General Posting Guidelines
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What are some basic suggestions for people who are posting to groups on Usenet?
Here are some general suggestions to becoming a good poster:
Here are some general suggestions to becoming a good poster:
- You may not want to post using your real name. Once your message is posted to our server, it spreads through Usenet to thousands of other servers with potentially millions of viewers. Some suggestions for user names include just your first name or a nickname.
- You should not post using your actual email address. Spammers may send unsolicited e-mail to your address. If you desire to be contacted, you can disguise your email address by placing a word or two into it that are obvious to remove (example: [email protected]). Alternately, you can enter a non-existent email address and just provide your email address in some form in your message itself (example: joeuser at Easynews dot com). If you do enter a fake email address, make sure that you end it with ".invalid" or your mail might get addressed to a mail server you didn't know existed.
- Watch the activity in the newsgroup of your interest for a while before posting. Don't be too quick to start throwing out loads of posts for the 'benefit' of the group. Most of those who do this end up in everyone's kill filter because they're going against group norms. Look for a copy of the newsgroup FAQ/charter (or request one) and find out what is acceptable or unacceptable. Group FAQs are often posted to the group every few weeks. You can also often find web pages dedicated to the group. Use your favorite search engine to find these.
Most newsgroups will have a bunch of people who are very helpful and willing to answer your questions. When you're ready to post a file, test post to a group like easynews.test or alt.binaries.test. By posting to a test group, you won't clutter up the regular group. Start with something small until you get the hang of it. After you've practiced posting go ahead and post to the actual group. The same rules apply to posting text messages. Post to a test group such as easynews.test or alt.test first and make sure your message appears correctly. Then go ahead and post to your actual target group.
