Path: senator-bedfellow.mit.edu!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!boulder!csnews!nntpX.primenet.com!nntp.primenet.com!newspump.sol.net!newsfeed.direct.ca!cyclone.bc.net!rover.ucs.ualberta.ca!not-for-mail From: check.the.signature@nospam.ualberta.ca (Art Mulder) Newsgroups: rec.woodworking,news.answers,rec.answers Subject: rec.woodworking Introduction FAQ (updated: 22/Jun/98) Supersedes: Followup-To: poster Date: 5 Oct 1998 08:12:11 GMT Organization: University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada Lines: 173 Approved: news-answers-request@MIT.EDU Message-ID: Reply-To: check.the.signature@nospam.ualberta.ca (Art Mulder) NNTP-Posting-Host: rockpile.ucs.ualberta.ca Summary: An introduction to the newsgroup, pointer to resources, etc. Keywords: FAQ introduction Xref: senator-bedfellow.mit.edu rec.woodworking:295135 news.answers:141844 rec.answers:44319 Archive-name: woodworking/introduction Last-modified: 22 Jun 1998 Posting-Frequency: weekly URL: http://www.ualberta.ca/~amulder/wood/rec.ww.Introduction.txt --------------------------------------------------------------------- |Here's a three line summary that covers almost every situation: | | Read the FAQ's, lurk, listen, and learn. Check www.dejanews.com | | for frequently discussed topics. Use good titles on your posts. | | Refrain from "me too" posts. Handle personal matters via email. | --------------------------------------------------------------------- CONTENTS: 1) Where are the FAQ's 2) Where are the WWW archive sites 3) Where are rec.woodworking articles archived? 4) Pointers to some related newsgroups and resources. 5) Pointers for Beginners 5.1) Posting Binaries This FAQ is intended to point readers to woodworking resources available on the Internet. The newsgroup sees a lot of repeat traffic; please check out these resources before posting. ---------- ---------- ---------- ---------- ---------- ---------- ---------- 1) The following relevant FAQ's are available: rec.woodworking Introduction rec.woodworking Frequently Requested Addresses rec.woodworking Steambending wood Frequently asked Questions rec.woodworking Electric Motors Frequently asked Questions rec.woodworking Frequently Requested Tool Reviews rec.woodworking Frequently Asked Questions Electrical Wiring FAQ [Part 1/ Part 2] FAQ: Crib and Cradle Safety Regulations FAQ: Hand Tools Cabinet Saw FAQ These FAQ's are posted regularly (usually monthly) to this newsgroup. Most are also crossposted to news.answers and rec.answers. A well configured site should keep all postings to the *.answers news groups for at least 30 days before expiring them. Therefore, you should always be able to find these FAQ's in your news spool. (If you can't, ask your sysadmin, but read on, there are other options.) There exist several Usenet FAQ archive sites. To find out more about them and how to access them, please see the "Introduction to the *.answers newsgroups" posting in the group news.answers. One main WWW FAQ archive site is at: http://www.faqs.org/ The "main" rec.woodworking archive is maintained by Jim Roche, and can be accessed at http://www.cs.rochester.edu/u/roche/wood.html ftp://ftp.cs.rochester.edu/pub/archives/rec.woodworking/ In addition to those "general purpose" FAQ's, more focussed special purpose documents (eg: a Workbench FAQ, Wood toxicity table, etc) are also available, and continually being developed. Browse some of the Woodworking web pages (like Jim Roche's above) to find them. ---------- ---------- ---------- ---------- ---------- ---------- ---------- 2) Woodworking information on the WWW: There are many Woodworking pages on the WWW. I can't expect to keep track of all of them, so here are just a few links to get you started. Check them for further links to other Woodworking pages, or check an indexing service like Yahoo or Lycos. http://www.cs.rochester.edu/u/roche/wood.html - Jim Roches' pages -- the "main" rec.woodworking archive http://www.kiva.net/~rjbrown/w5/wood.html - Robert Brown's "W^5: WoodWorking on the World Wide Web" http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~alf/en/en.html - Allan Fisher's "The Electronic Neanderthal" (Hand tool focus) ---------- ---------- ---------- ---------- ---------- ---------- ---------- 3) Where are rec.woodworking articles archived? There are two main services (that I am aware of) that archive rec.woodworking articles. Between the two of them you can search through a year or more worth of archived postings. These archives are a wonderful way to look up old posts, and avoid restarting a discussion that just got finished. 3.1) Dejanews Research Service http://www.dejanews.com/ Dejanews archives many Usenet newsgroups. Last time I checked they had over 3 years of rec.woodworking archived. 3.2) Alta Vista http://altavista.digital.com/ Alta Vista is a Research project of Digital's Palo Alto labs. They provide a full-text index of over 13,000 USENET newsgroups, and also a full-text index to over 16,000,000 web pages. They index 'current' news -- which seems to amount to roughly a month of rec.woodworking, as near as I could discover. This is still a very useful archive to search for recent rec.ww articles. ---------- ---------- ---------- ---------- ---------- ---------- ---------- 4) Pointers to some related newsgroups and resources. Perhaps this newsgroup's focus isn't quite what you are looking for. If so, Maybe one of these other newsgroups will have what you are looking for. comp.home.automation Home automation devices, setup, sources, etc. misc.consumers Consumer interests, product reviews, etc. misc.consumers.house Discussion about owning and maintaining a house. alt.home.repair Created by someone who didn't know about m.c.h alt.building.* There are 10 or so building-industry groups. rec.crafts.metalworking All aspects of working with metal. rec.crafts.carving Carving and its techniques. rec.crafts.woodturning Woodturning and turned objects. ---------- ---------- ---------- ---------- ---------- ---------- ---------- 5) Some Pointers for Beginners If you are a complete beginner to the whole world of Usenet (electronic news), I STRONGLY[1] encourage you to make the time to read the handful of very informative postings in the 'news.announce.newusers' newsgroup. They are an invaluable help. [1] In fact, when they finally name me King Of The Internet, no one will be allowed to post to Usenet until they have passed a reading comprehension test to show that they have read the ~5 main FAQ's in news.announce.newusers. :-) rec.woodworking has a fair amount of traffic. To those people who have trouble with the volume of this group, a few suggestions that may help: Learn and use a good-quality newsreader, like tin, trn, nn, and others. These all have powerful display mechanisms that can show you "threads" of conversation, searching, sorting, and the ability to automatically select or deselect articles (aka "kill files"). A good newsreader makes it much easier to read a high-volume newsgroup. If your newsreader can't follow threads or doesn't have automatic selection/killing of articles then... Your Software Is Broken. Fix It. [paraphrased from one of Chris Lewis' well written postings.] 5.1) Posting Binaries The question has come up recently about posting binaries to the rec.woodworking newsgroup. I quote briefly from the FAQ "How to find the right place to post" which is posted to the news.announce.newusers newsgroup. See that FAQ for a more full explanation. (You HAVE read all of those FAQ's, haven't you!?) "There are many newsgroups dedicated to posting various sorts of binary files, such as images, computer software, etc. These are gathered under the alt.binaries.* and comp.binaries.* hierarchies. (There are also some local binaries hierarchies, such as de.alt.binaries.*) These groups are the only places where you should ever post a file that is not directly human-readable, such as pictures, software, or even Microsoft Word files" ----- PLEASE NOTE: The reply address in the headers is bogus. I regret this action, but it is necessary to ATTEMPT to defeat Junk Email robots. -- ...art mulder ( art.mulder@ualberta.ca )( http://www.ualberta.ca/~amulder/ ) ( Sys Admin / Support Analyst, Network Resources ) ( Computing and Network Services, U of Alberta, Edmonton )