LZ: READ THIS!!!
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LZ: READ THIS!!!
For everyone new to computers here a few common courtesy guidelines that
people might want to consider.
Please everyone read this and atleast consider following it:
(Small Excert from "The Netiquette Handbook")
Don't Overdo Signatures (especially 80-line doom demons)
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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.
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.
Limit Line Length and Avoid Control Characters (including HTML!!)
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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.
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.
Take a look at the whole book at :
http://nice.ethz.ch/Usenet/netiquette_engl.html
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Adam Geitgey
Partner CSRA Web Design and Computer Consulting
"Web Design for the Information Age"
PGP Key upon request
Email: csrawebtech@qualityservice.com
Web : http://csraweb.home.ml.org
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Follow-Ups:
References: