't require the [] in the "tr" command.  In fact, some systems will
  get upset if you use them in an unquoted manner.  The following
  should work for everyone, but may be shortened on some systems:
	tr '[a-m][n-z][A-M][N-Z]' '[n-z][a-m][N-Z][A-M]'
  Don't forget the single quotes!)

		    Summarize What You are Following Up.

  When you are following up someone's article, please summarize the parts of
  the article to which you are responding.  This allows readers to
  appreciate your comments rather than trying to remember what the original
  article said.  It is also possible for your response to get to some sites
  before the original article.

  Summarization is best done by including appropriate quotes from the
  original article.  Do not include the entire article since it will
  irritate the people who have already seen it.  Even if you are responding
  to the entire article, summarize only the major points you are discussing.

			When Summarizing, Summarize!

  When you request information from the network, it is common courtesy to
  report your findings so that others can benefit as well.  The best way of
  doing this is to take all the responses that you received and edit them
  into a single article that is posted to the places where you originally
  posted your question.  Take the time to strip headers, combine duplicate
  information, and write a short summary.  Try to credit the information to
  the people that sent it to you, where possible.

		      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.

From ankh.iia.org!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!math.ohio-state.edu!deshaw.com!do-not-use-path-to-reply Sun Aug 28 11:11:57 1994
Path: ankh.iia.org!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!math.ohio-state.edu!deshaw.com!do-not-use-path-to-reply
Date: Sun, 28 Aug 1994 08:00:21 GMT
Supersedes: <CuEwwG.GMC@deshaw.com>
Expires: Wed, 28 Sep 1994 08:00:21 GMT
Message-ID: <Cv8JKL.30o@deshaw.com>
From: netannounce@deshaw.com (Mark Moraes)
Subject: Introduction to news.announce
Newsgroups: news.announce.newusers,news.answers
Followup-To: news.newusers.questions
Approved: netannounce@deshaw.com (Mark Moraes)
Lines: 182
Xref: ankh.iia.org news.announce.newusers:257 news.answers:10090

Archive-name: news-announce-intro/part1
Original-author: mark@stargate.com (Mark Horton)
Comment: enhanced & edited until 5/93 by spaf@cs.purdue.edu (Gene Spafford)
Last-change: 13 July 1994 by netannounce@deshaw.com (Mark Moraes)
Changes-posted-to: news.misc,news.answers

------------------------------

Subject: Introduction.

Welcome to Usenet! This periodic posting describes the the major Usenet
announcement newsgroups.  There are the four moderated newsgroups in the
news.announce.hierarchy -- news.announce.important,
news.announce.newgroups, news.announce.newusers and
news.announce.conferences.  The moderated groups news.admin.technical,
news.answers and news.lists are also described, since they are closely
related to the announcement newsgroups.

------------------------------

Subject: news.announce.important

"news.announce.important" is a newsgroup for just what it says it is --
important announcements.  It is intended to be read by everyone on
Usenet, although nobody is forced to subscribe.  To post to
news.announce.important, send mail to the moderator at
"announce@stargate.com".  Some netnews implementations will
automatically mail to the moderator anything posted instead of
attempting to post it directly.  If the message is appropriate, it will
be posted by the moderator; if not, the moderator will suggest a more
appropriate place to post it or a better way to go about the same
goal.

Discussions in news.announce.important are explicitly forbidden, and
the volume of traffic will be kept low enough to keep people from
feeling a need to unsubscribe.  Usenet administrators for each site
should make a point of reading news.announce.important.

The current policy is that news.announce.important submissions must be:

(a) short - preferably they should fit on one crt screen, including headers.
(b) important enough to at least have their header shown to everyone on the
    net.  The posting should be more of benefit to the net than to the poster.
(c) not posted to any other newsgroup - news.announce.important by itself is 
    supposed to be sufficient to reach everybody, and nobody should have to
    read an announcement more than once.
(d) signed - the author should be clearly evident.
(e) not commercial, political, or religious in nature.

------------------------------

Subject: news.announce.newsgroups

"news.announce.newgroups" exists for announcements of either the
creation or the consideration of a new newsgroup.  All calls for
votes, calls for discussions, vote results, and creation notices of
all hierarchies should be posted to news.announce.newgroups.
Submissions should be directed to announce-newgroups@uunet.uu.net (or to
your nearest major site).  Followups will be redirected to
news.groups.

------------------------------

Subject: news.announce.newusers

Introductory messages like this one will be repeated every month, in
order to reach all newcomers.  These messages will be placed in
news.announce.newusers, which is also moderated.  This makes it safe for
experienced users who have already read these messages to unsubscribe to
news.announce.newusers without missing anything new in
news.announce.important.

If you aren't familiar with the netnews guidelines in
news.announce.newusers, please read them carefully.  Your understanding
of these rules will assure that you don't annoy the more than 3 million
members of the net community (estimated) by unintentionally abusing the
net, and will help you get more value from the net.

This group does not accept postings from users (although the moderator is
usually willing to entertain suggestions for edits and additions to
existing postings).  In addition to the periodic re-posting of these
messages in news.announce.newusers, changes to the news.announce.newusers
postings will be posted to news.misc; this allows experienced users to
just follow the differences.  After reading the postings in
news.announce.newusers, newcomers can refer to the lists of newsgroups,
mailing lists and periodic informational postings in news.lists.

------------------------------

Subject: news.answers

Many newsgroups have postings that are made periodically for new users
of those specific groups.  These postings are usually referred to as
FAQs, or Frequently-Asked Questions.  The postings are usually
cross-posted to the news.answers (and companion comp.answers,
sci.answers, etc.)  newsgroup for purposes of archiving and
consolidated searching.  Normally, users will not post articles here
unless they have constructed a FAQ for a particular newsgroup.

------------------------------

Subject: news.announce.conferences

news.announce.conferences is for announcements of conference programs,
calls for papers, and things of that kind.  Submissions should be
directed to nac@sparky.sterling.com.  Please keep Subject lines
informative; if space permits, mention the topic and location there,
and avoid acronyms unless very widely known.

------------------------------

Subject: news.admin.technical

news.admin.technical is a newsgroup for discussion about Usenet software,
policies, and the technical aspects of running Usenet news.  Postings of
a more general nature should be posted to the unmoderated group
news.admin.misc instead.  

------------------------------

Subject: news.lists

Several people make an on-going effort to collect administrative
information and interesting statistics about Usenet.  This information,
usually in the form of lists, is posted on a regular basis to the
news.lists newsgroup.  This allows others interested in these topics
(such as news flow, volume, valid newsgroup names, etc) to find them all
in one particular place.  Again, this is not a group in which users will
normally post, but they may find the information in the group to be of
interest.  Here are some postings in that group that users may want to
consult.

List of Active Newsgroups, Part ...

	Names and descriptions of all newsgroups in Usenet.
	
Alternative Newsgroup Hierarchies, Part ...

	Describes the alternative newsgroup hierarchies, including alt.*,
	bionet.*, bit.*, biz.*, clari.*, gnu.*, hepnet.*, ieee.*, the
	inet/ddn distribution, info.*, k12.*, relcom.*, u3b.* and
	vmsnet.*.  While alternative groups use the same underlying
	technology for transmission and reading, they are not considered
	part of mainstream Usenet, by definition.

List of Periodic Informational Postings, Part ...

	A comprehensive list of postings like this one, including the
	information-rich Frequently Asked Questions postings (FAQs).

Publicly Accessible Mailing Lists, Part ...

	A list of the large number of electronic mailing-lists that
	complement or sometimes supplement Usenet.  Mailing lists usually
	have smaller audiences or more specialized interests than the
	average newsgroup; some of them later become Usenet groups.  Many
	of these mailing lists are also available as gatewayed Usenet
	groups in the info.* and bit.listserv.* alternative hierarchies.
	
Mailing Lists Available in Usenet

	A list of those Usenet newsgroups that are also available as
	mailing lists.

------------------------------

Subject: Moderators.

	Mark Horton                         Mark Moraes
	news.announce.important moderator   news.announce.newusers moderator
	mark@stargate.com                   netannounce@deshaw.com

 	David Lawrence                      Rich Ohnemus
 	news.announce.newgroups moderator   news.announce.conferences moderator
	news.lists moderator		    nac-request@sparky.sterling.com
 	tale@uunet.uu.net                   

	Jonathan Kamens			    Scott Hazen Mueller
	news.answers moderator		    news.admin.technical moderator
	news-answers-request@mit.edu	    natech-request@uunet.uu.net

------------------------------

From ankh.iia.org!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!math.ohio-state.edu!deshaw.com!do-not-use-path-to-reply Sun Aug 28 11:11:57 1994
Path: ankh.iia.org!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!math.ohio-state.edu!deshaw.com!do-not-use-path-to-reply
Date: Sun, 28 Aug 1994 08:00:27 GMT
Supersedes: <CuEwwL.Gnx@deshaw.com>
Expires: Wed, 28 Sep 1994 08:00:27 GMT
Message-ID: <Cv8JKr.32A@deshaw.com>
From: netannounce@deshaw.com (Mark Moraes)
Subject: How to Get Information about Networks
Newsgroups: news.admin.misc,news.announce.newusers,news.answers
Reply-To: netannounce@deshaw.com
Followup-To: news.admin.misc
Approved: netannounce@deshaw.com (Mark Moraes)
Lines: 216
Xref: ankh.iia.org news.admin.misc:13850 news.announce.newusers:258 news.answers:10092

Archive-name: network-info/part1
Last-change: 5 July 1994 by netannounce@deshaw.com (Mark Moraes)
Changes-posted-to: news.admin.misc,news.misc,news.answers

	[I would like to enhance this posting to include more pointers to
	information about non-US networks, more Internet service
	providers and other information sources that would help the
	newcomer.  (Books?) Please contribute additions to
	netannounce@deshaw.com, please keep them terse.  This article is
	just meant to provide pointers -- Mark]
	
------------------------------

Subject: Introduction.

This is a periodic posting on how to get information about the Internet and
how to get information about connecting to the (US) National Science
Foundation's NSFNET through an NSF-affiliated regional network, or to get
commercial Internet service through a commercial service provider.

Because the contents of the documents referred to in this posting are
constantly being updated, this posting only describes how to obtain a
current copy rather than providing the data directly.

In this document, electronic mail addresses, commands that you should use
and other such references are indented by a single TAB character
(may appear on your screen as some number of spaces, typically 8)
When you use the reference, do not include the TAB.

------------------------------

Subject: Table of Contents.

	1. Introduction.
	2. Table of Contents.
	3. The Internet Network Information Center (InterNIC).
	4. Internet documents and specifications.
	5. Commercial networks.
	6. Contributors.

------------------------------

Subject: The Internet Network Information Center (InterNIC).

The Internet Network Information Center (InterNIC) makes current
documentation on the NSFNET available via a mail server, by anonymous ftp,
gopher, WAIS and the World-Wide Web.  If all else fails, you can contact
them by phone.  The InterNIC has a wealth of documents on the Internet; by
the time you finish reading the introductory ones, you probably won't need
this posting any more!

+ Phone numbers for the InterNIC

If you have no network access whatever (unlikely, if you are reading this
posting via Usenet)

	+1-800-444-4345 (probably not available outside the USA)
	+1-619-455-4600


+ Getting information via electronic mail. (some sort of E-mail access needed)

If you're on some sort of network that can send and receive electronic
mail from the Internet, you can get various documents from the InterNIC's
automated mail server.  Send mail to

	mailserv@is.internic.net

and leave the "Subject" line blank.  Here's a suggested initial message:

	begin
	help
	index
	send about-information-services/background
	send about-information-services/contact-info
	end

Be sure your mailer puts out a valid "From:" line that the server can
respond to!  If you have problems with the reply (eg. you don't get
a reply within a few days), try sending the same message with the line

	reply YOUR-EMAIL-ADDRESS

after the begin line.  Make sure YOUR-EMAIL-ADDRESS is one that can
be replied to from the Internet.  Ask your site's postmaster for
help, if you need to.


+ Using Gopher (Internet access needed)

Use your "gopher" client program to connect to
	gopher.internic.net

eg. on a typical Unix machine, try
	gopher gopher.internic.net

or, if you do not have a gopher client installed, you can use a
"telnet" client program to connect to 
	gopher.internic.net 

eg.
	telnet gopher.internic.net

When you get the login: prompt, reply

	gopher

+ Using the anonymous File Transfer Protocol (FTP) (Internet access needed)

Use your FTP client program to connect to
	is.internic.net

eg.
	ftp is.internic.net

When you get the login: prompt, reply

	anonymous

and follow the instructions on your screen.


+ Using Wide Area Information Services (WAIS) (Internet access needed)

source name: internic-infosource
server name: is.internic.net

+ World-Wide Web (WWW) (Internet access needed)

With your WWW client (eg. Lynx, Mosaic or WWW), give the reference

	http://ds.internic.net/


------------------------------

Subject: Internet documents and specifications.

General Internet information documents are available from the
DDN Network Information Center (which is part of the Internet).
There are several "For Your Information (FYI)" documents
published as part of the Internet "Request For Comments (RFC)" 
series of documents.  These can be helpful in getting a better 
understanding of the Internet and its services and organization.  
Experienced, novice, and would-be Internet users can all benefit 
from reading these documents.

Included among these are:

  RFC-1208 Glossary of Networking Terms
  RFC-1207 FYI: Answers to commonly asked "experienced Internet user" questions
  RFC-1206 FYI: Answers to commonly asked "new Internet user" questions
  RFC-1178 Choosing a Name for your Computer
  RFC-1150 FYI on FYI: Introduction to the FYI notes

To learn how to retrieve RFCs, get the following document from the InterNIC:

	internet-info-for-everybody/rfc/rfc-retrieval.txt

------------------------------

Subject: Commercial networks.

The Internet is composed of many networks, not just those sponsored or
affiliated with the US Government. There are also commercial Internet
service providers.  Commercial firms that might not meet requirements for
connecting to a US Government-related network can still connect to the
TCP/IP Internet via commercial service providers not affiliated with the
NSFNET or the DDN Internet.

For a list of dialup Internet service providers, send email to
info-deli-server@netcom.com with the single line query:
	Send PDIAL

For a list of Internet (and UUCP) service providers, see the frequent
posting "How to Become a USENET Site" in the news.admin.misc,
news.announce.newusers and news.answers newsgroups.  (Archive-name:
site-setup) You can also get this document by anonymous ftp from
rtfm.mit.edu, or by sending mail to mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu with the
single line request:
	send usenet-by-group/news.announce.newusers/How_to_become_a_USENET_site

O'Reilly and Associates has a mail server that provides a list
of Internet Access providers who offer dedicated line connections.
Send e-mail to:
	dlist@ora.com
with an empty message body. If you have problems getting the
information from dlist, send email to mj@ora.com

If you have access to the WWW, you can get more info on
network providers in different countries from the rather
large list of all registered WWW servers at:
	http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/DataSources/WWW/Geographical.html


------------------------------

Subject: Contributors

This is a list of people who have made contributions to this document.

The first version of this document was written by Randall Atkinson
<randall@uvaarpa.virginia.edu>

It was enhanced & edited until 5/93 by spaf@cs.purdue.edu (Gene Spafford).

It was rewritten in Mar 94 by Mark Moraes <moraes@deshaw.com>, also the
current maintainer.

Thanks to the following for their contributions:

Ed Vielmetti <emv@msen.com>
Denis Lafont <dl@apysoft.oleane.com>
Mary Jane Caswell-Stephenson <mj@ora.com>

--

From ankh.iia.org!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!math.ohio-state.edu!deshaw.com!do-not-use-path-to-reply Sun Aug 28 11:11:57 1994
Path: ankh.iia.org!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!math.ohio-state.edu!deshaw.com!do-not-use-path-to-reply
Date: Sun, 28 Aug 1994 08:00:35 GMT
Supersedes: <CuEwwr.GpI@deshaw.com>
Expires: Wed, 28 Sep 1994 08:00:35 GMT
Message-ID: <Cv8JKz.33v@deshaw.com>
From: netannounce@deshaw.com (Mark Moraes)
Subject: Answers to Frequently Asked Questions about Usenet
Newsgroups: news.announce.newusers,news.answers
Followup-To: news.newusers.questions
Approved: netannounce@deshaw.com (Mark Moraes)
Lines: 817
Xref: ankh.iia.org news.announce.newusers:259 news.answers:10094

Archive-name: usenet-faq/part1
Original-author: jerry@eagle.UUCP (Jerry Schwarz)
Comment: enhanced & edited until 5/93 by spaf@cs.purdue.edu (Gene Spafford)
Last-change: 15 July 1994 by netannounce@deshaw.com (Mark Moraes)
Changes-posted-to: news.misc,news.answers

		   Frequently Submitted/Asked Items

This document discusses some questions and topics that occur
repeatedly on USENET.  They frequently are submitted by new users, and
result in many followups, sometimes swamping groups for weeks. The
purpose of this note is to head off these annoying events by answering
some questions and warning about the inevitable consequence of asking
others.  If you don't like these answers, let the poster of thie
article know.

Note that some newsgroups have their own special "Frequent Questions &
Answers" posting.  You should read a group for a while before posting
any questions, because the answers may already be present.
Comp.unix.questions and comp.unix.internals are examples -- Steve Hayman
regularly posts an article that answers common questions, including
some of the ones asked here.

This list is often referred to as FAQ -- the Frequently Asked
Questions.  If you are a new user of the Usenet and don't find an
answer to your questions here, you can try asking in the
news.newusers.questions group.  You might also read through other FAQ
lists, cross-posted to the news.answers group.


			       Contents
			       ========

 1.  What does UNIX stand for?
 2.  What is the derivation of "foo" as a filler word?
 3.  Is a machine at "foo" on the net?
 4.  What does "rc" at the end of files like .newsrc mean?
 5.  What does :-) mean?
 6.  How do I decrypt jokes in rec.humor?
 7.  misc.misc or misc.wanted: Is John Doe out there anywhere?
 8.  sci.math: Proofs that 1=0.
 9.  rec.games.*: Where can I get the source for empire or rogue?
10.  comp.unix.questions: How do I remove files with non-ascii 
     characters in their names?
11.  comp.unix.internals: There is a bug in the way UNIX handles
     protection for programs that run suid, or any other report of
     bugs with standard software.
12.  Volatile topics, e.g., soc.women: What do you think about abortion?
13.  soc.singles: What do MOTOS, MOTSS, and MOTAS  stand for?
     What does LJBF mean?
14.  soc.singles and elsewhere:  What does HASA stand for?
15.  sci.space.shuttle: Shouldn't this group be merged with sci.space?
16.  How do I use the "Distribution" feature?
17.  Why do some people put funny lines ("bug killers") at the beginning
     of their articles?
18.  What is the address or phone number of the "foo" company?
19.  What is the origin of the name "grep"?
20.  How do I get from BITNET to UUCP, Internet to BITNET, JANET etc. etc.?
21.  Didn't some state once pass a law setting pi equal to 3 ?
22.  Where can I get the necessary software to get a "smart"
     mail system running on my machine that will take advantage
     of the postings in comp.mail.maps?  (E.g., pathalias, smail, etc.)
23.  What is "food for the NSA line-eater"?
24.  Does anyone know the {pinouts, schematics, switch settings,
     what does jumper J3 do} for widget X?
25.  What is "anonymous ftp"?
26.  What is UUNET?
27.  Isn't the posting mechanism broken?  When I post an article to both
     a moderated group and unmoderated groups, it gets mailed to the
     moderator and not posted to the unmoderated groups.
28.  comp.arch and elsewhere:  What do FYI and IMHO mean?
29.  Would someone repost {large software distribution}?
30.  How do I contact the moderator of an Internet mailing list rather than
     post to the entire list?
31.  I see BTW (or "btw"), wrt and RTFM in postings.  What do they mean?
32.  Are there any restrictions on posting e-mail someone sends to me?
33.  What's an FQDN?
34.  How do you pronounce "char" in C, "ioctl" in UNIX, the character
     "#", etc., etc.?
35.  How do you pronounce "TeX"?
36.  What is the last year of the 20th century A.D.?
37.  I heard these stories about a dying child wanting
     postcards/get-well cards/business cards to get in the Guinness Book
     of World Records.  Where can I post the address for people to help?
38.  I just heard about a scheme the FCC has to implement a tax on
     modems!  Where can I post a message so everyone will hear about
     this and do something to prevent it?
39.  Is there a public access Unix system near me?  How can I get
     access to system for news and mail?
40.  In rec.pets: My pet has suddenly developed the following symptoms
     .... Is it serious?  In sci.med: I have these symptoms .... Is it
     serious?
41.  I have this great idea to make money.  Alternatively, wouldn't an
     electronic chain letter be a nifty idea?
42.  Where can I get archives of Usenet postings?
43.  Is it possible to post messages to the Usenet via electronic mail?
44.  Is it possible to read Usenet newsgroups via electronic mail?
45.  How do I get the news software to include a signature with my
     postings?
46.  I'm on Bitnet -- can I connect to the net?
47.  What is a "flame"?
48.  What is a mail-server/listserv?


			Questions and Answers
			=====================

 1.  What does UNIX stand for?

     It is not an acronym, but is a pun on "Multics".  Multics is a
     large operating system that was being developed shortly before
     UNIX was created.  Brian Kernighan is credited with the name.

 2.  What is the derivation of "foo" as a filler word?

     The favorite story is that it comes from "fubar" which is an
     acronym for "fouled up beyond all recognition", which is supposed
     to be a military term.  (Various forms of this exist, "fouled"
     usually being replaced by a stronger word.) "Foo" and "Bar" have
     the same derivation.

 3.  Is a machine at "foo" on the net?

     These questions belong in news.config (if anywhere), but in fact
     your best bet is usually to phone somebody at "foo" to find out.
     If you don't know anybody at "foo" you can always try calling and
     asking for the "comp center."  Also, see the newsgroup
     comp.mail.maps where maps of USENET and the uucp network are posted
     regularly.  If you have access to telnet, connect to ds.internic.net
     and try the "whois" command.  (See also the answer to question
     #7, below.)

 4.  What does "rc" at the end of files like .newsrc mean?

     It is related to the phrase "run commands." It is used for any
     file that contains startup information for a command.  The use of
     "rc" in startup files derives from the /etc/rc command file used
     to start multi-user UNIX.

 5.  What does :-) mean?

      This is the net convention for a "smiley face".  It means that
      something is being said in jest.  If it doesn't look like a smiley
      face to you, flop your head over to the left and look again.
      Variants exist and mean related things; for instance, :-( is sad.

      Collections of smileys are posted to various newsgroups from
      time to time. One was posted to comp.sources.misc in v23i102.

 6.  How do I decrypt jokes in rec.humor?

     The standard cypher used in rec.humor is called "rot13."  Each
     letter is replaced by the letter 13 farther along in the alphabet
     (cycling around at the end).  Most systems have a built-in
     command to decrypt such articles; readnews and nn have the "D"
     command, emacs/gnus has the "^C^R" combination, rn has the "X" or
     "^X" commands, notes has "%" or "R", and VMS news has the
     read/rot13 command.  If your system doesn't have a program to
     encrypt and decrypt these, you can quickly create a shell script
     using "tr":
	tr A-Za-z N-ZA-Mn-za-m
     On some versions of UNIX, the "tr" command should be written as:
	tr "[a-m][n-z][A-M][N-Z]" "[n-z][a-m][N-Z][A-M]"

 7.  misc.misc or misc.wanted: Is John Doe out there anywhere?

     I suspect that these items are people looking for Freshman room-
     mates that they haven't seen in ten years.  If you have some idea
     where the person is, you are usually better off calling the
     organization.  For example, if you call any Bell Labs location and
     request John Doe's number they can give it to you even if he works
     at a different location.  If you must try the net, use newsgroup
     soc.net-people *NOT* misc.misc or misc.wanted.  Also, you can try
     the "whois" command (see item #3).  There is a periodic posting
     in the news.newusers.questions and news.answers newsgroups that
     gives information on other ways to locate people.

 8.  sci.math: Proofs that 1=0.

     Almost everyone has seen one or more of these in high school.
     They are almost always based on either division by 0, confusing
     the positive and negative square roots of a number, or performing
     some ill-defined operation.

 9.  rec.games.*: Where can I get the source for empire or rogue?

     You can't get the source of rogue.  The authors of the game, as is
     their right, have chosen not to make the sources available.
     However, several rogue-like games have been posted to the
     comp.sources.games group and they are available in the archives.

     You can obtain the source to a version of empire if you provide
     a tape and SASE *plus* a photocopy of your UNIX source license.
     To obtain further info, contact mcnc!rti-sel!polyof!john.
     You can also call John at +1 516 454-5191 (9am-9pm EST only).

     Sites with Internet access can ftp several versions of empire
     from site ftp.ms.uky.edu in the directory pub/games/empire.

     Also, please note that the wizards' passwords in games like these
     are usually system-dependent and it does no good to ask the
     net-at-large what they are.

10.  comp.unix.questions: How do I remove files with non-ascii
     characters in their names?

     You can try to find a pattern that uniquely identifies the file.
     This sometimes fails because a peculiarity of some shells is that
     they strip off the highorder bit of characters in command lines.
     Next, you can try an rm -i, or rm -r. Finally, you can mess around
     with i-node numbers and "find".

     Some Emacs editors allow you to directly edit a directory, and
     this provides yet another way to remove a file with a funny name
     (assuming you have Emacs and figure out how to use it!).

     To remove a file named "-" from your directory, simply do:
     rm ./-

11.  comp.unix.internals: There is a bug in the way UNIX handles
     protection for programs that run suid, or any other report of
     bugs with standard software.

     There are indeed problems with the treatment of protection in
     setuid programs.  When this is brought up, suggestions for changes
     range from implementing a full capability list arrangement to new
     kernel calls for allowing more control over when the effective id
     is used and when the real id is used to control accesses.  Sooner
     or later you can expect this to be improved.  For now you just
     have to live with it.

     Always discuss suspected bugs or problems with your site software
     experts before you post to the net.  It is likely that the bugs
     have already been reported.  They might also be local changes and
     not something you need to describe to the whole Usenet.

12.  Volatile topics, e.g., soc.women: What do you think about abortion?

     Although abortion might appear to be an appropriate topic for
     soc.women, more heat than light is generated when it is brought
     up.  All abortion-related discussion should take place in the
     newsgroup talk.abortion.  If your site administrators have chosen
     not to receive this group, you should respect this and not post
     articles about abortion at all.

     This principle applies to other topics: religious upbringing of
     children should be restricted to talk.religion.misc and kept out
     of misc.kids.  Similarly, rape discussions should be kept to
     talk.rape and not in soc.singles, alt.sex and/or soc.women,
     Zionism discussions should be kept to talk.politics.mideast and
     not in soc.culture.jewish; likewise, evangelical and
     proseletyzing discussions of Jesus or of religions other than
     Judaism should go to newsgroups for the appropriate religion or
     to talk.religion.misc or alt.messianic.  Any attempts to
     proselytize any religious view belongs in talk.religion.misc, if
     they belong on the net at all.  Discussions on the merits of
     Affirmative Action and racial quotas belong in a talk.politics
     subgroup or alt.discrimination, not in
     soc.culture.african.american.  Discussions about evolution vs.
     creationism should be confined to the talk.origins group.

     USENET newsgroups are named for mostly historical reasons, and
     are not intended to be fully general discussion groups for
     everything about the named topic.  Please accept this and post
     articles in their appropriate forums.

13.  soc.singles: What do MOTOS, MOTSS, MOTAS, and SO stand for?
     What does LJBF mean? 

     Member of the opposite sex, member of the same sex, and member of
     the appropriate sex, respectively.  SO stands for "significant
     other."

     LJBF means "Let's just be friends."  This phrase is often heard
     when you least want it.

14.  soc.singles and elsewhere:  What does HASA stand for?

     The acronym HASA originated with the Heathen and Atheistic SCUM
     Alliance; the Hedonistic Asti-Spumante Alliance, Heroes Against
     Spaghetti Altering, the Society for Creative Atheism (SCATHE),
     SASA, SALSA, PASTA, and many others too numerous to mention all
     followed.  HASA started in (what is now) talk.religion.misc and
     also turns up in soc.singles, talk.bizarre, et al. because members
     post there too.

15.  sci.space.shuttle: Shouldn't this group be merged with sci.space?

     No.  sci.space.shuttle is for timely news bulletins.  sci.space is for
     discussions.

16.  How do I use the "Distribution" feature?

     When your posting software (e.g., Pnews or postnews) prompts you
     for a distribution, it's asking how widely distributed you want
     your article.  The set of possible replies is different,
     depending on where you are, but at Bell Labs in Murray Hill, New
     Jersey, possibilities include (for example):
	local	local to this machine
	mh	Bell Labs, Murray Hill Branch
	nj	all sites in New Jersey
	btl	All Bell Labs machines
	att	All AT&T machines
	usa	Everywhere in the USA
	na	Everywhere in North America
	world	Everywhere on USENET in the world 
     Many of the posting programs will provide a list of
     distributions, if your site admin has kept the files up-to-date.

     If you hit return, you'll get the default, which is usually
     "world.".  This default is often not appropriate -- PLEASE take a
     moment to think about how far away people are likely to be
     interested in what you have to say.  Used car ads, housing wanted
     ads, and things for sale other than specialized equipment like
     computers certainly shouldn't be distributed to Europe and Korea,
     or even to the next state.

     It is generally not possible to post an article to a distribution
     that your own machine does not receive.  For instance, if you
     live in Indiana, you can't post an article for distribution only
     in New Jersey or Germany unless your site happens to exchange
     those particular distributions with another site.  Try mailing
     the article to someone in the appropriate area and asking them to
     post it for you.

     If you cannot determine what distributions are valid for your
     site, ask someone locally rather than posting a query to the
     whole network!

17.  Why do some people put funny lines ("bug killers") at the beginning
     of their articles?

     Some earlier versions (mid-80s) of news had a bug which would
     drop the first 512 or 1024 bytes of text of certain articles.
     The bug was triggered whenever the article started with
     whitespace (a blank or a tab).  A fix many people adopted was to
     begin their articles with a line containing a character other
     than white space.  This gradually evolved into the habit of
     including amusing first lines.

     The original bug has since been fixed in newer version of news,
     and sites running older versions of news have applied a patch to
     prevent articles from losing text.  The "bug-killer" lines are
     therefore probably no longer needed, but they linger on.

18.  What is the address or phone number of the "foo" company?

     Try the white and yellow pages of your phone directory, first; a
     sales representative will surely know, and if you're a potential
     customer they will be who you're looking for.  Phone books for
     other cities are usually available in libraries of any size.
     Whoever buys or recommends things for your company will probably
     have some buyer's guides or national company directories. Call or
     visit the reference desk of your library; they have several
     company and organization directories and many will answer
     questions like this over the phone.  Remember if you only know
     the city where the company is, you can telephone to find out
     their full address or a dealer.  Calls to 1-800-555-1212 will
     reveal if the company has an "800" number you can call for
     information.  The network is NOT a free resource, although it may
     look like that to some people.  It is far better to spend a few
     minutes of your own time researching an answer rather than
     broadcast your laziness and/or ineptitude to the net.

19.  What is the origin of the name "grep"?

     The original UNIX text editor "ed" has a construct g/re/p,
     where "re" stands for a regular expression, to Globally
     search for matches to the Regular Expression and Print the
     lines containing them.  This was so often used that it was
     packaged up into its own command, thus named "grep".  According
     to Dennis Ritchie, this is the true origin of the command.

20.  How do I get from BITNET to UUCP, Internet to BITNET, JANET etc.?

     There are so many networks and mail systems in use now, it would
     take a book to describe all of them and how to send mail between
     them.  Luckily, there are a couple of excellent books that do
     exactly that, and in a helpful, easy-to-use manner:

         "!%@:: A Directory of Electronic Mail Addressing & Networks"
         by Donnalyn Frey and Rick Adams, O'Reilly & Associates, Inc,
         2nd edition 1990.

         "The Matrix: Computer Networks and Conferencing Systems
         Worldwide" by John Quarterman, Digital Press, 1990.

     Another excellent book to have on your bookshelf (to keep those
     two company) is "The User's Directory of Computer Networks" edited
     by Tracy LaQuey, Digital Press, 1990.

21.  Didn't some state once pass a law setting pi equal to 3 ?

     Indiana House Bill #246 was introduced on 18 January 1897, and
     referred to the Committee on Canals "midst general cheerfulness."
     The text states, "the ratio of the diameter and circumference is
     as five-fourths to four", which makes pi 3.2 (not 3), but there
     are internal contradictions in the bill as well as contradictions
     with reality.  The author was a mathematical crank.  The bill was
     passed by the state House on 5 February, but indefinitely tabled
     by the state Senate, in part thanks to the fortuitous presence
     on other business of a Purdue professor of mathematics.

     For details, including an annotated text of the bill, read the
     article by D. Singmaster in "The Mathematical Intelligencer" v7
     #2, pp 69-72.

22.  Where can I get the necessary software to get a "smart"
     mail system running on my machine that will take advantage
     of the postings in comp.mail.maps?  (E.g., pathalias, smail, etc.)

     There are a couple of packages available through the supporters of
     the comp.sources.unix archives.  If sites next to you don't have
     what you want, contact your nearest comp.sources.unix archive, or
     the moderator.  Information on archive sites, and indices of
     comp.sources.unix back issues are posted regularly in
     comp.sources.unix and comp.sources.d.

23.  What is "food for the NSA line-eater"?

     This refers to the alleged scanning of all USENET traffic by the
     National Security Agency (and possibly other intelligence
     organizations) for interesting keywords.  The "food" is believed to
     contain some of those keywords in the fond hope of overloading NSA's
     poor computers.  Other posters have taken up this practice, either
     as an ambiguous form of political statement, or as an attempt at
     humor.  The bottom line is that excessive signatures in any form are
     discouraged, the joke has worn stale amongst long-time net readers,
     and there are specific newsgroups for the discussion of politics.

24.  Does anyone know the {pinouts, schematics, switch settings,
     what does jumper J3 do} for widget X?

     These postings are almost always inappropriate unless the
     manufacturer has gone out of business or no longer supports the
     device.  If neither of these is the case, you're likely to get a
     better and faster response by simply telephoning the
     manufacturer.

25.  What is "anonymous ftp"?

     "FTP" stands for File Transfer Protocol; on many systems, it's
     also the name of a user-level program that implements that
     protocol.  This program allows a user to transfer files to and
     from a remote network site, provided that network site is
     reachable via the Internet or a similar facility.  (Ftp is
     also usable on many local-area networks.)

     "Anonymous FTP" indicates that a user may log into the remote
     system as user "anonymous" with an arbitrary password.  A common
     convention is that the user's email address is supplied as the
     password, e.g. "yourname@yoursite".  This is useful to those
     sites that track ftp usage.  Also note that most sites restrict
     when transfers can be made, or at least suggest that large
     transfers be made only during non-peak hours.

26.  What is UUNET?

     UUNET is a for-profit communications service designed to provide
     access to USENET news, mail, and various source archives at low
     cost by obtaining volume discounts.  Charges are calculated to
     recover costs.

     For more information send your US mail address to
     info@uunet.uu.net (uunet!info).

27.  Isn't the posting mechanism broken?  When I post an article to both
     a moderated group and unmoderated groups, it gets mailed to the
     moderator and not posted to the unmoderated groups.

     This is a question that is debated every few months.  The answer
     is "No, it was designed to work that way."  The software is
     designed so that the moderator can crosspost the article so it
     appears in the regular groups as well as the moderated group, if
     appropriate.  If the article were to be posted immediately to the
     unmoderated groups, the moderated group name would have to be
     deleted from the header and you would lose the crossposting.

     Whether or not this is correct behavior is a matter of opinion.
     If you want your article to go out immediately to the unmoderated
     groups, post it twice -- once to the unmoderated groups and once
     to the moderated groups.

28.  comp.arch and elsewhere:  What do FYI and IMHO mean?

     Those are abbreviations for common phrases.  FYI is "For Your
     Information" and IMHO is "In My Humble Opinion" or "In My
     Honest Opinion."  This is used sarcastically as often as not.

29.  Would someone repost {large software distribution}?

     This question should never be posted unless you are reporting a
     widespread problem in article propagation. Lamentably, there ARE
     occasional glitches in article transport. Large source or binary
     postings, by their sheer size, are an inviting target.

     If the problem is isolated, it is much better to take it upon
     yourself to obtain the bad portions of the program than to ask
     thousands of sites to spend thousands of dollars to needlessly
     move several hundred kilobytes of code. There are archive sites
     around the net that make most source/binary newsgroups available
     via anonymous FTP and UUCP. If you get desperate, you can always
     mail the author a blank disk or magnetic tape with provisions for
     return postage.

30.  How do I contact the moderator of an Internet mailing list rather than
     post to the entire list?

     To do this you should know that there are, by convention, two
     mailing addresses for every mailing list (except where noted by
     the List of Lists):

	     list-request@host	(e.g. xpert-request@x.org)
	     list@host		(e.g. xpert@x.org)

     When you have something for everyone on the mailing list to read,
     mail to the list@host address. HOWEVER, if you have an
     administrative request to make (e.g. "please add me to this list",
     "please remove me from this list", "where are the archives?",
     "what is this mailer error I got from sending to this list?"), it
     should be directed to the list-request@host address, which goes
     only to the mailing list administrator.

     It is considered to be in bad taste to send administrative
     requests to the entire mailing list in question, and if (as is
     often the case) the administrator does not read the mailing list
     (i.e. he just takes care of the admin tasks for the list), he will
     not see your request if you don't send it to the right address.

31.  I see BTW (or "btw"), wrt and RTFM in postings.  What do they mean?

     BTW is shorthand for "by the way."  WRT is "With respect to".

     RTFM is generally used as an admonition and means "read the f*ing
     manual" (choice of f-words varies according to reader).  The
     implication is that the answer to a query or complaint is easy to
     find if one looks in the appropriate location FIRST.  Most FAQ
     postings (Frequently-Asked Questions) that answer these questions
     may be found cross-posted in news.answers.

32.  Are there any restrictions on posting e-mail someone sends to me?

     At a minimum, it is only polite for you to contact the author of
     the letter and secure her or his permission to post it to the net.

     On a more serious note, it can be argued that posting someone's
     e-mail to the net without their permission is a violation of
     copyright law.  Under that law, even though a letter was
     addressed to you, it does not grant you the right to publish the
     contents, as that is the work of the author and the author
     retains copyright (even if no explicit copyright mark appears).

     Basically, your letters are your intellectual property.  If
     someone publishes your letters they are violating your copyright.
     This principle is well-founded in "paper media," and while
     untested in electronic forums such as Usenet, the same would
     probably apply if tested in court.

33.  What's an FQDN?

     A fully-qualified domain name.  That is, a hostname containing
     full, dotted qualification of its name up to the root of the
     Internet domain naming system tree.  Example: uiucuxc is the
     single-word hostname (suitable for, e.g., UUCP transport
     purposes) of the machine whose FQDN is uxc.cso.uiuc.edu.

34.  How do you pronounce "char" in C, "ioctl" in UNIX, the character
     "#", etc., etc.?

     Opinions differ.  Pick pronunciations close to what your
     colleagues use.  After all, they're the ones you need to
     communicate with.

35.  How do you pronounce "TeX"?

     To quote Donald Knuth, the creator of TeX: "Insiders pronounce
     the X of TeX as a Greek chi, not as an 'x', so that TeX rhymes
     with the word blecchhh.  It's the 'ch' sound in Scottish words
     like loch or German words like ach; it's a Spanish 'j' and a
     Russian 'kh'.  When you say it correctly to your computer, the
     terminal may become slightly moist."  [The TeXbook, 1986, Addison
     Wesley, page 1]

36.  What is the last year of the 20th century A.D.?

     The A.D. (Latin, Anno Domini, In the Year of Our Lord) system was
     devised before "origin 0 counting" was invented.  The year during
     which Jesus was (incorrectly) assumed to have been born was
     numbered 1.  (The preceding year was 1 B.C.)  So the 1st century
     was 1 to 100, the 2nd was 101 to 200, the 20th is 1901 to 2000.
     This is standard terminology no matter how much some of you may
     dislike it.  However, "a" century is any span of 100 years; so if
     you want to celebrate the end of "the century", meaning the
     1900's, on December 31, 1999, nobody will stop you.  It just
     isn't the end of the "20th century A.D.".

37.  I heard these stories about a dying child wanting
     postcards/get-well cards/business cards to get in the Guinness
     Book of World Records.  Where can I post the address for people to
     help?

     Post it to "junk," or better yet, don't post it at all.  The
     story of the little boy keeps popping up, even though his mother
     and the agencies involved have been appealing for people to stop.
     So many postcards were sent that the agencies involved in the
     effort don't know what to do with them.  The Guinness people have
     recorded the boy, Craig Shergold, as the record holder in the
     category.  However, they will not accept claims for a new try at
     the record.  For confirmation, you can see page 24 of the 29 July
     1990 NY Times or call the publisher of the Guinness Book (in the
     US, call "Facts on File" @ 212-683-2244).

     According to the 1993 edition of the GBWR, on page 213:
	Craig Shergold (born 1979) of Carshalton, Surrey when
	undergoing cancer chemo-therapy was sent a record 33
	million get-well cards until May 1991 when his mother
	pleaded for no more.  A successful 5 hour operation on
	a brain tumour by neurosurgeon Neal Kassel at the
	University of Virginia, Charlottesville, USA in March 1991
	greatly	improved his condition.

     If you want to do something noble, donate the cost of a stamp and
     postcard (or more) to a worthwhile charity like UNICEF or the
     International Red Cross (Red Crescent, Red Magen David).  There are
     tens of thousands of children dying around the world daily, and
     they could use more than a postcard.  

38.  I just heard about a scheme the FCC has to implement a tax on
     modems!  Where can I post a message so everyone will hear about
     this and do something to prevent it?

     Post it the same place as the articles in response to #37, above.
     This is an old, old story that just won't die.  Something like
     this was proposed many YEARS back and defeated.  However, the
     rumor keeps spreading and people who hear about it for the first
     time get all upset.  Before posting stories like this, check with
     the organizations involved (like the FCC) to see if the story is
     true and current.

39.  Is there a public access Unix system near me?  How can I get
     access to system for news and mail?

     Phil Eschallier posts a list of open access Unix sites (he calls
     them "Nixpub" sites) on a regular basis to the following
     newsgroups: comp.misc and alt.bbs.   Check his posting
     for information on sites you can contact.

     Furthermore, a list of open access sites that are not necessarily
     Unix sites is posted regularly in alt.bbs.lists; see the postings
     entitled "NetPub listing" for more information.

40.  In rec.pets: My pet has suddenly developed the following symptoms
     .... Is it serious?  In sci.med: I have these symptoms .... Is it
     serious?

     Could be.  The only way to tell for sure is to see an expert.  The
     network reaches a vast audience with considerable talent, but that
     can never replace the expert observation and diagnosis of a
     trained professional.  Do yourself or your pet a big favor -- if
     there is a problem, go see an appropriate practitioner.  If there
     is a serious problem, it is important that it is dealt with promptly.

 41. I have this great idea to make money.  Alternatively, wouldn't an
     electronic chain letter be a nifty idea?

     In a few words: don't even think about it.  Trying to use the net
     to make vast sums of money or send chain letters is a very bad
     idea.  First of all, it is an inappropriate use of resources, and
     tends to use up vast amounts of net bandwidth.  Second, such
     usage of the net tends to produce extremely negative reactions by
     people on the net, adding even more to the volume -- most of it
     directed to you.  Users, particularly system admins, do not like
     that kind of activity, and they will flood your mailbox with
     notices to that effect.

     And last, and perhaps most important, some of this activity is
     against the law in many places.  In the US, you can (and will) be
     reported by hacked-off system administrators for suspicion of wire
     fraud or mail fraud.  In one incident, at *least* a half dozen
     people reported the poster to Postal Service inspectors; I'm not
     sure what the outcome was, but it probably was not a nice
     experience.

     Bottom line: don't try clever schemes to sell things, solicit
     donations, or run any kind of pyramid or Ponzi scheme.  Also,
     don't start or support electronic chain letters.

 42. Where can I get archives of Usenet postings?

     Most Usenet newsgroups are not archived in any organized fashion,
     though it's likely that if you look hard enough someone will have
     kept much or most of the traffic (either on disk or on some tape
     gathering dust somewhere).  The volume on Usenet is simply too
     high to keep everything on rotating magnetic media forever,
     however.  The signal-to-noise ratio is too low in many groups to
     make them good candidates for archiving.

     One person's signal is another person's noise; if you're lucky,
     you'll find someone who has been keeping the good parts of a
     particular newsgroup in their own personal stash to save up for
     later.  How to get access to a group that *is* archived depends
     on what kind of group it is:

     * The "sources" and "binaries" groups are generally archived at
       multiple sites; for more information about getting access to
       them, see the posting entitled "How to find sources" in
       comp.sources.wanted.

     * Some non-source newsgroups can be found by asking "archie"
       about the group name.  See the comp.sources.wanted posting
       mentioned above for information about how to use "archie."

     * In other groups, if the group has a Frequently Asked Questions
       posting or another periodic posting about the group, check that
       posting to see if it mentions where the group is archived.  If
       not, then you'll have to post a message in the newsgroup and
       ask if it is archived anywhere.

 43. Is it possible to post messages to the Usenet via electronic mail?

     There are a few sites on the Usenet that offer a full-scale mail
     to news gateway, so that you can post via E-mail to any newsgroup
     available on that site.

     One of them is decwrl.dec.com.  To use its gateway, you mail the
     message you wish to post to newsgroup.name.usenet@decwrl.dec.com.
     For example, to post to news.newusers.questions, you would send
     your message to news.newusers.questions.usenet@decwrl.dec.com.
     This gateway is an unsupported service, as are most other
     such gateways.

     Mail-to-news gateways of this sort tend to be overloaded.
     Therefore, please do not use this gateway or any other similar
     gateway if you have other posting access to the Usenet.

 44. Is it possible to read Usenet newsgroups via electronic mail?

     Most Usenet newsgroups do not correspond to any mailing list, so
     the conventional answer to this question is "no" for most groups.
     However, there are some newsgroups that are gatewayed to mailing
     lists.  For a list of them, see the "List of Active Newsgroups"
     or the "Mailing Lists Available in Usenet" postings in news.lists.

     If you know a Usenet site admin who is willing to act as a
     personal gateway for you, you might be able to get him/her to set
     up his/her system to forward messages from individual newsgroups
     to you via E-mail.  However, most admins don't like to do this
     because it adds to the outgoing traffic from their site, so don't
     post messages to the net saying, "Hey, is there someone willing
     to gateway newsgroups to me?"

 45. How do I get the news software to include a signature with my
     postings?

     This is a question that is best answered by examining the
     documentation for the software you're using, as the answer
     varies depending on the software.

     However, if you're reading news on a Unix machine, then you can
     probably get a signature to appear on your outgoing messages by
     creating a file called ".signature" in your home directory.  Two
     important things to remember are:

     1. Many article-posting programs will restrict the length of the
        signature.  For example, the "inews" program will often only
        include the first four lines.  This is not something you
        should be trying to find a way to defeat; it is there for
        a reason.  If your signature is too long, according to the
        software, then shorten it.  Even if the software does not
        complain, keep your .signature under four lines as a courtesy
        to others.

     2. Under some news configurations, your .signature file must be
        world-readable, and your home directory world-executable, for
        your signature to be included correctly in your articles.  If
        your .signature does not get included, try running these
        commands:
           chmod a+x $HOME
           chmod a+r $HOME/.signature

 46. I'm on BitNet -- can I connect to the Usenet?

     Many BitNet sites also have connections to other networks. Some
     of these sites may be receiving Usenet with NNTP or by other
     methods. IBM VM/CMS sites which only have a connection to BitNet
     may still gain access to Usenet if they get a software package
     called NetNews, which is available from Penn State University at
     no charge. The PSU NetNews software allows sites to receive
     Usenet news over BITNET.  Talk to your local site administraters
     to find out if your site has this software installed and how to
     access it from your account. Also, contact your favorite BITNET
     LISTSERV and get the list NETNWS-L.  That list carries info on
     the necessary procedures and software.



 47. What is a "flame"?

     A "flame" usually refers to any message or article that contains
     strong criticism, usually irrational or highly emotional.  Avoid
     "flames", and if you do get "flamed", relax, calm down and decide
     if it's really worth "counter-flaming".  Usually, it isn't worth
     it -- a complete waste of bandwidth and time;  it also gets you
     perceived as a "flamer" by the large silent majority of Usenet
     readers, who will probably start ignoring your articles.

 48. What is a mail-server/list-server?
     
     Mail servers are a family of programs that answer email
     automatically.  These programs are also called list servers (or
     listserv, from the original BITNET LISTSERV list management program)
     when the automatically maintain mailing lists, or info-servers or
     netlibs if they permit automatic software retrieval).  Most mail
     servers will tell you all about themselves if you send them
     a message with no Subject: and the one-line body
		help
     (without the indentation, of course!)

From ankh.iia.org!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!math.ohio-state.edu!deshaw.com!do-not-use-path-to-reply Sun Aug 28 11:11:58 1994
Path: ankh.iia.org!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!math.ohio-state.edu!deshaw.com!do-not-use-path-to-reply
Date: Sun, 28 Aug 1994 08:00:41 GMT
Supersedes: <CuEwwx.Gr5@deshaw.com>
Expires: Wed, 28 Sep 1994 08:00:41 GMT
Message-ID: <Cv8JL5.35G@deshaw.com>
From: netannounce@deshaw.com (Mark Moraes)
Subject: Rules for posting to Usenet
Newsgroups: news.announce.newusers,news.answers
Followup-To: news.newusers.questions
Approved: netannounce@deshaw.com (Mark Moraes)
Lines: 334
Xref: ankh.iia.org news.announce.newusers:260 news.answers:10096

Archive-name: posting-rules/part1
Original-author: mark@stargate.com (Mark Horton)
Comment: enhanced & edited until 5/93 by spaf@cs.purdue.edu (Gene Spafford)
Last-change: 5 July 1994 by netannounce@deshaw.com (Mark Moraes)
Changes-posted-to: news.misc,news.answers

This message describes some of the rules of conduct on Usenet.  The rules
vary depending on the newsgroup.  


Some newsgroups are intended for discussions and some for announcements
or queries.  It is not usually a good idea to carry on discussions in
newsgroups that are designated otherwise.  It is never a good idea to
carry on "meta-discussions" about whether a given discussion is
appropriate -- such traffic mushrooms until nobody can find articles
that belong.  If you are unhappy with what some user said, send him/her
mail, don't post it.


Before posting, think about where your article is going.  If it's posted
to a "comp", "news", "misc", "soc", "sci", "rec" or "talk" newsgroup, it
will probably go to the sites on every continent with an estimated
audience of more than 3 million potential readers.  Certain articles are
only of local interest (e.g. used car ads) and it is inappropriate to
post them to the whole world.  Use the "Distribution" feature to restrict
distribution to your local area.  If you don't know how to use this
feature, read the "Answers to Frequently Asked Questions about Usenet" in
another article in news.announce.newusers. (Note, however, that some
sites have broken software or improperly configured news systems, so
sometimes use of a "Distribution" header may not work.)


Be considerate with your use of network resources.  Your individual
usage may not seem like much compared to the net as a whole, but in
aggregate, small savings in disk or CPU add up to a great deal.  For
instance, messages offering thanks, jibes, or congratulations will
only need to be seen by the interested parties -- send these by mail
rather than posting them. The same goes for simple questions, and
especially for any form of "me too" posting.

To help minimize some transfer load and disk usage throughout the
Usenet, consider not only how many groups should carry your posting
over what distribution area, but also how long it will be useful. Many
kinds of postings -- such as those making announcements or offers --
have an obvious useful lifetime. Posted questions that aren't answered
within a decent interval probably won't be answered at all, and
announcements will have a limited lifetime. All such postings will be
using bandwidth to no purpose after a certain time.  When making such
postings one should determine what that time interval is, based upon
the nature of the posting, the volume of articles on the newsgroup(s)
involved, and the habits of the audience, if known. Then include an
expiration date in the posting. This will mark the date after which
the article should not be retained at each site.

To include an expiration date in an article, when posting insert a
line in the header below the "Newsgroups:" line with the expiration.
For instance, type "Expires: 5 Feb 92" to have the article expire
after Feb 5, 1992.  Most news software will also accept expiration
dates of the form "Expires: +5days".  Please do NOT set expiration
dates far into the future simply to have the article stay around.
Many sites expire old articles no matter what the header indicates, so
you are unlikely to achieve much other than clutter the disk on a few
sites.  Default expiration is normally in the range of 7 to 21 days,
depending on disk space at each site.


Don't post announcements regarding major news events (e.g. the space
shuttle has just exploded!) to news groups.  By the time most people
receive such items, they will long since have been informed by
conventional media.  If you wish to discuss such an event on the net,
use the "misc.headlines" newsgroup.


Announcement of professional products or services on Usenet is allowed,
provided suitable restraint is exercised. Since someone else is paying
the phone bills for this, it is important that it be of overall benefit
to Usenet.  Post such information ONLY to comp.newprod -- never to a
general purpose newsgroup such as "misc.misc".  comp.newprod is a
moderated group; you can get the submission guidelines from the article
"Welcome to comp.newprod", posted periodically to comp.newprod and
news.answers.  You can also get this article by sending a mail message to
mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu with the single line:
	send usenet-by-group/news.answers/newprod

General guidelines: Clearly mark your article as a product announcement
in the subject.  Never repeat these -- one article per product at the
most; preferably group everything into one article.  Advertising hype is
especially frowned upon -- stick to technical facts.  Obnoxious or
inappropriate announcements or articles violating this policy will
generally be rejected.  This policy is, of course, subject to change if
it becomes a problem.

There exists an alternative hierarchy called "biz" specifically for
commercial postings.  See the articles "Alternative Newsgroup
Hierarchies, Part ...", posted periodically to several newsgroups,
including news.lists.  You can also get these articles by sending a mail
message to mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu with the lines:
        send usenet-by-group/news.answers/alt-hierarchies/part1
        send usenet-by-group/news.answers/alt-hierarchies/part2


Some newsgroups are moderated.  In these groups, you cannot post
directly, either by convention or because the software prevents it.  To
post to these newsgroups, send mail to the moderator. Examples:

Newsgroup		Moderator		Purpose
---------		---------		-------
news.announce.important announce@stargate.com	Important announcements for everyone.
comp.std.unix		std-unix@uunet.uu.net	Unix standards discussion.
rec.food.recipes	recipes@taronga.com	Sharing favorite recipes.

Some newsgroups have special purpose rules:

Newsgroup		Rules
---------		-----
news.announce.important	Moderated, no direct postings, important things only.
misc.wanted		Queries, "I want an x", "Anyone want my x?".  No
			discussions. Don't post to more than one xxx.wanted. 
			Use the smallest appropriate wanted (e.g. used car
			ads to nj.wanted.)
			Requests for sources, termcaps, etc. should go to the
			"comp.sources.wanted" newsgroup.
rec.humor		Clean humor only; anything offensive must be rotated;
			no discussions -- humor only.  Discussions go in
			rec.humor.d
rec.arts.movies		Don't post anything revealing part of a movie
			without marking it (spoiler) in the subject.
rec.arts.*		Same as movies -- mark spoilers in the subject line.
news.groups		Discussions about new groups: whether to create
			them and what to call them.  Don't post yes/no
			votes, mail them to the author
misc.test		Use the smallest test group possible, e.g.
			"test" or "ucb.test".  Say in the body of the
			message what you are testing.


It is perfectly legal to reproduce short extracts of a copyrighted work
for critical purposes, but reproduction in whole is strictly and
explicitly forbidden by US and international copyright law.  (Otherwise,
there would be no way for the artist to make money, and there would
thus be less motive for people to go to the trouble of making their art
available at all.  The crime of theft is as serious in this context as
any other, even though you may not have to pick locks, mask your face,
or conceal merchandise.)

It is generally considered rude to post private e-mail correspondence
without the permission of the author of that mail.  Furthermore, under
copyright statutes, the author of the e-mail possesses a copyright on
mail that he or she wrote; posting it to the net or mailing it on to
others without permission of the author is likely a violation of that
copyright as well as being rude.

All opinions or statements made in messages posted to Usenet should be
taken as the opinions of the person who wrote the message.  They do not
necessarily represent the opinions of the employer of that person, the
owner of the computer from which the message was posted, or anyone
involved with Usenet or the underlying networks of which Usenet is made
up.  All responsibility for statements made in Usenet messages rests
with the individual posting the message.


Posting of information on Usenet is to be viewed as similar to
publication.  Because of this, do not post instructions for how to do
some illegal act (such as jamming radar or obtaining cable TV service
illegally); also do not ask how to do illegal acts by posting to the
net.


If you have a standard signature you like to append to your articles,
and you are running a form of news software that supports automatic
inclusion of a signature file, it is usually enabled by putting it in
a file called .signature in your home directory.  The posting software
you use should automatically append it to your article.  Please keep
your signatures concise, as people do not appreciate seeing lengthy
signatures, nor paying the phone bills to repeatedly transmit them.  2
or 3 lines are usually plenty.  Sometimes it is also appropriate to
add another line or two for addresses on other major networks where
you can be reached (e.g., CompuServ, Bitnet).  Long signatures are
definitely frowned upon.  DO NOT include drawings, pictures, maps, or
other graphics in your signature -- it is not the appropriate place
for such material and is viewed as rude by other readers.


If you post an article and remember something you've left out or realize
you've made a factual error, you can cancel the article and (if canceled
quickly enough) prevent its distribution.  Then you can correct whatever
was wrong and post a new copy.  In "rn", "trn", "nn" and "readnews", (and
probably most other newsreaders) an article that you posted can be
canceled with the "C" command.  In "tin", use "D" (delete) to cancel an
article.  Newer newsreaders typically offer "Cancel" from a menu.  Be
aware, however, that some people may have already read the incorrect
version so the sooner you cancel something, the better.


Before posting a question to the net (especially one that you think
will be easy for experts to answer), consider carefully whether
posting is the most appropriate way to get the answer.  There are many
ways to find answers without using up network resources and forcing
thousands of people to read your question (and several helpful
volunteers to spend time responding).  Many newsgroups have a
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) list that is posted periodically
(usually every few weeks), and they are also usually cross-posted
to news.answers.  They usually have explicit expiration dates set, so
they shouldn't be expired until a new version has been posted, so if
you can't find the FAQ in either the newsgroup or news.answers, there
probably isn't one (thus, it's probably not useful to post a question
asking whether there is one).  If you have local experts (or simply
more experienced users than yourself) at your site, try asking them
before posting.  If you're trying to find where you can FTP software
or a newsgroup archive, try using the Archie service; see postings in
news.answers for details.  Many newsgroups are also archived in Wide
Area Information Service (WAIS) databases; WAIS client software may be
FTPed from ftp.think.com, or you may use WAIS by telnetting to
quake.think.com and logging in as "wais".  Finally, you should also
check the manuals for your system; if you don't, and you post a
question that's answered there, you'll likely receive a number of
responses that scream "RTFM" (Read the F*ing Manual).


When you post, post to all the newsgroups at the same time rather than
posting a separate copy to each newsgroup.  By posting a single
article to all the newsgroups you wish to reach, the news software is
able to transfer a single copy.  Furthermore, users with "smart"
newsreaders will see the article only once.  Making separate postings
of your article for each newsgroup you wish to reach tends to annoy
readers rather than emphasize the message content as well as waste
computational resources.


All newsreaders should have two ways to post a news article.  First,
there is an original posting; this is used whenever you are starting a
new topic.  Second, there is a "followup"; this is used when you are
posting a response to another news article.  In several newsreaders,
including "rn", the "f" command usually generates an original posting
if your current position is at the end of the newsgroup, but a
followup when you have a current article; you can also use the "Pnews"
command outside of rn to make an original posting.

The news posting software does special things in the second case that
indicates to the news system that this article is "related" to the
article to which you are following up.  First, the newsreader adds
"Re: " before the existing subject line to tell people that this is
"regarding" a previous article.  Second, the software adds a
"References" line that contains the Message-ID of the article you are
following up.  This header is used by threaded news readers such as
"trn" to follow "threads" of discussion.

It is important that these two posting methods not be confused.  Don't follow
up to articles without using the newsreader's "followup" mechanism.
Conversely, don't use the followup mechanism to post an article that
is an unrelated thread.  Violating this convention sometimes leads to
confusion and annoyance of users with threaded newsreaders.

When posting a followup, be careful about newsgroups.  The article
that you're responding to might have been cross-posted to several
newsgroups, and by default your followup will go to ALL of those
newsgroups.  Or the article might have a Followup-To line in its
header, and in that case, by default your followup will go where the
Followup-To line says -- which might not be the newsgroup where you're
reading the article.  You should ensure that your article is posted
only to newsgroups where its actual content is appropriate.  Sometimes
it's better to leave the newsgroups on your own article the same as
they were, but put a Followup-To line in its header to confine
followups to an appropriate group.  In any case, it's best for
articles that have a Followup-To line to be posted to whatever groups
are mentioned in that line, and to mention in the text of the article
that followups are redirected.  The idea is for the threads of
articles to make sense in each newsgroup where the articles appear,
for people who don't read the others.


if you don't immediately see your posting, don't immediately assume it
failed and try to repost it.  Some sites have set up the local
software to process news periodically.  Thus, your article will not
appear immediately.  If you post again, you will have multiple copies
of the article in circulation.


If the news system rejects a followup due to "more quoted lines than
new text," please do not use "filler" lines to make up for this.
Instead, if after careful editing, you have more to quote than to
write, change the citation character.  For example, in the display
editor vi, you could use the incantation:
	:%s/^>/</
Be careful not to do the very similar:
	:%s/>/</
which will affect >'s that are not being used as the citation
character.  (In particular, it will damage the "References" line in the
article header.)


In preparing an article, be aware that other people's machines are
not the same as yours.  The following is a list of things to keep
in mind:
 * Keep your lines under 80 characters, and under 72 if possible (so that
   the lines won't get longer than 80 when people include them when
   responding to your postings).  Most editors have a fill or format mode
   that will do this for you automatically.  Make sure that it
   actually puts ("hard") newline characters into the file, rather
   than just wrapping the displayed lines on your screen.
 * Right justified text may look "prettier" in some sense, but it
   is almost always harder to read than leaving ragged right
   margins; don't justify your articles.
 * Most special control characters will not work for most readers.
   In fact, the  space character is about the only one
   you can be sure will work consistently. Even tabs aren't always
   the same from machine to machine, and should be avoided.  Many mail
   agents will strip or remap control characters.
 * Pictures and diagrams should not use embedded tabs.
 * Refer to articles by Message-ID, and never by article number.
   Article numbers vary on every news system, Message-IDs are always
   preserved throughout the network.
 * What you think is the previous article is unlikely to be so elsewhere.
 * Submissions in a single case (all upper or all lower) are
   difficult to read.


In general, when a mailing to somebody fails, DON'T post a message
about it!  Think for a moment: you are trying to send something to
someone on ONE system.  Your message might go through (at most) TEN
systems on the way there.  Posting a message in the news sends it to
many tens of thousands of systems throughout the world!  There is no
way to justify adding to the news load of all those machines simply
because you cannot determine how to get your mail through.

If your message is important, contact someone who knows more about the
mail system and who might be able to help you get your message
through.  Your local system administrator, for instance, or the admin
of the next site "upstream," might be able to help. You can also send
mail to "postmaster" at one of the major Usenet sites.  Almost all of
these people would rather see an occasional plea for help in their
mailbox than read another broadcast in the news system.  If your
message is *really* important, pick up the phone and try to call the
other person.

From ankh.iia.org!uunet!gatech!howland.reston.ans.net!math.ohio-state.edu!deshaw.com!do-not-use-path-to-reply Sun Aug 28 11:11:58 1994
Path: ankh.iia.org!uunet!gatech!howland.reston.ans.net!math.ohio-state.edu!deshaw.com!do-not-use-path-to-reply
Date: Sun, 28 Aug 1994 08:00:48 GMT
Supersedes: <CuEwx3.Gsq@deshaw.com>
Expires: Wed, 28 Sep 1994 08:00:47 GMT
Message-ID: <Cv8JLC.371@deshaw.com>
Subject: A Guide to Social Newsgroups and Mailing Lists
Newsgroups: news.announce.newusers,news.groups,news.answers
Followup-To: news.newusers.questions
From: taylor@netcom.com (Dave Taylor)
Reply-To: taylor@netcom.com
Approved: netannounce@deshaw.com (Mark Moraes)
Lines: 270
Xref: ankh.iia.org news.announce.newusers:261 news.groups:20447 news.answers:10098

Archive-name: social-newsgroups/part1
Last-change: 13 July 1994 by taylor@netcom.com (Dave Taylor)
Changes-posted-to: news.misc,news.groups,news.answers

      A Brief Guide to Social Newsgroups and Mailing Lists

*** This list has some out-of-date material included, so if you're
*** active on any of the lists of Usenet groups listed, please
*** check the blurb within and let me know if it's okay. Thanks!!!
*** Send your notes to: Dave Taylor  taylor@netcom.com

INTRODUCTION

The Usenet distributed conferencing system is a terrific way to meet 
new friends and engage in many interesting topics of conversation, but
people just joining our on-line community often have a difficult time 
figuring out which group is which and what groups they could join to 
find like-minded individuals.

To try to help this situation, this article is intended to be one of
a group of regularly posted articles that are given to new users to
aid you in deciding where you might have the best luck finding new 
electronic friends that share your interests both socially and sexually.

Disclaimer: some of what is said on Usenet might be offensive to you as
some of the groups discuss topics that are, well, a bit unusual.  
Fortunately it's easy to avoid this problem; don't read that group.  Also
please keep in mind that the more controversial the subject, the more
likely the group is awash in inane, unrelated discussion, partially
due to the nature of the Usenet community and partially perhaps due to 
how uncomfortable most people are with these subjects.

To reiterate this point, please do NOT join a group to find a forum for
arguing or demonstrating righteous indignation over a particular belief,
behavior, or desire.  Those discussions are almost always completely
inappropriate and the more controversial the subject, the more likely
the participants in a group are going to dislike judgemental postings.
Also, there is a good chance that you have misunderstood either the
offending article or the responses of other readers.  In other words,
you may well be alone in your indignation.

Finally, as with all groups on the Usenet, once you find one that 
seems of interest, please try to spend a week or two just reading
the group and learning how conversations proceed in that particular 
forum before you jump in.  It'll save you, and others, a lot of grief 
and unpleasantness.

THE GROUPS

alt.romance

   One of the nicest things about any relationship, be it the beginning of
   a courtship or years into a more serious commitment, are the little
   things that you do for each other, the romance.  If you're interested 
   in chatting with people about what is considered romantic, talking about
   a particular romantic thing that you've done, or even just reading 
   stories about what other couples have done to 'be romantic' or 'have a 
   romantic liaison', then this is the group.

alt.sex

   What's a relationship without sex?  For that matter, how many of us
   would be around without our parents having had sex?  This group is one of
   the most controversial on the net, not surprisingly, and while the
   actual number of articles that discuss sex or sexuality is distressingly
   low, the group is still an interesting place to find the occasional
   horror story of a sexual rendezvous gone bad, to read debates about
   what type of birth control (or condom) is best, or even to read some
   surprisingly revealing details about the sex lives of people on the net.

alt.sex.bestiality

   While bestiality refers to engaging in sexual activity with an animal, 
   the articles in this group seem to talk about everything but that.

alt.sex.intergen 

    Discussion group for intergenerational relationships, including
    "May/December relationships" (relationships between
    adults in two different parts of their lives, 20 and 45 years old for
    example), as well as discussion on "ephebophilia" (relationships between
    adults and teenagers) and "pedophilia" or "paedophilia" (relationships
    between teenagers or adults and pre-pubescent children).  The level of
    mature discussion (discourse) on alt.sex.intergen tends to be rather
    high, and those that read and/or participate in the discussions would
    like to keep it that way :-)

alt.sex.bondage

   The best spin-off discussion from alt.sex, this group has a higher level 
   of interesting articles, which talk about bondage and related topics, 
   ranging from the psychology of being confined by another during sexual 
   play to the mechanics of different bondage devices.  It also occasionally
   delves into sadism and masochism, so as with any other group, if you don't
   like what you're reading, be prepared to unsubscribe.

rec.arts.erotica

   A moderated group with long, but infrequent articles, rec.arts.erotica 
   is the main focus for erotica and pornography, depending on your
   standards.  Most are explicit, and some demonstrate a surprising writing 
   ability, but many also seem rather sleazy and variously demeaning.  Just 
   like reading the Letters to Penthouse, it's a mixed bag as to whether any 
   of it will be exciting or erotic to you.

soc.couples

   Being in a short or long term relationship offers much in the way of 
   joy, pleasure, and emotional satisfaction, but it also offers the 
   chance for major arguments and other problems.  This group is where
   you can talk about the relationship you're in with others that are also
   in relationships of their own.

soc.feminism

   Soc.feminism is a moderated newsgroup for the discussion of feminist
   issues.  Both men and women are encouraged to post to it and discussion
   is not limited to the pro-feminist viewpoint.

   This group differs from soc.women in that moderation keeps out the
   flames and inappropriate cross-posts.  In addition, there are several
   subjects appropriate for soc.women but not soc.feminism (e.g.  the
   sporadic "where do I find comfortable shoes?"  discussion that turns up
   in soc.women or discussions of women's health, other than policy issues 
   related to it).

soc.men

   This group discusses similar issues to soc.women, but from the 
   male perspective.  Topics include equal rights, child support,
   custody of children, relationships and so on.  In addition, there
   are often topics specific to men including shaving in the shower,
   post-workout skin care, and similar.  Both men and women are active 
   participants in this group.

soc.motss

   While the Usenet community is pretty open minded, many of the
   aforementioned social groups tend to be populated primarily by
   the heterosexual community.  Soc.motss (Members of the Same Sex) 
   is where people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, or just interested and 
   sympathetic can share conversation about relationships, dating, travel, 
   and the like.  Discussion of the validity or appropriateness of 
   homosexuality is inappropriate, however, and will not be appreciated.

soc.singles

   Of all the things that people seem to have in common, perhaps the most
   common thread of all is the bouts of being single, and the hunting and 
   searching for relationships that this implies.  This group is a forum 
   for all discussions even vaguely related to either being single or the 
   quest for a relationship.  Indeed, it has been likened to an electronic 
   cocktail party, where people have known each other (electronically, 
   usually) for years.  There are also a number of people in relationships 
   that share their thoughts, as well as a high level of aggression between 
   some of the contributors.

soc.women

   Soc.women is an unmoderated group that discusses similar issues to 
   soc.men, but from the female perspective.  Topics include equal rights, 
   child support, custody of children, relationships and so on.  In addition, 
   there are often topics specific to women including shaving legs, finding
   comfortable shoes, and so on.  Both men and women are active participants 
   in this group.

OTHER PLACES TO LOOK

In addition to these Usenet groups, there are many other forums on 
Usenet where you can make new friends and share conversations about 
topics of interest to yourself.  Among them are the many "soc.culture" 
groups for specific ethnic/geographic cultures, the "soc.religion" and 
"talk.religion" groups for those interested in meeting friends of a 
specific religious background, the "rec.*" groups oriented about a 
specific recreational activity and many more.  

Also, there are a number of different private mailing lists for specific 
sexual and social orientations, including:

  alternates
      Contact: alternates-request@ns1.rutgers.edu

      Purpose: Alternates is a mailing list for people who advocate, and/or
      practice an alternate sexual lifestyle. Alternates is intended as a
      forum and support group for adult men and women who espouse their
      freedom of choice and imagination in human sexual relations, no matter
      what their orientaion. Those who are offended by frank, and
      uninhibited discussions relating to sexual issues should not
      subscribe.

      Moderator/Editor: <amq@ns1.rutgers.edu>

  bears
      Contact: bears-request@spdcc.COM (Steve Dyer & Brian Gollum)
               ...!{harvard,ima,linus,mirror}!spdcc!bears-request

      Purpose: Mail.bears is a mailing list in digest format for gay
      and bisexual men who are bears themselves and for those who enjoy
      the company of bears.  The exact definition of a "bear" seems to
      be a personal one, but it encompasses men who are variously cuddly,
      furry, perhaps stocky, or bearded.  Mail.bears is designed to be a
      forum to bring together folks with similar interests for conversation,
      friendship and sharing of experiences.  The tone of mail.bears
      will be determined by its members, but people uncomfortable with
      discussing sexually explicit topics via electronic mail should
      not subscribe.

  cdforum
      Contact: cd-request@valis.biocad.com

      Purpose: To provide support/discuss/share experiences about gender
      related issues; Crossdressing, Transvestism, Transsexualism, etc.
      This list is in Digest Format.

  feminists
      Contact: femail@hpldlh.hpl.hp.com (Patricia Collins)

      Purpose: The feminist mailing list is intended to provide a forum
      for discussion of issues of interest to women, in a friendly
      atmosphere. The basic tenets of feminism and the day-to-day
      experiences of women do not have to be explained or defended.  Men
      and women can join, but everyone requesting to be added to the
      mailing list MUST provide the moderator with: 1) a full name; 2) a
      complete uucp path to a well-known host or a fully specified
      Internet address; 3) the correspondent's gender (for records and
      statistics only).  NO exceptions.

  men
      Contact: attunix!mail-men-request
	       mail-men-request@usl.com (Marcel Franck Simon)

      Purpose: This digested mailing list discusses "men's issues."
      Both women and men may join. Mail-men is a place where men and
      women can discuss men's issues in an atmosphere of openness and
      support. Men's issues are those problems and experiences that
      affect male humans.

  sappho
      Contact:  sappho-request@silver.lcs.mit.edu
		zonker@silver.lcs.mit.edu (Regis)

      Purpose: A forum and support group for gay and bisexual women.
      The list is not moderated, but may become so if the volume and/or
      content begins to warrant it.  A digest version is available; if
      you want it, be sure to mention it in your addition request.  Men
      who want to "listen in," for whatever reason, are requested to use
      the feminist and alternates mailing lists instead; sappho
      membership is limited to women.

  spanking
       Contact:  craftman@iglou.com

      Purpose:  The SPANKING E-MAIL LIST is for the exchange of
      stories, articles, letters, rememberances and comments on and
      about erotic spanking.  The list is mailed out once a week.  
      In addition, there is a personals section at the end of the 
      mailing for those who wish to post.  Posting is not required, 
      but is strongly encouraged to keep the list going. Membership 
      list is private.

SUMMARY

Please use this list of Usenet groups and mailing lists as one of the many 
signposts to help you find the groups that you'll be interested in.  One 
other terrific place to find more information is by asking your friends on 
the net what groups they read too!

Changes, corrections, additions, or other requests for information
related to this posting should be sent to:   taylor@netcom.com


From ankh.iia.org!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!math.ohio-state.edu!deshaw.com!do-not-use-path-to-reply Sun Aug 28 11:11:58 1994
Path: ankh.iia.org!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!math.ohio-state.edu!deshaw.com!do-not-use-path-to-reply
Date: Sun, 28 Aug 1994 08:00:54 GMT
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Expires: Wed, 28 Sep 1994 08:00:54 GMT
Message-ID: <Cv8JLI.38n@deshaw.com>
From: netannounce@deshaw.com (Mark Moraes)
Subject: USENET Software: History and Sources
Newsgroups: news.admin.misc,news.announce.newusers,news.software.readers,news.software.b,news.answers
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Archive-name: usenet-software/part1
Original-from: spaf@cs.purdue.edu (Gene Spafford)
Comment: edited until 5/93 by spaf@cs.purdue.edu (Gene Spafford)
Last-change: 17 Aug 1994 by netannounce@deshaw.com (Mark Moraes)
Changes-posted-to: news.admin.misc,news.misc,news.software.readers,news.software.b,news.answers


Currently, Usenet readers interact with the news using a number of
software packages and programs.  This article mentions the important
ones and a little of their history, gives pointers where you can look
for more information and ends with some special notes about "foreign"
and "obsolete" software.  At the very end is a list of sites from which
current versions of the Usenet software may be obtained.

Note that the number of software packages available to run news,
especially on PCs, is increasing.  This article lists only a few of
the many news packages available, and the presence or absence of any
particular software package should not be construed as indicating
anything about its suitability usefulness.

The material contained in this post is probably not 100% up-to-date.
Many of the software packages described in this posting are undergoing
constant development, and it is not always possible to know when new
releases have been made.  Should you discover that information in this
post has been superseded by a new release, please send mail to the poster
of this article with the corrected information.

While the "official" ftp archive sites for packages are listed, note that
most large archive sites carry news software; please try the one nearest
to you before you use up expensive bandwidth on a trans-continental
network link.  You can check the official site for the current version
number, if you want to make sure you're getting the latest version.  In
general, a good place to get recent versions of the more popular news
transport and reading software by anonymous ftp is
ftp.uu.net:/networking/news/ directory.


History
-------
Usenet came into being in late 1979, shortly after the release of V7
Unix with UUCP.  Two Duke University grad students in North Carolina,
Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis, thought of hooking computers together to
exchange information with the Unix community.  Steve Bellovin, a grad
student at the University of North Carolina, put together the first
version of the news software using shell scripts and installed it on
the first two sites: "unc" and "duke." At the beginning of 1980 the
network consisted of those two sites and "phs" (another machine at
Duke), and was described at the January Usenix conference.  Steve
Bellovin later rewrote the scripts into C programs, but they were never
released beyond "unc" and "duke." Shortly thereafter, Steve Daniel did
another implementation in C for public distribution.  Tom Truscott made
further modifications, and this became the "A" news release.

In 1981 at U. C. Berkeley, grad student Mark Horton and high school
student Matt Glickman rewrote the news software to add functionality
and to cope with the ever increasing volume of news -- "A" News was
intended for only a few articles per group per day.  This rewrite was
the "B" News version.  The first public release was version 2.1 in
1982; the 1.* versions were all beta test.  As the net grew, the news
software was expanded and modified.  The last version maintained and
released primarily by Mark was 2.10.1.

Rick Adams, at the Center for Seismic Studies, took over coordination
of the maintenance and enhancement of the B News software with the
2.10.2 release in 1984.  By this time, the increasing volume of news
was becoming a concern, and the mechanism for moderated groups was
added to the software at 2.10.2.  Moderated groups were inspired by
ARPA mailing lists and experience with other bulletin board systems.
In late 1986, version 2.11 of B News was released, including a number
of changes to support a new naming structure for newsgroups, enhanced
batching and compression, enhanced ihave/sendme control messages, and
other features.

The current release of B News is 2.11, patchlevel 19.  Article format is
specified in RFC 1036 (see below).  B News has been declared "dead" by a
number of people, including Rick Adams, and is unlikely to be upgraded
further; most new UUCP sites are using C News or INN (see next
paragraphs).

In March 1986 a package was released implementing news transmission,
posting, and reading using the Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP)
(as specified in RFC 977).  This protocol allows hosts to exchange
articles via TCP/IP connections rather than using the traditional
uucp.  It also permits users to read and post news (using a modified
news user agent) from machines which cannot or choose not to install
the USENET news software.  Reading and posting are done using TCP/IP
messages to a server host which does run the USENET software.  Sites
which have many workstations like the Sun and SGI, and HP products
find this a convenient way to allow workstation users to read news
without having to store articles on each system.  Many of the Usenet
hosts that are also on the Internet exchange news articles using NNTP
because the load impact of NNTP is much lower than uucp (and NNTP
ensures much faster propagation).

NNTP grew out of independent work in 1984-1985 by Brian Kantor at U.  C.
San Diego and Phil Lapsley at U. C. Berkeley.  Primary development was
done at U. C. Berkeley by by Phil Lapsley with help from Erik Fair, Steven
Grady, and Mike Meyer, among others.  The NNTP package (now called the
reference implementation) was distributed on the 4.3BSD release tape
(although that was version 1.2a and out-of-date) and is also available on
many major hosts by anonymous FTP.  The current version (which includes
support for a wide variety of systems including System V UNIX with Excelan
Ethernet cards and DECNET under Ultrix is 1.5.11.  The official archive
site for the package is ftp.academ.com.  A modified version, called
nntp-t5, implements many of the extensions provided by INN (most notably
News Overview NOV support -- see below).  It is available from
ftp.uu.net:/networking/news/nntp/nntp-t5.tar.gz.

One new version of news, known as C News, was developed at the University
of Toronto by Geoff Collyer and Henry Spencer.  This version is a rewrite
of the lowest levels of news to increase article processing speed,
decrease article expiration processing and improve the reliability of the
news system through better locking, etc.  The package was released to the
net in the autumn of 1987.  For more information, see the paper "News
Need Not Be Slow," published in The Winter 1987 Usenix Technical
Conference proceedings.  The most recent version of C News is the 20 Feb
1993 "performance release."  C News can be obtained by anonymous ftp from
its official archive site, ftp.cs.toronto.edu:pub/c-news/c-news.tar.Z.

Another Usenet system, known as InterNetNews, or INN, was written by Rich
Salz <rsalz@uunet.uu.net>.  INN is designed to run on Unix hosts that
have a socket interface.  It is optimized for larger hosts where most
traffic uses NNTP, but it does provide full UUCP support.  INN is very
fast, and since it integrates NNTP many people find it easier to
administer only one package.  The package was publicly released on August
20, 1992.  For more information, see the paper "InterNetNews:  Usenet
Transport for Internet Sites" published in the June 1992 Usenix Technical
Conference Proceedings.  INN can be obtained from many places, including
the 4.4BSD tape; its official archive site is ftp.uu.net in the directory
/networking/news/nntp/inn.  The current version is 1.4sec, last release
22-dec-1993.

Towards the end of 1992, Geoff Collyer implemented NOV (News Overview): a
database that stores the important headers of all news articles as they
arrive.  This was intended for use by the implementors of news readers to
provide fast article presentation by sorting and "threading" the article
headers.  (Until this point, newsreaders like tn, tin and nn came with
their own daemons and databases that used a nontrivial amount of system
resources).  NOV for C News can be obtained from
world.std.com:/src/news/nov.dist.tar.Z (it will be integrated into the
next version of C News) and is already supported by INN and the nntp-t5
implementations.

ANU-NEWS is news package written by Geoff Huston of Australia for VMS
systems.  ANU-NEWS is a complete news system that allows reading,
posting, direct replies, moderated newsgroups, etc. in a fashion
closely related to regular news.  The implementation includes the RFC
1036 news propagation algorithms and integrated use of the NNTP
protocols (see below) to support remote news servers, implemented as a
VAX/VMS Decnet object.  An RFC 977 server implemented as a Decnet
object is also included. ANU-NEWS currently includes support for the
following TCP/IP protocols: MultiNet, CMU/TEK, Wollongong WIN/TCP, UCX
(TCP/IP Services for OpenVMS), EXOS, and TCPware.  The ANU-NEWS
interface is similar to standard DEC screen oriented systems.  The
license for the software is free, and there are no restrictions on the
re-distribution.  For more info, contact gih900@fac.anu.oz.au (Geoff
Huston).  ANU-NEWS is available for FTP from kuhub.cc.ukans.edu.
Contact SLOANE@KUHUB.CC.UKANS.EDU for more info.

A screen-oriented news client for VMS that works with CMU/tek, EXOS,
MultiNet, UCX, Wollongong and DECnet is also available via ftp from
iraun1.ira.uka.de, info.rz.uni-ulm.de, and ftp.spc.edu (contact Bernd
Onasch <uranus@pilhuhn.ka.sub.org> for details).

Reader NNTP clients for VMS are also available, including VMS/VNEWS
(current release 1.4) and an upcoming reader only version of ANU-NEWS.
VMS/VNEWS is available via anonymous ftp from arizona.edu (contact
jms@arizona.edu for more information) or at any site which archives
vmsnet.source.  Although the current release of ANU-NEWS is usable as
a reader it can be difficult when used with a UNIX server.

A port of C News for the Commodore Amiga under AmigaDOS (NOT Unix), is
available.  The port was done by Frank J. Edwards <crash@ckctpa.uucp>,
and available from Larry Rosenman <ler@lerami.lerctr.org>.  Also,
Matt Dillon <dillon@overload.berkely.ca.us>, has greatly improved the
UUCP clone for AmigaDOS, currently V1.16D, available for ftp from
ftp.uu.net in /systems/amiga/dillon.  The package also includes a
newsreader very loosely like the real rn.  Dillon also has a "vn" port
provided by Eric Lee Green.  This software is also available on Bix,
and for ftp from wuarchive.wustl.edu (many other Amiga newsreaders are
also available on theis ftp site).

Several popular screen-oriented news reading interfaces have been
developed in the last few years to replace the traditional "readnews"
interface.  The first of these was "vnews" and it was written by
Kenneth Almquist.  "vnews" provides a "readnews"-like command
interface, but displays articles using direct screen positioning.  It
appears to have been inspired, to some extent, by the "notes" system
(described below).  "vnews" is currently distributed with the standard
2.11 news source.

A second, more versatile interface, "rn", was developed by Larry Wall
(the author of Perl) and released in 1984.  This interface also uses
full-screen display with direct positioning, but it includes many
other useful features and has been very popular with many regular net
readers.  The interface includes reading, discarding, and/or
processing of articles based on user-definable patterns, and the
ability of the user to develop customized macros for display and
keyboard interaction.  "rn" is currently at release 4.4.4.  It is
being maintained by Stan Barber of the Baylor College of Medicine.
"rn" is not provided with the standard news software release, but is
very widely available because of its popularity.  The software can be
obtained from its official archive site, lib.tmc.edu, using FTP, and
via mail from archive-server@bcm.tmc.edu

Wayne Davison's "trn" is a superset of "rn".  Trn adds the ability to
follow "threads of discussions" in newsgroups; its latest version 3.5 is
based on rn 4.4.  It uses a Reference-line database to allow the user to
take advantage of the "discussion tree" formed by an article and its
replies.  This results in a true reply-ordered reading of the articles,
complete with a small ascii representation of the current article's
position in the discussion tree.  Trn is also capable of "menu-based"
selection of articles, allows one to do useful things to operate on a set
of selected newsgroups.  Trn can be obtained from ftp.uu.net in the
/networking/news/readers/trn directory, and from many other archive
servers world-wide.

xrn is an X11-based interface to NNTP that was written by Rick
Spickelmier and Ellen Sentovich (UC Berkeley).  The current version is
6.17.  xrn supports many features, including sorting by subject,
user-settable key bindings, graceful handling of NNTP server crashes,
and many of the features of rn (including KILL files and key bindings
similar to rn).  xrn is actively supported by the authors with bug
fixing and feature addition support from many of the users.  xrn can
be retrieved from most of the popular FTP sites (gatekeeper.dec.com,
ftp.uu.net, ftp.x.org).

Another X11-based newsreader is xvnews, written by Dan Currie, currently
maintained by Hans de Graaff <J.J.deGraaff@twi.tudelft.nl>.  xvnews is an
OPENLook newsreader written primarily for Sun workstations running
OpenWindows, but it will run on any X workstation which has the XView
libraries. It works with NNTP only, and is compatible with rn style
commands. The current version is 2.2.1 and is available from its archive
site ftp.twi.tudelft.nl in the /pub/news directory.

There are two popular macro packages named "GNUS" and "Gnews" that can
be used with the GNU Emacs text editor.  These allow reading,
replying, and posting interaction with the news from inside the Emacs
text editor.  Client code exists to get the articles using NNTP rather
than from a local disk.  Copies can be found on most archive sites
that carry the GNU archives eg. ftp.cs.titech.ac.jp, archie.au,
archive.eu.net, gatekeeper.dec.com, prep.ai.mit.edu.

"nn" is yet another reader interface, developed by Kim F. Storm of Texas
Instruments A/S, Denmark, and released in 1989.  nn differs from the
traditional readnews and vnews by presenting a menu of article subject
and sender-name lines, allowing you to preselect articles to read.  nn is
also a very fast newsreader, as it keeps a database of article headers
on-line.  (I.e. it trades space for time.  A good rule of thumb is that
the nn database size is 5%-10% of your news spool.  So up to 110% of your
news spool is the amount of space news and the nn database will take.)
nn is now maintained by Peter Wemm <peter@dialix.oz.au>, and the "offical"
ftp location is the /pub/nn directory on uniwa.uwa.edu.au.  The current
version of nn is 6.4.18.  Non-Australian sites should request the sources
from their nearest backbone site.

Yet another newsreader is the "tin" reader.  It operates with threads, uses
NOV-style index files if available, has different article organization
methods, and is full-screen oriented.  tin works on a local news spool or
over an NNTP connection.  It has been posted to alt.sources; further
information is available from Iain Lea (iain.lea@erlm.siemens.de). The
current release of tin is 1.22.  Tin is based more on the Notes and tass
systems than "rn".  There is an extensive list of features, including
interfaces to batch modes and auto unpacking mechanisms.  The official
ftp site for tin is ftp.germany.eu.net:/pub/news/tin.

An NNTP newsreader for Macintoshs is available called HyperNews.  It is
implemented as a HyperCard stack and depends on MacTCP.  It is available
from many Mac archives, including ftp.apple.com and
sumex-aim.stanford.edu.  A newsreader preferred by many Macintosh users
is NewsWatcher by by j-norstad@nwu.edu (John Norstad).  The current
version is 2.0b8 and is available in ftp.acns.nwu.edu:/pub/newswatcher.

There is also an NNTP-based netnews reader for Symbolics Lisp Machines
(under Genera 7) available for anonymous FTP from ucbvax.berkeley.edu
[128.32.133.1] in pub/nntp-clients/lispm written by Ian Connolly
<connolly@coins.cs.umass.edu> and maintained by Richard Welty
<welty@lewis.crd.ge.com>.  In addition, another NNTP-based news
browser is available running under Genera 7 and Genera 8.  It provides
mouse driven hierarchic browsing of newsgroups and articles, with
support for X11 servers on remote machines.  It is available for
anonymous FTP on flash.bellcore.com [128.96.32.20] in the directory
pub/lispm/news-reader/.  It is written and maintained by Peter
Clitherow <pc@bellcore.com>

A TOPS-20 reader was developed by Dave Edwards of SRI
<dle@kl.sri.com>, but current availability is unknown.  An NNTP reader
suite for PC's running MS-DOS and having Excelan boards is available
for ftp from ames.arc.nasa.gov; get the pcrrn files.  There are two
MS-DOS news readers that can be obtained from bcm.tmc.edu in the "nfs"
directory.  They both require PC-NFS (from Sun) to work.  They will
both work under PC/TCP from FTP Software early this year.  Source will
be provided at that time.

"trumpet" is a NNTP based news reader for DOS which will also run under
Windows (although only as a DOS application). There is Lan Workplace
version which is also available.  It runs over packet drivers, which can
work side-by-side with a Novell Network.  For information on the Crynwr
Packet Driver Collection, send mail to <info@crynwr.com> or send a FAX to
+1-315-268-9201.  Trumpet offers a very intuitive interface with most of
the basic facilities required in a newsreader (but without some of the
'bells and whistles found in something like rn).  It has facilities for
using SMTP to forward/reply etc.  The latest version is 1.07 and is
shareware available at most main ftp sites.

trumpet       ftp.utas.edu.au:/pc/trumpet/
wintrumpet    ftp.utas.edu.au:/pc/trumpet/wintrump/*.*

"WinVN" is a public domain NNTP newsreader for Microsoft Windows and
Windows NT.  There are versions available for WINSOCK, Novell LWP, and
DEC Pathworks/LanMan.  It supports the XOVER extension, and can display
articles in thread trees.  SMTP and MAPI outgoing mail are supported.
The latest version is 0.91.4.  Sources and binaries are always available
from:

ftp.ksc.nasa.gov:[.pub.win3.winvn].
ripem.msu.edu:/pub/pc/win/winvn/titan.ksc.nasa.gov (mirror).

Details on several newsreaders for systems running "Waffle" may be
found in the FAQ posted to the comp.bbs.waffle newsgroup on a regular
basis.  At least 8 different readers are available, and all can be
obtained via ftp and mailserver from ftp.halcyon.com (look in
/pub/waffle/news).

Details on many other mail and news readers for MSDOS, Windows and OS/2
systems can be found in the FAQ posted to the comp.os.msdos.mail-news.

At least one IBM VM/SP (CMS) version of the Usenet software is
available.  It is known as PSU NetNews, and it is maintained by Linda
Littleton (lrl@psuvm.bitnet/psuvm.psu.edu).  Version 2.4 of the
software is available from LISTSERV@PSUVM.  PSU NetNews supports only
3270 terminals, and uses XEDIT as its screen driver.  Most major VM
sites appear to use this package.  NetNews supports locally-stored
news, not NNTP reading.

Since january 1993 a complete NNTP server is available for VM systems.
It provides news reading, posting and feed processing compatible to the
Unix NNTP implementations.  The code is written in IBM's VM Rexx.
It assumes that you already have installed PSU VM NETNEWS.  The VM NNTP
package, written by Kris Van Hees (gutest6@cc1.kuleuven.ac.be) who also
takes care of the maintenance.  The current version is 1.0.1 and requires
IBM's FAL TCP/IP and Arty Ecock's RXSOCKET which is available from the
IBMTCP FIELLIST on listserv@pucc.  The VM NNTP package can be obtained
from the NNTP PACKAGE on listserv@blekul11.

There is NNTP support for PSU NetNews for bulk news receipt: NNTPXFER
will poll another site for news, and NNTPRCVR will receive news sent
from a Unix NNTPXMIT process.  Either program sends the news articles
to NetNews for processing.  Contact Andy Hooper (hooper@qucdn.bitnet
or qucdn.queensu.ca) for more information, or obtain them from
listserv@qucdn in PUBLIC FILELIST.  These programs are provided with
source, and require IBM's FAL TCP/IP and Pascal.  An NNTPXMIT sender
that works in cooperation with PSU NETNEWS is available from Herman
Van Uytven (SYSTHVU@cc1.kuleuven.ac.be).

There is at least one NNTP news-reader for VM using XEDIT as its
screen manager: NNR.  Contact Paul Campbell (pc@mbunix.mitre.org) for
information.  The program requires IBM's FAL TCP/IP.  The software is
available for anonymous ftp from ftp.uni-stuttgart.de
in the directory pub/comm/news/beginner/software/nnr/*.

An NNTP news reader is available for TSO/ISPF, called NNMVS. NNMVS is
written by Steve Bacher <seb@draper.com> at Draper Laboratory.  It
requires C/370 V1R2 or SAS/C; ISPF V2; and TCP/IP for MVS (either
IBM's "FAL" or SNS).  It is now available via anonymous ftp at
ftp.uni-stuttgart.de under the directory
/pub/comm/news/beginner/software/nnmvs and from ftp.mic.ucla.edu,
directory /pub/mvs/netnews.  The current version is Version 3
Release 2.  There's also an object-code-only distribution for folks
without C compilers, but that's an at-your-own-risk distribution,
and requires the IBM C/370 run-time library.  The source code
distribution can be compiled with either C/370 or SAS/C.


Special note on "notes" and old versions of news
------------------------------------------------
Many years ago, there was another distributed "news" system called
"notes".  The "notes" software package used a different internal
organization of articles, and a different interchange format than that
of the standard Usenet software.  It was inspired by the notesfiles
available in the PLATO system and was developed independently from the
Usenet news.  Eventually, the "notes" network and Usenet were joined
via gateways doing (sometimes imperfect) protocol translation.
"notes" was written in 1980-1981 by Ray Essick and Rob Kolstad, (then)
grad students at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.  The
first public release of "notes" was at the January 1982 Usenix
conference.  The last release of notes was version 1.7; it is no
longer being actively maintained.

"B" news software is currently considered obsolete.  Unix sites
joining the Usenet should install C news or INN to ensure proper
behavior and good performance.  Most old B news software had
compiled-in limits on the number of newsgroups and the number of
articles per newsgroup; the increasing volume of news means that B
news software cannot reliably cope with a moderately-full newsfeed.


Software versions & availability
--------------------------------
You can obtain the version number of your news software by issuing
some form of "v" command to show the current version -- consult the
man page for details.  Current software is obtainable from almost any
major Usenet site as well as the sites noted in the body of the
article, above.

The following sites probably have sources to the current news software
available for anyone needing a copy:

		Site		Contact
		----		-------
		munnari		kre@munnari.oz.au
		osu-cis		postmaster@cis.ohio-state.edu
		philabs		usenet@philabs.philips.com
		pyramid		usenet@pyramid.com
		rutgers		usenet@rutgers.edu
		tektronix	news@tektronix.tek.com
		watmath		usenet@watmath.waterloo.edu
		uunet		info@uunet.uu.net

Sources for most of the news readers and software, including news
2.11, C News, "rn", and "trn" are also available in the
comp.sources.unix archives.  European sites should request the sources
from their nearest backbone site.

The "archie" service can be used to locate ftp archives containing
various news software packages.  There are regular postings in the
comp.answers newsgroup about how to use the "archie" service.

For a relatively low price, you can buy one of many CD-ROM distributions
of freely-redistributable software.  This may be cheaper than a
long-distance phone call.

Standards
---------
News programs communicate with each other according to standard protocols,
some of which are described by RFCs.  An RFC is a Request For Comment, a
de facto standard in the Internet Community.  It is a form of published
software standard, done through the Network Information Center (NIC) at SRI.
Copies of RFCs are often posted to the net and obtainable from archive sites.
Current news-related RFCs include the following:

    RFC 822 specifies the format of messages; RFC 1036 uses this.
    RFC 977 specifies NNTP, the Network News Transfer Protocol.
    RFC 1036 specifies the format of Usenet articles.
    RFC 1123 amends RFC 822.
    RFC 1153 specifies the digest format some moderated groups use.

See the accompanying posting "How to Get Information about Networks"
for instructions on getting copies of the RFCs.

Henry Spencer has a draft of a successor to RFC1036 that attempts to
document and explain all subsequent enhancements and existing practice as
implemented in the newer news systems.  This draft (often called
son-of-1036) can be obtained by anonymous ftp from ftp.zoo.toronto.edu as
/pub/news.txt.Z (the text version) or /pub/news.ps.Z (a PostScript
version).  Son-of-1036 is intended to be stand-alone reading and does not
require that one also read RFCs 822 or 1123.

Newsgroups
----------

The following newsgroups cover issues discussed in this article, and can
be consulted for recent developments.

bit.listserv.netnws-l	Discussion about NetNews on VM systems.
gnu.emacs.gnews		News reading under GNU Emacs using Weemba's Gnews.
gnu.emacs.gnus		News reading under GNU Emacs using GNUS (in English).
news.software.anu-news	VMS B-news software from Australian National Univ.
news.software.b		Discussion about B-news-compatible software.
news.software.nn	Discussion about the "nn" news reader package.
news.software.notes	Notesfile software from the Univ. of Illinois.
news.software.readers	General discussion about news reading software.
news.software.nntp	The Network News Transfer Protocol.
comp.os.msdos.mail-news	Administering mail & network news systems under MS-DOS.
comp.protocols.tcp-ip   TCP and IP network protocols.
comp.protocols.tcp-ip.ibmpc     TCP/IP for IBM(-like) personal computers.


The following periodic postings in the news.software.b newsgroup are
useful for people interested in news software.

Mark Linimon	"News.software.b: Introduction to news.software.b"
Mark Linimon	"News.software.b Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)"
Mark Linimon	"C News Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)"
Rob Robertson	"FAQ: Overview database / NOV General Information"
Tom Limoncelli	"INN FAQ Part 1/4: General Information"
Tom Limoncelli	"INN FAQ Part 2/4: Debugging Guide & Tutorial"
Tom Limoncelli	"INN FAQ Part 3/4: Operational and Misc. Questions"
Tom Limoncelli	"INN FAQ Part 4/4: Appendix A: Norman's install guide"

Acknowledgements
----------------
The preparation of this article (and Usenet itself!) was greatly
enhanced by the contributions and assistance of the following persons:
Steve Bellovin, Ray Essick, Mark Horton, Brian Kantor, Phil Lapsley,
Bob Page, Rich Salz, Tom Truscott, and Larry Wall.  Thanks, folks.

From ankh.iia.org!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!math.ohio-state.edu!deshaw.com!do-not-use-path-to-reply Sun Aug 28 11:11:58 1994
Path: ankh.iia.org!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!math.ohio-state.edu!deshaw.com!do-not-use-path-to-reply
Date: Sun, 28 Aug 1994 08:01:01 GMT
Supersedes: <CuEwxE.Gvx@deshaw.com>
Expires: Wed, 28 Sep 1994 08:01:01 GMT
Message-ID: <Cv8JLp.3A9@deshaw.com>
From: netannounce@deshaw.com (Mark Moraes)
Subject: Hints on writing style for Usenet
Newsgroups: news.announce.newusers,news.answers
Followup-To: news.newusers.questions
Approved: netannounce@deshaw.com (Mark Moraes)
Lines: 112
Xref: ankh.iia.org news.announce.newusers:263 news.answers:10102

Archive-name: usenet-writing-style/part1
Original-author: ofut@hubcap.clemson.edu (A. Jeff Offutt VI)
Comment: enhanced & edited until 5/93 by spaf@cs.purdue.edu (Gene Spafford)
Last-change: 5 July 1994 by netannounce@deshaw.com (Mark Moraes)
Changes-posted-to: news.misc,news.answers

I would like to take a moment to share some of my knowledge of writing
style.  If you read the suggestions below, remember: it's easy to agree
that they make sense but it's much harder to apply them.

References: 
 Cunningham and Pearsall, "How to Write For the World of Work"
 Strunk & White, "Elements of Style"

The above references are both excellent books.  Cunningham is a
standard in tech writing classes and won an award for the best tech
writing book from the Association for Teaching of Technical Writing.  I
was lucky enough to take a class from him as an undergraduate.  Strunk
is a standard in college composition classes.  Other ideas here come
from my own experience on the net and hints from other people.

This is a "long article." The rest of it is simply a list of pointers.

               Writing style:

 * Write *below* the readers' reading level.  The avg. person in the US
   reads at a 5th grade level (11 years of age). The avg. professional
   reads at about the 12th grade level (18 years of age).

 * Keep paragraphs short and sweet.  Keep sentences shorter and sweeter. 
   This means "concise," not cryptic.

 * White space is not wasted space -- it greatly improves clarity.
   A blank line only adds a byte to the article length, so don't be
   stingy if it will help make your meaning clearer.

 * Pick your words carefully.  Writing with precision is as important
   here as it is in any other kind of discourse.  Consider carefully
   whether what you have written can be misinterpreted, and whether
   that is something you wish to have happen.

 * People can only grasp about seven things at once.  This means ideas in a
   paragraph, major sections, etc..

 * Avoid abbreviations and acronyms, if possible, and define the ones
   you use.

 * There are several variations on any one sentence.  A passive, questioning
   or negative sentence takes longer to read.

 * "Cute" misspellings are difficult to read, especially if the reader
    is not fluent in the language involved.


               Net style:

 * Subtlety is not communicated well in written form - especially over a 
   computer.  Remember, most people who will read your posting do not
   know you.

 * The above applies to humor as well. (rec.humor, of course, not included.)
   Smileys :-), frowns :-(, winks ;-) can sometimes avoid confusion.

 * When being especially "flame-boyant", I find it helpful to go to the
   bathroom before actually sending.  Then, I often change the tone
   considerably. :-) Take a break before posting something in anger or that
   might hurt or anger others.

 * Subject lines should be used very carefully.  How much time have you
   wasted reading articles with a misleading subject line?  The "Subject:"
   header line can be edited in all the various posting programs
   (as can the "Distribution:", "Newsgroups:" and "Followup-To:" header
   lines).

 * References need to be made.  When you answer mail, you have the original
   message fresh in your mind.  When I receive your answer, I don't.

 * Do not include the entire article that you are replying to.  Cut down
   the part that you include to the absolute minimum needed to provide
   context to your reply.

 * It's *much* easier to read a mixture of upper and lower case letters.

 * Leaving out articles (such as "the," "a," "an," etc.) for "brevity"
   mangles the meaning of your sentences and takes longer to read. It saves
   you time at the expense of your reader.

 * Be careful of contextual meanings of words. For instance, I used "articles" 
   just now.  In the context of netnews, it has a different meaning than I 
   intended.

 * Make an effort to spell words correctly.  Obvious misspellings are
   jarring and distract the reader.  Every news posting program allows
   you to edit your article before posting, and most systems have some
   kind of spelling checker program that you can use on your article.

 * If your article goes over one screenful, use subheadings to organize it.
   Numbering your paragraphs is rarely helpful.

 * Just before you post your article, re-read it.  This will ensure that
   you actually wrote what you intended to write.

 * Remember - this is an international network.

 * Remember - your current or future employers may be reading your
   articles.  So might your spouse, neighbors, children, and others
   who will long-remember your gaffes.

Enough said.  

These suggestions are all easily supported by arguments and research.
There's a lot more to say, but....

From ankh.iia.org!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!math.ohio-state.edu!deshaw.com!do-not-use-path-to-reply Sun Aug 28 11:11:58 1994
Path: ankh.iia.org!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!math.ohio-state.edu!deshaw.com!do-not-use-path-to-reply
Date: Sun, 28 Aug 1994 08:01:10 GMT
Supersedes: <CuEwxJ.GxH@deshaw.com>
Expires: Wed, 28 Sep 1994 08:01:10 GMT
Message-ID: <Cv8JLy.3Bx@deshaw.com>
From: emv@msen.com (Edward Vielmetti)
Subject: What is Usenet?  A second opinion.
Newsgroups: news.announce.newusers,news.admin.misc,news.answers
Followup-To: news.newusers.questions
Reply-To: emv@msen.com (Edward Vielmetti)
Approved: netannounce@deshaw.com (Mark Moraes)
Lines: 471
Xref: ankh.iia.org news.announce.newusers:264 news.admin.misc:13854 news.answers:10104

Original-author: emv@msen.com (Edward Vielmetti)
Original-date: 26 Dec 1991
Archive-name: what-is-usenet/part2
Last-change: 16 Aug 94 by netannounce@deshaw.com (Mark Moraes)
Changes-posted-to: news.misc,news.admin.misc,news.answers

The periodically posted "What is Usenet?" posting goes:
>
>Archive-name: what-is-usenet/part1
>Original-from: chip@tct.com (Chip Salzenberg)
>
>The first thing to understand about Usenet is that it is widely
>misunderstood.  Every day on Usenet, the "blind men and the elephant"
>phenomenon is evident, in spades.  In my opinion, more flame wars
>arise because of a lack of understanding of the nature of Usenet than
>from any other source.  And consider that such flame wars arise, of
>necessity, among people who are on Usenet.  Imagine, then, how poorly
>understood Usenet must be by those outside!

Imagine, indeed, how poorly understood Usenet must be by those who
have the determined will to explain what it is by what it is not?
    "Usenet is not a bicycle.  Usenet is not a fish."  

Any posting like this that doesn't get revised every few months quickly
becomes a quaint historical document, which at best yields a
prescriptivist grammar for how the net "should be" and at worst tries
to shape how the Usenet "really is".

The first thing to understand about Usenet is that it is big.  Really big.
Netnews (and netnews-like things) have percolated into many more places
than are even known about by people who track such things.  There is no
grand unified list of everything that's out there, no way to know beforehand
who is going to read what you post, and no history books to guide you that
would let you know even a small piece of any of the in jokes that pop
up in most newsgroups.  Distrust any grand sweeping statements about
"Usenet", because you can always find a counterexample.  (Distrust this
message, too :-).

>Any essay on the nature of Usenet cannot ignore the erroneous
>impressions held by many Usenet users.  Therefore, this article will
>treat falsehoods first.  Keep reading for truth.  (Beauty, alas, is
>not relevant to Usenet.)

Any essay on the nature of Usenet that doesn't change every so often
to reflect its ever changing nature is erroneous.  Usenet is not a
matter of "truth", "beauty", "falsehood", "right", or "wrong", except
insofar as it is a conduit for people to talk about these and many
other things.

>WHAT USENET IS NOT
>------------------

> 1. Usenet is not an organization.

Usenet is organized.  There are a number of people who contribute
to its continued organization -- people who post lists of things,
people who collect "frequently asked questions" postings, people
who give out or sell newsfeeds, people who keep archives of groups,
people who put those archives into web servers, people who turn
those archives into printed books, talk shows, and game shows.
This organization is accompanied by a certain amount of disorganization
-- news software that doesn't always work just right, discussions
that wander from place to place, parts of the net that resist easy
classification.  Order and disorder are part of the same whole.

In the short run, the person or group who runs the system that you read
news from and the sites which that system exchanges news with control
who gets a feed, which articles are propogated to what places and how
quickly, and who can post articles.  In the long run, there are a number
of alternatives for Usenet access, including companies which can sell you
feeds for a fee, and user groups which provide feeds for their members;
while you are on your own right now as you type this in, over the long
haul there are many choices you have on how to deal with the net.

> 2. Usenet is not a democracy.

Usenet has some very "democratic" sorts of traditions.  Traffic is
ultimately generated by readers, and people who read news ultimately
control what will and will not be discussed on the net.  While the
details of any individual person's news reading system may limit or
constrain what is easy or convenient for them to do right now, in the
long haul the decisions on what is or is not happening rests with the
people.

On the other hand, there have been (and always will be) people who
have been on the net longer than you or I have been, and who have a
strong sense of tradition and the way things are normally done.  There
are certain things which are simply "not done".  Any sort of decision
that involves counting the number of people yes or no on a particular
vote has to cope with the entrenched interests who aren't about to
change their habits, their posting software, or the formatting of
their headers just to satisfy a new idea.

> 3. Usenet is not fair.

Usenet is fair, cocktail party, town meeting, notes of a secret cabal,
chatter in the hallway at a conference, friday night fish fry,
post-coital gossip, conversations overhead on an airplane, and a bunch
of other things.

> 4. Usenet is not a right.

Usenet is a right, a left, a jab, and a sharp uppercut to the jaw.
The postman hits!  You have new mail.

> 5. Usenet is not a public utility.

Usenet is carried in large part over circuits provided by public
utilities, including the public switched phone network and lines
leased from public carriers.  In some countries the national
networking authority has some amount of monopoly power over the
provision of these services, and thus the flow of information is
controlled in some manner by the whims and desires (and pricing
structure) of the public utility.

Most Usenet sites are operated by organizations which are not public
utilities, not in the ordinary sense.  You rarely get your newsfeed
from National Telecom, it's more likely to be National U. or Private
Networking Inc.

> 6. Usenet is not an academic network.

Usenet is a network with many parts to it.  Some parts are academic,
some parts aren't.  Usenet is clearly not a commercial network like
Sprintnet or Tymenet, and it's not an academic network like BITNET.
But parts of BITNET are parts of Usenet, though some of the traffic on
usenet violates the BITNET acceptable use guidelines, even though the
people who are actually on BITNET sites reading these groups don't
necessarily mind that they are violating the guidelines.

Whew.  Usenet is a lot of networks, and none of them.  You name
another network, and it's not Usenet.

> 7. Usenet is not an advertising medium.

A man walks into a crowded theater and shouts, "ANYBODY WANT TO BUY A
CAR?"  The crowd stands up and shouts back, "WRONG THEATER!"

Ever since the first dinette set for sale in New Jersey was advertised
around the world, people have been using Usenet for personal and for
corporate gain.  If you're careful about it and don't make people mad,
Usenet can be an effective means of letting the world know about
things which you find valuable.  But take care...

- Marketing hype will be flamed immediately.  If you need to post a
  press release, edit it first.
- Speak nice of your competitors.  If your product is better than
  theirs, don't say theirs is "brain damaged", "broken", or "worthless".
  After all someone else might have the same opinion of your product.
- Dance around the issue.  Post relevant information (like price, availability
  and features) but make sure you don't send everything out.  If someone
  wants the hard sell let them request it from you by e-mail.
- Don't be an idiot.  If you sell toasters for a living, don't spout off
  in net.breadcrumbs about an international conspiracy to poison pigeons
  orchestrated by the secret Usenet Cabal; toaster-buyers will get word
  of your reputation for idiocy and avoid your toasters even if they are
  the best in the market.
- Disclaimers are worthless.  If you post from foobar.com, and put a note
  on the bottom "not the opinions of foobar inc.,", you may satisfy the
  lawyers but your corporate reputation still will be affected.  To maintain
  a separate net.identity, post from a different site.

> 8. Usenet is not the Internet.

It would be very difficult to sustain the level of traffic that's
flowing on Usenet today if it weren't for people sending news feeds
over dedicated circuits with TCP/IP on the Internet.  That's not
to say that if a sudden disease wiped out all RS/6000s and Cisco
routers that form the NSFnet backbone, CIX hub, and MAE East
interconnect, that some people wouldn't be inconvenienced or cut
off from the net entirely.  (Based on the reliability of the MAE
East, perhaps the "sudden disease" has already hit?)

There's a certain symbiosis between netnews and Internet connections;
the cost of maintaining a full newsfeed with NNTP is so much less
than doing the same thing with dialup UUCP that sites which depend
enough on the information flowing through news are some of the most
eager to get on the Internet.

The Usenet is not the Internet.  Certain governments have laws which
prevent other countries from getting onto the Internet, but that
doesn't stop netnews from flowing in and out.  Chances are pretty good
that a site which has a usenet feed you can send mail to from the
Internet, but even that's not guaranteed in some odd cases (news feeds
sent on CD-ROM, for instance).

> 9. Usenet is not a UUCP network.

UUCP carried the first netnews traffic, and a considerable number
of sites get their newsfeed using UUCP.  But it's also fed using
NNTP, mag tapes, CD-ROMs, and printed out on paper to be tacked up
on bulletin boards and pasted on refrigerators.

>10. Usenet is not a United States network.

A 1991 analysis of the top 1000 Usenet sites showed about 58% US
sites, 15% unknown, 8% Germany, 6% Canada, 2-3% each the UK, Japan,
and Australia, and the rest mostly scattered around Europe.  Things
have no doubt changed since then, but I don't have that data close
at hand.

The state of California is the center of the net, with about 14% of
the mapped top sites there.  The Washington, DC area is also the center
of the net, with several large providers headquartered there.  You
can read netnews on all seven continents, including Antarctica.

If you're looking for a somewhat less US-centered view of the world,
try reading regional newsgroups from various different states or
groups from various far-away places (which depending on where you are
at could be Japanese, German, Canadian, or Australian).  There are a
lot of people out there who are different from you.

>11. Usenet is not a UNIX network.

Well...ok, if you don't have a UNIX machine, you can read news.  In
fact, there are substantial sets of newsgroups (bit.*) which are
transported and gatewayed primarily through IBM VM systems, and a set
of newsgroups (vmsnet.*) which has major traffic through DEC VMS
systems.  Reasonable news relay software runs on Macs (uAccess), Amiga
(a C news port), MS-DOS (Waffle), and no doubt quite a few more.  I'm
was typing on a DOS machine when I first wrote this sentence, and it's
been edited on Macs and X terminals since then.

There is a certain culture about the net that has grown up on Unix
machines, which occasionally runs into fierce clashes with the
culture that has grown up on IBM machines (LISTSERV), Commodore
64's (B1FF 1S A K00L D00D), MS-DOS Fidonet systems, commercial chat
systems (America Online), and "family oriented" systems (Prodigy).
If you are not running on a Unix machine or if you don't have one
handy there are things about the net which are going to be puzzling
or maddening, much as if you are reading a BITNET list and you
don't have a CMS system handy.

>12. Usenet is not an ASCII network.

There are reasonably standard ways to type Japanese, Russian, Swedish,
Finnish, Icelandic, and Vietnamese that use the ASCII character set to
encode your national character set.  The fundamental assumption of
most netnews software is that you're dealing with something that looks
a lot like US ASCII, but if you're willing to work within those bounds
and be clever it's quite possible to use ASCII to discuss things in
any language.

>13. Usenet is not software.

Usenet software has gotten much better over time to cope with the ever
increasing aggregate flow of netnews and (in some cases) the extreme
volume that newsgroups generate.  If you were reading news now with
the same news software that was running 10 years ago, you'd never be
able to keep up.  Your system would choke and die and spend all of its
time either processing incoming news or expiring old news.  Without
software and constant improvements to same, Usenet would not be here.

There is no "standard" Usenet software, but there are standards for
what Usenet articles look like, and what sites are expected to do with
them.  It's possible to write a fairly simple minded news system
directly from the standards documents and be reasonably sure that it
will work with other systems, though thorough testing is necessary if
it's going to be used in the real world.  You should not assume that
all systems have been tested before they have been deployed.

>WHAT USENET IS
>--------------

Usenet is in part about people.  There are people who are "on the
net", who read rec.humor.funny every so often, who know the same jokes
you do, who tell you stories about funny or stupid things they've
seen.  Usenet is the set of people who know what Usenet is.

Usenet is a bunch of bits, lots of bits, millions of bits each day
full of nonsense, argument, reasonable technical discussion, scholarly
analysis, and naughty pictures.

Usenet (or netnews) is about newsgroups (or groups).  Not bboards,
not LISTSERV, not areas, not conferences, not mailing lists, they're
groups.  If someone calls them something else they're not looking
at things from a Usenet perspective.  That's not to say that they're
"incorrect" -- who is to say what is the right way of viewing the
world? -- just that it's not the Net Way.  In particular, if they
read Usenet news all mixed in with their important every day mail
(like reminders of who to go to lunch with Thursday) they're not
seeing netnews the way most people see netnews.  Some newsgroups
are also (or "really") Fidonet echoes (alt.bbs.allsysop), BITNET
LISTSERV groups (bit.listserv.pacs-l), or even both at once!
(misc.handicap).  So be prepared for some violent culture clashes
if someone refers to you favorite net.hangout as a "board".

Newsgroups have names.  These names are both very arbitrary and very
meaningful.  People will fight for months or years about what to name
a newsgroup.  If a newsgroup doesn't have a name (even a dumb one like
misc.misc) it's not a newsgroup.  In particular newsgroup names have
dots in them, and people abbreviate them by taking the first letters
of the names (so alt.folklore.urban is afu, and soc.culture.china is
scc).

>DIVERSITY
>---------

There is nothing vague about Usenet.  (Vague, vague, it's filling up
millions of dollars worth of disk drives and you want to call it
vague?  Sheesh!)  It may be hard to pin down what is and isn't part of
usenet at the fringes, but netnews has tended to grow amoeba-like to
encompass more or less anything in its path, so you can be pretty sure
that if it isn't Usenet now it will be once it's been in contact with
Usenet for long enough.

There are a lot of systems that are part of Usenet.  Chances are that
you don't have any clue where all your articles will end up going or
what news reading software will be used to look at them.  Any message
of any appreciable size or with any substantial personal opinion in it
is probably in violation of some network use policy or local ordinance
in some state or municipality.

>CONTROL
>-------

Some people are control freaks.  They want to present their opinion of
how things are, who runs what, what is OK and not OK to do, which
things are "good" and which are "bad".  You will run across them every
so often.  They serve a useful purpose; there's a lot of chaos
inherent in a largely self-governing system, and people with a strong
sense of purpose and order can make things a lot easier.  Just don't
believe everything they say.  In particular, don't believe them when
they say "don't believe everything they say", because if they post the
same answers month after month some other people are bound to believe
them.

If you run a news system you can be a petty tyrant.  You can decide
what groups to carry, who to kick off your system, how to expire old
news so that you keep 60 days worth of misc.petunias but expire
rec.pets.fish almost immediately.  In the long run you will probably
be happiest if you make these decisions relatively even-handedly since
that's the posture least likely to get people to notice that you
actually do have control.

Your right to exercise control over netnews usually ends at your
neighbor's spool directory.  Pleading, cajoling, appealing to good
nature, or paying your news feed will generally yield a better
response than flames on the net.


>PERIODIC POSTINGS
>-----------------

One of the ways to exert control over the workings of the net is to
take the time to put together a relatively accurate set of answers to
some frequently asked questions and post it every month.  If you do
this right, the article will be stored for months on sites around the
world, and you'll be able to tell people "idiot, don't ask this
question until you've read the FAQ, especially answer #42".

The periodic postings include several lists of newsgroups, along with
comments as to what the contents of the groups are supposed to be.
Anyone who has the time and energy can put together a list like this,
and if they post it for several months running they will get some
measure of net.recognition for themselves as being the "official"
keeper of the "official" list.  But don't delude yourself into
thinking that anything on the net is official in any real way; the
lists serve to perpetuate common myths about who's talking about what
where, but that's no guarantee that things will actually work out that
way.


>PROPAGATION
>-----------
In the old days, when it cost real money to make long distance
phone calls to send netnews around the world, some people were
able to get their management to look the other way when they
racked up multi-thousand dollar phone bills.  These people were
called the "backbone cabal", and they had a disproportionate
influence on news traffic because, after all, they were managing
to get someone else to pay for it.

Nowadays, communications costs are (for many sites) buried in with
a general "internet service".  If you want to have a disproportionate
influence on news traffic, you need to be able to beg, borrow, buy or
steal access to great big disk drives (so that you can keep a full
feed) and lots of memory (so that you can feed a lot of sites at once).

There is a vigorous, competetive cash market for news feeds; you
can get a newsfeed from a local provider via modem or via Internet
in all 50 states of the USA, more than 50 countries, and via
satellite in most of North America.  The notion that any one system
is a "pre-eminent site" is outdated; communications costs have
gotten low enough, and traffic high enough, that if any one node
were to get wiped out completely it would still be possible for
everyone to be back on the net within weeks.

>NEWSGROUP CREATION
>------------------
You're better off starting up a mailing list.  

If you *must* start a newsgroup, you're best off starting a mailing
list anyway - even an informal one - to plan the newsgroup.  Get
a half dozen people to all agree on the basic goals, topics of
conversation, etc.  Figure that you have about two months to agree
that there's something worth talking about, get a hundred other people
to see your way, and run the vote.

There are time-honored rituals for newsgroup creation, designed 
mostly to minimize the amount of work that news administrators
(the people who have managed to corral a bunch of disk space to
store news) have to do; in particular, this involves minimizing
the number of mail messages they have to read every day.  The
process involves handing off responsibility to a group of people
well-steeped in ritual (the Usenet Volunteer Votetakers) who can
run through the process for you.

>THE CAMEL'S NOSE?
>-----------------
I'm not sure what camels have to do with anything.  The only real
camel that has anything to do with Usenet is Larry Wall and Randall
Schwartz's "Programming perl", aka the "Camel Book", published by
O'Reilley.  Larry wrote "rn", one of the second generation of news
readers that let you ignore some news that you didn't want to read.
The process of getting rid of unread news got to be a complex enough
decision process that he wrote a programming language (perl) to help
him write a newsreader to replace "rn".

He never finished the new newsreader, though that's not at all 
surprising.  "perl" is a pretty useful language, though.  If you
can understand "perl" you'll have a much greater appreciation for
the ability of news admins to get rid of things they don't want to
see.

There are easily $12M worth of computers that I can point to that
are responsible for the transportation of netnews around the world,
plus another $12M per year in communications bills spent to keep
news flowing.  Much has been made of the risk that miscreants will
do something horrendous that will mean The Death Of The Net As We
Know It.  It seems unlikely, however, that this collective enterprise
will be endangered by any one user's actions, no matter how bold
they might be about trying to propogate their message against the
collective will of the rest of the net trying to keep them in check.

>IF YOU ARE UNHAPPY...
>---------------------
If you are unhappy, what are you doing reading netnews?  Take a
break.  Stretch.  Walk outside in the sunshine or the snow.  Relax
your brain, watch some TV for a while, listen to the radio.  If
you need to communicate with someone else, give them a phone call,
or see them in person.

It's good to not spend too much time all in the same place with
a fixed focus - rest your eyes everyone once in a while by
looking around at something else.  

Don't worry about missing anything, it'll all get re-posted
if it's any good.

>WORDS TO LIVE BY #1:
>--------------------
  Hours can slip by, people can come and go, and you'll be locked
  in Cyberspace.  Remember to do your work!
                                     -- Brendan Kehoe

>WORDS TO LIVE BY #2:
>--------------------
  Part of the apprenticeship for a network guru was knowing enough
  other people and attending enough conferences to find out where
  things were hidden.  This worked just fine when the Internet was
  a small network.
                                     -- Ed Krol

>WORDS TO LIVE BY #3:
>--------------------
  The second newsreader philosophy believes that you want to read
  only 10 percent of the articles in any given group....  This
  philosophy is far more realistic.
  				     -- Adam Engst


From ankh.iia.org!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!math.ohio-state.edu!deshaw.com!do-not-use-path-to-reply Sun Aug 28 11:11:58 1994
Path: ankh.iia.org!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!math.ohio-state.edu!deshaw.com!do-not-use-path-to-reply
Date: Sun, 28 Aug 1994 08:01:19 GMT
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Expires: Wed, 28 Sep 1994 08:01:19 GMT
Message-ID: <Cv8JM7.3DJ@deshaw.com>
From: netannounce@deshaw.com (Mark Moraes)
Subject: What is Usenet?
Newsgroups: news.announce.newusers,news.admin.misc,news.answers
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Archive-name: what-is-usenet/part1
Original-from: chip@tct.com (Chip Salzenberg)
Comment: edited until 5/93 by spaf@cs.purdue.edu (Gene Spafford)
Last-change: 5 July 1994 by netannounce@deshaw.com (Mark Moraes)
Changes-posted-to: news.misc,news.admin.misc,news.answers


The first thing to understand about Usenet is that it is widely
misunderstood.  Every day on Usenet, the "blind men and the elephant"
phenomenon is evident, in spades.  In my opinion, more flame wars
arise because of a lack of understanding of the nature of Usenet than
from any other source.  And consider that such flame wars arise, of
necessity, among people who are on Usenet.  Imagine, then, how poorly
understood Usenet must be by those outside!

Any essay on the nature of Usenet cannot ignore the erroneous
impressions held by many Usenet users.  Therefore, this article will
treat falsehoods first.  Keep reading for truth.  (Beauty, alas, is
not relevant to Usenet.)

WHAT USENET IS NOT
------------------
 1. Usenet is not an organization.

    No person or group has authority over Usenet as a whole.  No one
    controls who gets a news feed, which articles are propagated
    where, who can post articles, or anything else.  There is no
    "Usenet Incorporated," nor is there a "Usenet User's Group."
    You're on your own.

    Granted, there are various activities organized by means of Usenet
    newsgroups.  The newsgroup creation process is one such
    activity.  But it would be a mistake to equate Usenet with the
    organized activities it makes possible.  If they were to stop
    tomorrow, Usenet would go on without them.

 2. Usenet is not a democracy.

    Since there is no person or group in charge of Usenet as a whole
    -- i.e. there is no Usenet "government" -- it follows that Usenet
    cannot be a democracy, autocracy, or any other kind of "-acy."
    (But see "The Camel's Nose?" below.)

 3. Usenet is not fair.

    After all, who shall decide what's fair?  For that matter, if
    someone is behaving unfairly, who's going to stop him?  Neither
    you nor I, that's certain.

 4. Usenet is not a right.

    Some people misunderstand their local right of "freedom of speech"
    to mean that they have a legal right to use others' computers to
    say what they wish in whatever way they wish, and the owners of
    said computers have no right to stop them.

    Those people are wrong.  Freedom of speech also means freedom not
    to speak.  If I choose not to use my computer to aid your speech,
    that is my right.  Freedom of the press belongs to those who own
    one.

 5. Usenet is not a public utility.

    Some Usenet sites are publicly funded or subsidized.  Most of
    them, by plain count, are not.  There is no government monopoly
    on Usenet, and little or no government control.

 6. Usenet is not an academic network.

    It is no surprise that many Usenet sites are universities,
    research labs or other academic institutions.  Usenet originated
    with a link between two universities, and the exchange of ideas
    and information is what such institutions are all about.  But the
    passage of years has changed Usenet's character.  Today, by plain
    count, most Usenet sites are commercial entities.

 7. Usenet is not an advertising medium.

    Because of Usenet's roots in academia, and because Usenet depends
    so heavily on cooperation (sometimes among competitors), custom
    dictates that advertising be kept to a minimum.  It is tolerated
    if it is infrequent, informative, and low-hype.

    The "comp.newprod" newsgroup is NOT an exception to this rule:
    product announcements are screened by a moderator in an attempt to
    keep the hype-to-information ratio in check.

    If you must engage in flackery for your company, use the "biz"
    hierarchy, which is explicitly "advertising-allowed", and which
    (like all of Usenet) is carried only by those sites that want it.

 8. Usenet is not the Internet.

    The Internet is a wide-ranging network, parts of which are
    subsidized by various governments.  It carries many kinds of
    traffic, of which Usenet is only one.  And the Internet is only
    one of the various networks carrying Usenet traffic.

 9. Usenet is not a UUCP network.

    UUCP is a protocol (actually a "protocol suite," but that's a
    technical quibble) for sending data over point-to-point
    connections, typically using dialup modems.  Sites use UUCP to
    carry many kinds of traffic, of which Usenet is only one.  And
    UUCP is only one of the various transports carrying Usenet
    traffic.

10. Usenet is not a United States network.

    It is true that Usenet originated in the United States, and the
    fastest growth in Usenet sites has been there.  Nowadays, however,
    Usenet extends worldwide.

    The heaviest concentrations of Usenet sites outside the U.S. seem
    to be in Canada, Europe, Australia and Japan.

    Keep Usenet's worldwide nature in mind when you post articles.
    Even those who can read your language may have a culture wildly
    different from yours.  When your words are read, they might not
    mean what you think they mean.

11. Usenet is not a UNIX network.

    Don't assume that everyone is using "rn" on a UNIX machine.  Among
    the systems used to read and post to Usenet are Vaxen running VMS,
    IBM mainframes, Amigas, Macintoshes and MS-DOS PCs.

12. Usenet is not an ASCII network.

    The A in ASCII stands for "American".  Sites in other countries
    often use character sets better suited to their language(s) of
    choice; such are typically, though not always, supersets of ASCII.
    Even in the United States, ASCII is not universally used: IBM
    mainframes use (shudder) EBCDIC.  Ignore non-ASCII sites if you
    like, but they exist.

13. Usenet is not software.

    There are dozens of software packages used at various sites to
    transport and read Usenet articles.  So no one program or package
    can be called "the Usenet software."

    Software designed to support Usenet traffic can be (and is) used
    for other kinds of communication, usually without risk of mixing
    the two.  Such private communication networks are typically kept
    distinct from Usenet by the invention of newsgroup names different
    from the universally-recognized ones.

Well, enough negativity.

WHAT USENET IS
--------------
Usenet is the set of people who exchange articles tagged with one or
more universally-recognized labels, called "newsgroups" (or "groups"
for short).

(Note that the term "newsgroup" is correct, while "area," "base,"
"board," "bboard," "conference," "round table," "SIG," etc.  are
incorrect.  If you want to be understood, be accurate.)

DIVERSITY
---------
If the above definition of Usenet sounds vague, that's because it is.

It is almost impossible to generalize over all Usenet sites in any
non-trivial way.  Usenet encompasses government agencies, large
universities, high schools, businesses of all sizes, home computers of
all descriptions, etc, etc.

(In response to the above paragraphs, it has been written that there
is nothing vague about a network that carries megabytes of traffic per
day.  I agree.  But at the fringes of Usenet, traffic is not so heavy.
In the shadowy world of news-mail gateways and mailing lists, the line
between Usenet and not-Usenet becomes very hard to draw.)

CONTROL
-------
Every administrator controls his own site.  No one has any real
control over any site but his own.

The administrator gets her power from the owner of the system she
administers.  As long as her job performance pleases the owner, she
can do whatever she pleases, up to and including cutting off Usenet
entirely.  Them's the breaks.

Sites are not entirely without influence on their neighbors, however.
There is a vague notion of "upstream" and "downstream" related to the
direction of high-volume news flow.  To the extent that "upstream"
sites decide what traffic they will carry for their "downstream"
neighbors, those "upstream" sites have some influence on their
neighbors' participation in Usenet.  But such influence is usually
easy to circumvent; and heavy-handed manipulation typically results in
a backlash of resentment.

PERIODIC POSTINGS
-----------------
To help hold Usenet together, various articles (including this one)
are periodically posted in newsgroups in the "news" hierarchy.  These
articles are provided as a public service by various volunteers.
They are few but valuable.  Learn them well.

Among the periodic postings are lists of active newsgroups, both
"standard" (for lack of a better term) and "alternative."  These
lists, maintained by David Lawrence, reflect his personal view of
Usenet, and as such are not "official" in any sense of the word.
However, if you're looking for a description of subjects discussed on
Usenet, or if you're starting up a new Usenet site, David's lists are
an eminently reasonable place to start.

PROPAGATION
-----------
In the old days, when UUCP over long-distance dialup lines was the
dominant means of article transmission, a few well-connected sites had
real influence in determining which newsgroups would be carried where.
Those sites called themselves "the backbone."

But things have changed.  Nowadays, even the smallest Internet site
has connectivity the likes of which the backbone admin of yesteryear
could only dream.  In addition, in the U.S., the advent of cheaper
long-distance calls and high-speed modems has made long-distance
Usenet feeds thinkable for smaller companies.

There is only one pre-eminent site for UUCP transport of Usenet in the
U.S., namely UUNET.  But UUNET isn't a player in the propagation wars,
because it never refuses any traffic.  UUNET charges by the minute,
after all; and besides, to refuse based on content might jeopardize
its legal status as an enhanced service provider.

All of the above applies to the U.S.  In Europe, different cost
structures favored the creation of strictly controlled hierarchical
organizations with central registries.  This is all very unlike the
traditional mode of U.S. sites (pick a name, get the software, get a
feed, you're on).  Europe's "benign monopolies," long uncontested, now
face competition from looser organizations patterned after the U.S.
model.

NEWSGROUP CREATION
------------------
The document that describes the current procedure for creating a new
newsgroup is entitled "How To Create A New Newsgroup."  Its common
name, however, is "the guidelines."

If you follow the guidelines, it is probable that your group will be
created and will be widely propagated.

HOWEVER: Because of the nature of Usenet, there is no way for any user
to enforce the results of a newsgroup vote (or any other decision, for
that matter).  Therefore, for your new newsgroup to be propagated
widely, you must not only follow the letter of the guidelines; you
must also follow its spirit.  And you must not allow even a whiff of
shady dealings or dirty tricks to mar the vote.  In other words, don't
tick off system administrators; they will get their revenge.

So, you may ask: How is a new user supposed to know anything about the
"spirit" of the guidelines?  Obviously, he can't.  This fact leads
inexorably to the following recommendation:

 >> If you are a new user, don't try to create a new newsgroup. <<

If you have a good newsgroup idea, then read the "news.groups"
newsgroup for a while (six months, at least) to find out how things
work.  If you're too impatient to wait six months, then you really
need to learn; read "news.groups" for a year instead.  If you just
can't wait, find a Usenet old hand to run the vote for you.

Readers may think this advice unnecessarily strict.  Ignore it at your
peril.  It is embarrassing to speak before learning.  It is foolish to
jump into a society you don't understand with your mouth open.  And it
is futile to try to force your will on people who can tune you out
with the press of a key.

THE CAMEL'S NOSE?
-----------------
As was observed above in "What Usenet Is Not," Usenet as a whole is
not a democracy.  However, there is exactly one feature of Usenet that
has a form of democracy: newsgroup creation.

A new newsgroup is unlikely to be widely propagated unless its sponsor
follows the newsgroup creation guidelines; and the current guidelines
require a new newsgroup to pass an open vote.

There are those who consider the newsgroup creation process to be a
remarkably powerful form of democracy, since without any coercion, its
decisions are almost always carried out.  In their view, the
democratic aspect of newsgroup creation is the precursor to an
organized and democratic Usenet Of The Future.

On the other hand, some consider the democratic aspect of the
newsgroup creation process a sham and a fraud, since there is no power
of enforcement behind its decisions, and since there appears little
likelihood that any such power of enforcement will ever be given it.
For them, the appearance of democracy is only a tool used to keep
proponents of flawed newsgroup proposals from complaining about their
losses.

So, is Usenet on its way to full democracy?  Or will property rights
and mistrust of central authority win the day?  Beats me.

IF YOU ARE UNHAPPY...
---------------------
Property rights being what they are, there is no higher authority on
Usenet than the people who own the machines on which Usenet traffic is
carried.  If the owner of the machine you use says, "We will not carry
alt.sex on this machine," and you are not happy with that order, you
have no Usenet recourse.  What can we outsiders do, after all?

That doesn't mean you are without options.  Depending on the nature of
your site, you may have some internal political recourse.  Or you might
find external pressure helpful.  Or, with a minimal investment, you can
get a feed of your own from somewhere else. Computers capable of taking
Usenet feeds are down in the $500 range now, UNIX-capable boxes are going
for under $2000 and there are several freely-redistributable UNIX-like
operating systems (NetBSD, FreeBSD, 386BSD and Linux from ftp sites all
around the world, complete with source code and all the software needed
to run a Usenet site) and at least two commercial UNIX or UNIX-like
systems in the $100 price range.

No matter what, though, appealing to "Usenet" won't help.  Even if
those who read such an appeal are sympathetic to your cause, they will
almost certainly have even less influence at your site than you do.

By the same token, if you don't like what some user at another site is
doing, only the administrator and owner of that site have any
authority to do anything about it.  Persuade them that the user in
question is a problem for them, and they might do something -- if they
feel like it, that is.

If the user in question is the administrator or owner of the site from
which she posts, forget it; you can't win.  If you can, arrange for
your newsreading software to ignore articles from her; and chalk one
up to experience.

WORDS TO LIVE BY #1:
 USENET AS SOCIETY
--------------------
  Those who have never tried electronic communication may not be aware
  of what a "social skill" really is.  One social skill that must be
  learned, is that other people have points of view that are not only
  different, but *threatening*, to your own.  In turn, your opinions may
  be threatening to others.  There is nothing wrong with this.  Your
  beliefs need not be hidden behind a facade, as happens with
  face-to-face conversation.  Not everybody in the world is a bosom
  buddy, but you can still have a meaningful conversation with them.
  The person who cannot do this lacks in social skills.

                                     -- Nick Szabo

WORDS TO LIVE BY #2:
 USENET AS ANARCHY  
--------------------
  Anarchy means having to put up with things that really piss you off.

                                     -- Unknown

From ankh.iia.org!uunet!spool.mu.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!math.ohio-state.edu!deshaw.com!do-not-use-path-to-reply Sun Aug 28 10:20:26 1994
Path: ankh.iia.org!uunet!spool.mu.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!math.ohio-state.edu!deshaw.com!do-not-use-path-to-reply
Date: Sun, 28 Aug 1994 08:00:14 GMT
Supersedes: <CuEwwB.GKr@deshaw.com>
Expires: Wed, 28 Sep 1994 08:00:14 GMT
Message-ID: <Cv8JKE.2z3@deshaw.com>
From: netannounce@deshaw.com (Mark Moraes)
Subject: A Primer on How to Work With the Usenet Community
Newsgroups: news.announce.newusers,news.answers
Followup-To: news.newusers.questions
Approved: netannounce@deshaw.com (Mark Moraes)
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Archive-name: usenet-primer/part1
Original-author: chuq@apple.COM (Chuq Von Rospach)
Comment: enhanced & edited until 5/93 by spaf@cs.purdue.edu (Gene Spafford)
Last-change: 5 July 1994 by netannounce@deshaw.com (Mark Moraes)
Changes-posted-to: news.misc,news.answers


              A Primer on How to Work With the USENET Community
                             Chuq Von Rospach 



  *** You now have access to Usenet, a network of thousands of
  computers.  Other documents or your system administrator will provide
  detailed technical documentation.  This message describes the Usenet
  culture and customs that have developed over time.  All new users should
  read this message to find out how Usenet works. ***
  *** (Old users could read it, too, to refresh their memories.)  ***

  USENET is a large collection of computers that share data with each
  other.  It is the people on these computers that make USENET worth
  the effort to read and maintain, and for USENET to function properly
  those people must be able to interact in productive ways.  This
  document is intended as a guide to using the net in ways that will
  be pleasant and productive for everyone.

  This document is not intended to teach you how to use USENET.
  Instead, it is a guide to using it politely, effectively and
  efficiently.  Communication by computer is new to almost everybody,
  and there are certain aspects that can make it a frustrating
  experience until you get used to them.  This document should help
  you avoid the worst traps.

  The easiest way to learn how to use USENET is to watch how others
  use it.  Start reading the news and try to figure out what people
  are doing and why.  After a couple of weeks you will start
  understanding why certain things are done and what things shouldn't
  be done.  There are documents available describing the technical
  details of how to use the software.  These are different depending
  on which programs you use to access the news.  You can get copies of
  these from your system administrator.  If you do not know who that
  person is, they can be contacted on most systems by mailing to
  account "usenet".


           Never Forget that the Person on the Other Side is Human.

  Because your interaction with the network is through a computer it is easy
  to forget that there are people "out there." Situations arise where
  emotions erupt into a verbal free-for-all that can lead to hurt feelings.

  Please remember that people all over the world are reading your words.  Do
  not attack people if you cannot persuade them with your presentation of
  the facts.  Screaming, cursing, and abusing others only serves to make
  people think less of you and less willing to help you when you need it.

  If you are upset at something or someone, wait until you have had a
  chance to calm down and think about it.  A cup of (decaf!) coffee or
  a good night's sleep works wonders on your perspective.  Hasty words
  create more problems than they solve.  Try not to say anything to
  others you would not say to them in person in a room full of people.

	    Don't Blame System Admins for their Users' Behavior.

  Sometimes, you may find it necessary to write to a system administrator
  about something concerning his or her site.  Maybe it is a case of the
  software not working, or a control message escaped, or maybe one of the
  users at that site has done something you feel requires comment.  No matter
  how steamed you may be, be polite to the sysadmin -- he or she may not have
  any idea of what you are going to say, and may not have any part in the
  incidents involved.  By being civil and temperate, you are more likely to
  obtain their courteous attention and assistance.

      Never assume that a person is speaking for their organization.

  Many people who post to Usenet do so from machines at their office or
  school.  Despite that, never assume that the person is speaking for the
  organization that they are posting their articles from (unless the
  person explicitly says so).  Some people put explicit disclaimers to
  this effect in their messages, but this is a good general rule.  If you
  find an article offensive, consider taking it up with the person
  directly, or ignoring it.  Learn about "kill files" in your newsreader,
  and other techniques for ignoring people whose postings you find
  offensive.

		    Be Careful What You Say About Others.

  Please remember -- you read netnews; so do as many as 3,000,000 other
  people.  This group quite possibly includes your boss, your friend's
  boss, your girl friend's brother's best friend and one of your
  father's beer buddies.  Information posted on the net can come back
  to haunt you or the person you are talking about.

  Think twice before you post personal information about yourself or
  others.  This applies especially strongly to groups like soc.singles
  and alt.sex but even postings in groups like talk.politics.misc have
  included information about the personal life of third parties that
  could get them into serious trouble if it got into the wrong hands.

				  Be Brief.

  Never say in ten words what you can say in fewer.  Say it succinctly and
  it will have a greater impact.  Remember that the longer you make your
  article, the fewer people will bother to read it.  

	     Your Postings Reflect Upon You -- Be Proud of Them.

  Most people on USENET will know you only by what you say and how well you
  say it.  They may someday be your co-workers or friends.  Take some time
  to make sure each posting is something that will not embarrass you later.
  Minimize your spelling errors and make sure that the article is easy to
  read and understand.  Writing is an art and to do it well requires
  practice.  Since much of how people judge you on the net is based on your
  writing, such time is well spent.

			   Use Descriptive Titles.

  The subject line of an article is there to enable a person with a limited
  amount of time to decide whether or not to read your article.  Tell people
  what the article is about before they read it.  A title like "Car for
  Sale" to rec.autos does not help as much as "66 MG Midget for sale:
  Beaverton OR." Don't expect people to read your article to find out what
  it is about because many of them won't bother.  Some sites truncate the
  length of the subject line to 40 characters so keep your subjects short
  and to the point.

			 Think About Your Audience.

  When you post an article, think about the people you are trying to
  reach.  Asking UNIX(*) questions on rec.autos will not reach as many
  of the people you want to reach as if you asked them on
  comp.unix.questions or comp.unix.internals.  Try to get the most
  appropriate audience for your message, not the widest.

  It is considered bad form to post both to misc.misc, soc.net-people,
  or misc.wanted and to some other newsgroup.  If it belongs in that
  other newsgroup, it does not belong in misc.misc, soc.net-people,
  or misc.wanted.  

  If your message is of interest to a limited geographic area (apartments,
  car sales, meetings, concerts, etc...), restrict the distribution of the
  message to your local area.  Some areas have special newsgroups with
  geographical limitations, and the recent versions of the news software
  allow you to limit the distribution of material sent to world-wide
  newsgroups.  Check with your system administrator to see what newsgroups
  are available and how to use them.

  If you want to try a test of something, do not use a world-wide newsgroup!
  Messages in misc.misc that say "This is a test" are likely to cause
  large numbers of caustic messages to flow into your mailbox.  There are
  newsgroups that are local to your computer or area that should be used.
  Your system administrator can tell you what they are.  

  Be familiar with the group you are posting to before you post!  You 
  shouldn't post to groups you do not read, or post to groups you've
  only read a few articles from -- you may not be familiar with the on-going
  conventions and themes of the group.  One normally does not join
  a conversation by just walking up and talking.  Instead, you listen
  first and then join in if you have something pertinent to contribute.

		     Be Careful with Humor and Sarcasm.

  Without the voice inflections and body language of personal
  communications, it is easy for a remark meant to be funny to be
  misinterpreted.  Subtle humor tends to get lost, so take steps to make
  sure that people realize you are trying to be funny.  The net has
  developed a symbol called the smiley face.  It looks like ":-)" and points
  out sections of articles with humorous intent.  No matter how broad the
  humor or satire, it is safer to remind people that you are being funny.

  But also be aware that quite frequently satire is posted without any
  explicit indications.  If an article outrages you strongly, you
  should ask yourself if it just may have been unmarked satire.
  Several self-proclaimed connoisseurs refuse to use smiley faces, so
  take heed or you may make a temporary fool of yourself.

			  Only Post a Message Once.

  Avoid posting messages to more than one newsgroup unless you are sure
  it is appropriate.  If you do post to multiple newsgroups, do not
  post to each group separately.  Instead, specify all the groups on a
  single copy of the message.  This reduces network overhead and lets
  people who subscribe to more than one of those groups see the message
  once instead of having to wade through each copy.

	      Please Rotate Messages With Questionable Content.

  Certain newsgroups (such as rec.humor) have messages in them that may
  be offensive to some people.  To make sure that these messages are
  not read unless they are explicitly requested, these messages should
  be encrypted.  The standard encryption method is to rotate each
  letter by thirteen characters so that an "a" becomes an "n".  This is
  known on the network as "rot13" and when you rotate a message the
  word "rot13" should be in the "Subject:" line.  Most of the software
  used to read usenet articles have some way of encrypting and
  decrypting messages.  Your system administrator can tell you how the
  software on your system works, or you can use the Unix command "tr
  [a-z][A-Z] [n-z][a-m][N-Z][A-M]". (Note that some versions of Unix
  don't require the [] in the "tr" command.  In fact, some systems will
  get upset if you use them in an unquoted manner.  The following
  should work for everyone, but may be shortened on some systems:
	tr '[a-m][n-z][A-M][N-Z]' '[n-z][a-m][N-Z][A-M]'
  Don't forget the single quotes!)

		    Summarize What You are Following Up.

  When you are following up someone's article, please summarize the parts of
  the article to which you are responding.  This allows readers to
  appreciate your comments rather than trying to remember what the original
  article said.  It is also possible for your response to get to some sites
  before the original article.

  Summarization is best done by including appropriate quotes from the
  original article.  Do not include the entire article since it will
  irritate the people who have already seen it.  Even if you are responding
  to the entire article, summarize only the major points you are discussing.

			When Summarizing, Summarize!

  When you request information from the network, it is common courtesy to
  report your findings so that others can benefit as well.  The best way of
  doing this is to take all the responses that you received and edit them
  into a single article that is posted to the places where you originally
  posted your question.  Take the time to strip headers, combine duplicate
  information, and write a short summary.  Try to credit the information to
  the people that sent it to you, where possible.

		      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.

