Path: senator-bedfellow.mit.edu!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!howland.erols.net!outgoing.news.rcn.net.MISMATCH!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!autopost From: Help Here Newsgroups: news.groups,news.answers Subject: NEW USERS PLEASE READ [news.groups] Followup-To: news.groups.questions Date: 14 Apr 2000 22:05:04 GMT Organization: cyberNOTHING Lines: 77 Approved: new-users-please-read@cybernothing.org Message-ID: <955749793.73538@news> Reply-To: new-users-please-read@cybernothing.org X-Trace: 88qO5c3DVMTNlRQpOWCJshd8FRSfqDc7GJ+FRLQ3Rn4= X-Complaints-To: abuse@rcn.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 14 Apr 2000 22:05:04 GMT Summary: Useful information for people new to Usenet Cache-Post-Path: news!unknown@unagi.cybernothing.org X-rn/trn/strn-Killfile-Entry: /new-users-please-read/f:j X-Cache: nntpcache 2.3.2.1 (see http://www.nntpcache.org/) Originator: autopost@unagi.cybernothing.org Xref: senator-bedfellow.mit.edu news.groups:394304 news.answers:181496 Archive-name: usenet/news-groups-newbies Posting-Frequency: Weekly (Fridays) URL: http://www.cybernothing.org/faqs/new-users-please-read.txt -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- NEW USERS PLEASE READ ======================---------------------------------------------------- If you're new to news.groups, or new to Usenet, this document will probably help you deal with this newsgroup. Most new Usenet users are best off avoiding this group altogether, unless here for a specific purpose. Your service provider may have neglected to tell you this, but there are *many, many* newsgroups on Usenet -- not just one group which happens to be named news.groups. news.groups is for discussion of the creation of new newsgroups. It is therefore *extremely* high in both noise (off-topic messages) and flames (arguments/insults) because almost every ongoing political dispute on Usenet ends up here sooner or later. This is *NOT* the newsgroup to read to learn about Usenet. This is *NOT* the newsgroup to read for announcements of new groups. This is *NOT* the newsgroup to read for information about newsgroups. This is *NOT* the newsgroup to read for questions about newsgroups. If your ISP's documentation says otherwise, your ISP's documentation is simply /wrong/. Please complain to your technical support people and have it fixed so that your fellow users there are not similarly confused. If you are not already familiar with Usenet, the place to start is news.announce.newusers. If you are interested in hearing about every new newsgroup which is proposed, read news.announce.newgroups. If you want to read information about existing groups, read news.groups.reviews. If you have questions about where to talk about various topics or what groups are available, read news.groups.questions. Again, news.groups is explicitly for discussion and arguments about newsgroup creation, which can be a *highly* political process. It is definitely *not* something I would encourage new users to jump into the middle of -- and if you do, please read the comments for a while first, to make sure that you understand what everybody's talking about. Thank you for your time, and thank you for redirecting your comments and questions to more appropriate forums. - -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- This document is heavily based upon a message originally posted by Russ Allbery . It was also posted for a time by Joe Bernstein , and is now posted automagically by a program written by J.D. Falk . The entire contents of this document is Copyright 1996 by Russ Allbery, Joe Bernstein, and J.D. Falk, all rights reserved. Permission is granted for it to be reproduced electronically on any system connected to the various networks which make up the Internet, USENET, and FidoNet so long as it is reproduced in its entirety, unedited, and with this copyright notice intact. For permission to quote from or reproduce any portion of this message outside of Usenet, please contact J.D. Falk . -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGPfreeware 5.0i for non-commercial use Comment: This signature was generated by the posting script, NOT the author. Charset: noconv iQBVAwUBOPeWDoQl1c/JyE95AQEd0gH/bpAVvok9iexDJtNNLOdpnEHYjTSK0FKK so2+1Z3LI/st2cN+nOy/8rpBtDRx+jhQ/jsZ1rO7UDvzXJK+dld9zA== =QAHZ -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----