Tutorial

Philosophy and behaviour rules

Quality, accessibility and even survival of the newsgroups rely upon the behaviour of visitors. Here we simply wish to inform you of some of thefundamentalunwritten rules that rule USENET life.

• Make sure you are informed!
  Newsgroups today are overcrowded because often the new visitors ask questions that have been answered hundreds of times, so:
  
  
  • read FAQ, Frequently Asked Questions, ...and their answers. More FAQ and info you can find in FAQ di it.news.aiuto.
    
    
  • Before asking questions about web sites addresses or info that you can find elsewhere make personal researches with searching engines, and write to the newsgroup only if you don't get result.
    
    
  • Moreover: if the group hasn't a FAQ of its own or if you arer not sure of the answer, before writing make a research on Google - groups (will speak about it later on for other reasons as well).
    
    
  
  
• We already said it but it's worthy repeating: it's very important to write a subject as exhaustive as possible, so that who unloads headers might understand if he is interested and/or up to answer. Tipical example of a bad subject: "HELP!!!" (why? what about?...)
  
  
• Be ON-TOPIC! Which is the contrary of OFF-TOPIC. Make sure that the newsgroup you are sending the post to is the wright one, possibbly read groups charters quifind those of the "big eight" that were written at the very creation of the groups and explain the motif of their birth and the arguments they mean to develop. After that, if you feel you have to send your post but you're not sure put before the subject the expression "[OT]", "[OT?]".
  
  
• Remember one can never be sure to get an answer. You may have proposed a subject that has already been widely treated,(see above), or maybe it wasn't interesting, or maybe who could be interested to argue is not at that moment following the newsgroup...
  
  
• Avoid to send posts in HTML or other formats that are not merely text (though some very widespread newsreaders consent it. Above all avoid to post binary files (images, sounds, video, etc.)in groups not intended fothis purpose (in practice all those ones which don't contain the word "binaries" o similar)
  
  
• The last advice is simply an appeal to one virtue and to two practical rules of behaviour that every traveller should employ when visiting foreign countries: humility, sense and politeness, all the rules come from these.
  
  

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