FAQ- PUBRADIO Posting Rules
2. Try to keep the length of your posting as short as possible. This is as much a courtesy to your colleagues as it is to the Boise State Data Center, who provides this service to us at no charge, and is really jumping through hoops to free up the disk space to keep this service operational.
In application, this means:
a. Do not use REPLY TEXT to repeat someone else's message in its
entirely before adding your pearls of wisdom (like "I
agree."). Do whatever work is necessary to quote only the
essential
elements of a previous posting. PLEASE LIMIT YOUR QUOTATIONS OF
ANOTHER PERSON'S POST TO 4-5 LINES.DO NOT QUOTE THEIR ENTIRE MESSAGE!
b. Do not use your REPLY KEY to respond to a message unless
it is critical that 900 of us need to see your response.
Instead, use your mailer program to send a direct e-mail message
to that person.
c. Although it does my soul good to see a pubradio member flame
another for excesses, it is generally much better to write
that person directly with your complaint. The personal touch is
always best.
d. Try to limit your postings to 4 screens. Anything longer decreases the chances that your message will be read.
e. Attachments are strictly PROHIBITED! This means you cannot
send anything to PUBRADIO that existed as a word
processing document -- UNLESS you FIRST convert it to plain ASCII
text. In most cases, you can simply cut and paste
from your original document to your e-mail message. If you have
any questions, please contact your local network
administrator, or contact me. Remember, if you see a bunch of
nonsense characters on PUBRADIO, it is because someone
thoughtlessly attached a document to a posting. Although I try
to police this problem as much as possible, please do not
hesitate to write to the offender directly. Hopefully, if enough
of us exercise some corrective discipline on the offender, we
will be able to stop this wasteful practice through peer pressure.
3. FORWARDING POSTINGS FROM OTHER NEWSGROUPS (AREPS, PUBGM,
PUBTECH, OR PRADO) IS
STRICLY PROHIBITED. PLEASE PAY ATTENTION TO THIS POLICY, as violators
will be given one warning -- but
just one warning -- prior to being removed from the listserv.
Instead, if you have an item that you think others might be
interested in seeing, simply summarize the content in two or three
sentences, and advise participants that you would be happy to
forward the complete file to them if they would simply e-mail
you DIRECTLY.
4. Announcements promoting clearance of programming is also prohibited.
That is why we have the DACS.
5. Job Announcements are also prohibited UNLESS they
contain information not previously posted on the DACS or in
advertisements. In other words, if you have some personal insight
to the position that would helpful to our participants, by
all means, post. Otherwise, please use the DACS. We encourage
users to include salary ranges whenever possible.
Thanks in advance for your cooperation and attention to these
items. The vast majority of our participants have just been great
to work with. PUBRADIO is a tremendous privilege that we have
been afforded in an era where just about everything has a
price tag. Let's all do our part to make it work.
PUBRADIO'S GENERAL RULES OF ETIQUETTE, FOR YOUR REFERENCE........-------------------
From: Theodric Young
Subject: RE: PUBRADIO Etiquette
DEAR PUBRADIO MEMBER: HERE'S SOME IMPORTANT INFORMATION ABOUT
DISCUSSION GROUP
ETIQUETTE THAT WE UTILIZE HERE ON PUBRADIO, COURTESY OF TED YOUNG.
The following is a few
extracts from the document, "Zen and the Art of the Internet".
Some of it refers to posting articles on Usenet or Net-News,
but the information can be just as well applied to Mailing Lists,
Listserves, and Email in general. Some information that has
no real bearing on PUBRADIO has been deleted. -
Ted Young
Monitor Radio
............................................................................
Mailing Lists
Exercise caution when replying to a message sent by a mailing
list.
If you wish to respond to the author only, make sure that the
only address you're replying to is that person, and not the entire
list. Often messages of the sort "Yes, I agree with you completely!"
will appear on a list, boring the daylights out of the other
readers.
Likewise, if you explicitly do want to send the message to the
whole list, you'll save yourself some time by checking to make
sure it's indeed headed to the whole list and not a single person.
............................................................................
"Netiquette"
There are many traditions with Usenet [and the Internet in general],
not the least of which is dubbed "netiquette"--being
polite
and considerate of others. If you follow a few basic guidelines,
you, and everyone that reads your posts, will be much
happier in the long run.
Signatures
At the end of most articles is a small blurb called a person's
signature. In Unix this file is named .signature in the person's
login directory---it will vary for other operating systems. It
exists to provide information about how to get in touch with the
person posting the article, including their email address, phone
number, address, or where they're located. Even so,
signatures have become the graffiti of computers. People put song
lyrics, pictures, philosophical quotes, even advertisements
in their ".sigs". (Note, however, that advertising in
your signature will more often than not get you flamed until you
take it
out.)
Four lines will suffice---more is just extra garbage for Usenet
sites to carry along with your article, which is supposed to be
the intended focus of the reader. Netiquette dictates limiting
oneself to this "quota" of four-- some people make signatures
that are ten lines or even more, including elaborate ASCII drawings
of their hand written signature or faces or even the space
shuttle. This is not cute, and will bother people to no end.
Similarly, it's not necessary to include your signature---if
you forget to append it to an article, don't worry about it. The
article's just as good as it ever would be, and contains everything
you should want to say. Don't re- post the article just to
include the signature.
Posting Personal Messages
If mail to a person doesn't make it through, avoid posting the
message to a newsgroup. Even if the likelihood of that person
reading the group is very high, all of the other people reading
the articles don't give a whit what you have to say to Jim
Morrison. Simply wait for the person to post again and double-check
the address, or get in touch with your system
administrator and see if it's a problem with local email delivery.
It may also turn out that their site is down or is having
problems, in which case it's just necessary to wait until things
return to normal before contacting Jim.
Posting Mail
In the interests of privacy, it's considered extremely bad taste
to post any email that someone may have sent, unless they
explicitly give you permission to redistribute it. While the legal
issues can be heavily debated, most everyone agrees that
email should be treated as anything one would receive via normal
snailmail, {The slang for the normal land and air postal
service.} , with all of the assumed rights that are carried with
it.
Summaries
Authors of articles occasionally say that readers should reply
by mail and they'll summarize. Accordingly, readers should do
just that---reply via mail. Responding with a followup article
to such an article defeats the intention of the author. She, in
a
few days, will post one article containing the highlights of the
responses she received. By following up to the whole group,
the author may not read what you have to say.
When creating a summary of the replies to a post, try to make
it as reader- friendly as possible. Avoid just putting all of
the
messages received into one big file. Rather, take some time and
edit the messages into a form that contains the essential
information that other readers would be interested in.
Also, sometimes people will respond but request to remain anonymous
(one example is the employees of a corporation that
feel the information's not proprietary, but at the same time want
to protect themselves from political backlash). Summaries
should honor this request accordingly by listing the From: address
as anonymous or (Address withheld by request).
Quoting
When following up to an article, many newsreaders provide the
facility to quote the original article with each line prefixed
by
> , as in
In article <1232@foo.bar.com>, sharon@foo.bar.com wrote:
> I agree, I think that basketweaving's really catching on,
>
particularly in Pennsylvania. Here's a list of every person >
in PA that currently engages in it publicly: line ... etc ...
This is a severe example (potentially a horribly long article),
but proves a point. When you quote another person, edit out
whatever isn't directly applicable to your reply. {But not changing
their words, of course. } This gives the reader of the new
article a better idea of what points you were addressing. By including
the entire article, you'll only annoy those reading it.
Also, signatures in the original aren't necessary; the readers
already know who wrote it (by the attribution).
Avoid being tedious with responses---rather than pick apart
an article, address it in parts or as a whole. Addressing
practically each and every word in an article only proves that
the person responding has absolutely nothing better to do with
his time.
If a "war" starts (insults and personal comments
get thrown back and forth), take it into email---exchange email
with the
person you're arguing with. No one enjoys watching people bicker
incessantly.
Quality of Postings
How you write and present yourself in your articles is important.
If you have terrible spelling, keep a dictionary nearby. If
you have trouble with grammar and punctuation, try to get a book
on English grammar and composition (found in many bookstores and
at garage sales). By all means pay attention to what
you say---it makes you who you are on The Net.