Medizin

On 26 Jun 2003 05:51:01 -0700, Jasper Riedel wrote:

>Swen Sauerwald wrote in message
>news:...

Es heißt Einleitungszeile, nicht Zweizeiler oder gar Roman!

>>On Mon, 23 Jun 2003 20:02:30 +0200, Gaby Hornik wrote:
>>
>
>XPost und Follow-Up bitte beachten.
>
>>
>>S.u.

Dein Quoting ist kaputt!

>>>Jasper Riedel schrieb:
>>Wie kommst Du dazu eine meiner Adressen zu benutzen?
>Dann war das eine falsche Annahme, in anderen
>Ländern werden z.B. email-namen mit beleidigender
>u.ä. Bedeutung nicht vergeben.

[ ] Du hast Ahnung!

>>>>Sowohl info als auch nospam können unmöglich
>>>>von gmx an einen Nutzer vergeben worden sein,
>>>>diese "Worte" sind mit Sicherheit reserviert.
>>Wenn man keine Ahnung hat, einfach mal Fresse halten!
>Das geht zu weit und ich lege hiermit AUSDRÜCKLICH
>BESCHWERDE gegen Beleidigung ein! Ich erwarte eine
>Entschuldungung des Urhebers und eine Unterlassungs-
>aufforderung an den Urheber von Seiten von
>de.admin.net-abuse !

ROTFLMAO

>>>Eben. Reserviert heisst nicht, dass jeder Doesel diese
>>>Mailadressen verwenden darf.
>Du bist auch ein Doesel, falls das erlaubt ist.
>Außer mit Beleidigungen kommt ihr beide wohl nicht
>zurecht!

Du hast es noch nicht erlebt wenn ich beleidigend werde...

BTW, http://afaik.nimmich.org/usenet/faq/zitieren/ solltest Du Dir mal
anschauen!

[...]
>>>Und da irrst du dich eben gewaltig. Verwende endlich deine
>>>eigene Mailadresse.
>Längst geschehen!

Du hättest erst gar nicht eine andere als Deine eigene nehmen dürfen,
aber das geht wohl nicht in Deinen Schädel rein.

>Ein wenig Geduld hätte nicht geschadet,
>aber mit deinem Dominaverhalten hast du nur eurem
>Ruf als ADMINISTRATOREN (weis gar kein deutsches Wort
>dafür, falls es überhaupt eins gibt, geschadet. So was
>wird man nicht so schnell vergessen können!).

Geh weg und komm erst dann wieder, wenn Du Ahnung von dem Medium hast,
in dem Du Dich hier gerade zum Brot machst!

[...]
>Ich erwarte umgehen Stellungnahme von de.admin.net-abuse und
>Swen Sauerwald!

Was *Du* erwartest interessiert hier nicht die Bohne, als sieh zu daß Du
Land gewinnst!

Swen

--
Den Steuerbeleg für die teuerste Ausgabe wirst du nie finden.
[Murphys Gesetz]

Swen Sauerwald wrote in message news:...
> On 26 Jun 2003 05:51:01 -0700, Jasper Riedel wrote:
>
> >Swen Sauerwald wrote in message
> >news:...
>
> Es heißt Einleitungszeile, nicht Zweizeiler oder gar Roman!
>

Wenn ihr Administratoren so gemein zu den Leuten seid,
dann wandern immer mehr Personen in die Hackerszene ab,
und letztlich wird es auch mehr Terrorismus geben,
aber das ist euch vermutlich egal.

Deshalb lest euch alle BITTE mal durch was ich hier gefunden
habe:

RFC 1855
Netiquette Guidelines
Status of This Memo
This memo provides information for the Internet community. This memo
does not specify an Internet standard of any kind. Distribution of
this memo is unlimited.
Abstract
This document provides a minimum set of guidelines for Network
Etiquette (Netiquette) which organizations may take and adapt for
their own use. As such, it is deliberately written in a bulleted
format to make adaptation easier and to make any particular item easy
(or easier) to find. It also functions as a minimum set of guidelines
for individuals, both users and administrators. This memo is the
product of the Responsible Use of the Network (RUN) Working Group of
the IETF.
Table of Contents
1.0 Introduction
2.0 One-to-One Communication
3.0 One-to-Many Communication
4.0 Information Services
5.0 Selected Bibliography
6.0 Security Considerations
7.0 Authors Address
1.0 Introduction
In the past, the population of people using the Internet had "grown
up" with the Internet, were technically minded, and understood the
nature of the transport and the protocols. Today, the community of
Internet users includes people who are new to the environment. These
"Newbies" are unfamiliar with the culture and dont need to know about
transport and protocols. In order to bring these new users into the
Internet culture quickly, this Guide offers a minimum set of behaviors
which organizations and individuals may take and adapt for their own
use. Individuals should be aware that no matter who supplies their
Internet access, be it an Internet Service Provider through a private
account, or a student account at a University, or an account through a
corporation, that those organizations have regulations about ownership
of mail and files, about what is proper to post or send, and how to
present yourself. Be sure to check with the local authority for
specific guidelines.
Weve organized this material into three sections: One-to-one
communication, which includes mail and talk; One-to-many
communications, which includes mailing lists and NetNews; and
Information Services, which includes ftp, WWW, Wais, Gopher, MUDs and
MOOs. Finally, we have a Selected Bibliography, which may be used for
reference.

2.0 One-to-One Communication (electronic mail, talk)
We define one-to-one communications as those in which a person is
communicating with another person as if face-to-face: a dialog. In
general, rules of common courtesy for interaction with people should
be in force for any situation and on the Internet its doubly
important where, for example, body language and tone of voice must be
inferred. For more information on Netiquette for communicating via
electronic mail and talk, check references [1,23,25,27] in the
Selected Bibliography.
2.1 User Guidelines
2.1.1 For mail:
Unless you have your own Internet access through an Internet provider,
be sure to check with your employer about ownership of electronic
mail. Laws about the ownership of electronic mail vary from place to
place.
Unless you are using an encryption device (hardware or software), you
should assume that mail on the Internet is not secure. Never put in a
mail message anything you would not put on a postcard.
Respect the copyright on material that you reproduce. Almost every
country has copyright laws.
If you are forwarding or re-posting a message youve received, do not
change the wording. If the message was a personal message to you and
you are re-posting to a group, you should ask permission first. You
may shorten the message and quote only relevant parts, but be sure you
give proper attribution.
Never send chain letters via electronic mail. Chain letters are
forbidden on the Internet. Your network privileges will be revoked.
Notify your local system administrator if your ever receive one.
A good rule of thumb: Be conservative in what you send and liberal in
what you receive. You should not send heated messages (we call these
"flames") even if you are provoked. On the other hand, you shouldnt
be surprised if you get flamed and its prudent not to respond to
flames.
In general, its a good idea to at least check all your mail subjects
before responding to a message. Sometimes a person who asks you for
help (or clarification) will send another message which effectively
says "Never Mind". Also make sure that any message you respond to was
directed to you. You might be cc:ed rather than the primary recipient.
Make things easy for the recipient. Many mailers strip header
information which includes your return address. In order to ensure
that people know who you are, be sure to include a line or two at the
end of your message with contact information. You can create this file
ahead of time and add it to the end of your messages. (Some mailers do
this automatically.) In Internet parlance, this is known as a ".sig"
or "signature" file. Your .sig file takes the place of your business
card. (And you can have more than one to apply in different
circumstances.)
Be careful when addressing mail. There are addresses which may go to a
group but the address looks like it is just one person. Know to whom
you are sending.
Watch ccs when replying. Dont continue to include people if the
messages have become a 2-way conversation.
In general, most people who use the Internet dont have time to answer
general questions about the Internet and its workings. Dont send
unsolicited mail asking for information to people whose names you
might have seen in RFCs or on mailing lists.
Remember that people with whom you communicate are located across the
globe. If you send a message to which you want an immediate response,
the person receiving it might be at home asleep when it arrives. Give
them a chance to wake up, come to work, and login before assuming the
mail didnt arrive or that they dont care.
Verify all addresses before initiating long or personal discourse.
Its also a good practice to include the word "Long" in the subject
header so the recipient knows the message will take time to read and
respond to. Over 100 lines is considered "long".
Know whom to contact for help. Usually you will have resources close
at hand. Check locally for people who can help you with software and
system problems. Also, know whom to go to if you receive anything
questionable or illegal. Most sites also have "Postmaster" aliased to
a knowledgeable user, so you can send mail to this address to get help
with mail.
Remember that the recipient is a human being whose culture, language,
and humor have different points of reference from your own. Remember
that date formats, measurements, and idioms may not travel well. Be
especially careful with sarcasm.
Use mixed case. UPPER CASE LOOKS AS IF YOURE SHOUTING.
Use symbols for emphasis. That *is* what I meant. Use underscores for
underlining. War and Peace is my favorite book.
Use smileys to indicate tone of voice, but use them sparingly. :-) is
an example of a smiley (Look sideways). Dont assume that the
inclusion of a smiley will make the recipient happy with what you say
or wipe out an otherwise insulting comment.
Wait overnight to send emotional responses to messages. If you have
really strong feelings about a subject, indicate it via FLAME ON/OFF
enclosures. For example:
FLAME ON:
This type of argument is not worth the bandwidth it takes to send it.
Its illogical and poorly reasoned. The rest of the world agrees with
me.
FLAME OFF
Do not include control characters or non-ASCII attachments in messages
unless they are MIME attachments or unless your mailer encodes these.
If you send encoded messages make sure the recipient can decode them.
Be brief without being overly terse. When replying to a message,
include enough original material to be understood but no more. It is
extremely bad form to simply reply to a message by including all the
previous message: edit out all the irrelevant material.
Limit line length to fewer than 65 characters and end a line with a
carriage return.
Mail should have a subject heading which reflects the content of the
message.
If you include a signature keep it short. Rule of thumb is no longer
than 4 lines. Remember that many people pay for connectivity by the
minute, and the longer your message is, the more they pay.
Just as mail (today) may not be private, mail (and news) are (today)
subject to forgery and spoofing of various degrees of detectability.
Apply common sense "reality checks" before assuming a message is
valid.
If you think the importance of a message justifies it, immediately
reply briefly to an e-mail message to let the sender know you got it,
even if you will send a longer reply later.
"Reasonable" expectations for conduct via e-mail depend on your
relationship to a person and the context of the communication. Norms
learned in a particular e-mail environment may not apply in general to
your e-mail communication with people across the Internet. Be careful
with slang or local acronyms.
The cost of delivering an e-mail message is, on the average, paid
about equally by the sender and the recipient (or their
organizations). This is unlike other media such as physical mail,
telephone, TV, or radio. Sending someone mail may also cost them in
other specific ways like network bandwidth, disk space or CPU usage.
This is a fundamental economic reason why unsolicited e-mail
advertising is unwelcome (and is forbidden in many contexts).
Know how large a message you are sending. Including large files such
as Postscript files or programs may make your message so large that it
cannot be delivered or at least consumes excessive resources. A good
rule of thumb would be not to send a file larger than 50 Kilobytes.
Consider file transfer as an alternative, or cutting the file into
smaller chunks and sending each as a separate message.
Dont send large amounts of unsolicited information to people.
If your mail system allows you to forward mail, beware the dreaded
forwarding loop. Be sure you havent set up forwarding on several
hosts so that a message sent to you gets into an endless loop from one
computer to the next to the next.
2.1.2 For talk:
Talk is a set of protocols which allow two people to have an
interactive dialogue via computer.
Use mixed case and proper punctuation, as though you were typing a
letter or sending mail.
Dont run off the end of a line and simply let the terminal wrap; use
a Carriage Return (CR) at the end of the line. Also, dont assume your
screen size is the same as everyone elses. A good rule of thumb is to
write out no more than 70 characters, and no more than 12 lines (since
youre using a split screen).
Leave some margin; dont write to the edge of the screen.
Use two CRs to indicate that you are done and the other person may
start typing. (blank line).
Always say goodbye, or some other farewell, and wait to see a farewell
from the other person before killing the session. This is especially
important when you are communicating with someone a long way away.
Remember that your communication relies on both bandwidth (the size of
the pipe) and latency (the speed of light).
Remember that talk is an interruption to the other person. Only use as
appropriate. And never talk to strangers.
The reasons for not getting a reply are many. Dont assume that
everything is working correctly. Not all versions of talk are
compatible.
If left on its own, talk re-rings the recipient. Let it ring one or
two times, then kill it.
If a person doesnt respond you might try another tty. Use finger to
determine which are open. If the person still doesnt respond, do not
continue to send.
Talk shows your typing ability. If you type slowly and make mistakes
when typing it is often not worth the time of trying to correct, as
the other person can usually see what you meant.
Be careful if you have more than one talk session going!
2.2 Administrator Issues
Be sure you have established written guidelines for dealing with
situations especially illegal, improper, or forged traffic.
Handle requests in a timely fashion - by the next business day.
Respond promptly to people who have concerns about receiving improper
or illegal messages. Requests concerning chain letters should be
handled immediately.
Explain any system rules, such as disk quotas, to your users. Make
sure they understand implications of requesting files by mail such as:
Filling up disks; running up phone bills, delaying mail, etc.
Make sure you have "Postmaster" aliased. Make sure you have "Root"
aliased. Make sure someone reads that mail.
Investigate complaints about your users with an open mind. Remember
that addresses may be forged and spoofed.
3.0 One-to-Many Communication (Mailing Lists, NetNews)
Any time you engage in One-to-Many communications, all the rules for
mail should also apply. After all, communicating with many people via
one mail message or post is quite analogous to communicating with one
person with the exception of possibly offending a great many more
people than in one-to-one communication. Therefore, its quite
important to know as much as you can about the audience of your
message.
3.1 User Guidelines
3.1.1 General Guidelines for mailing lists and NetNews
Read both mailing lists and newsgroups for one to two months before
you post anything. This helps you to get an understanding of the
culture of the group.
Do not blame the system administrator for the behavior of the system
users.
Consider that a large audience will see your posts. That may include
your present or your next boss. Take care in what you write. Remember
too, that mailing lists and Newsgroups are frequently archived, and
that your words may be stored for a very long time in a place to which
many people have access.
Assume that individuals speak for themselves, and what they say does
not represent their organization (unless stated explicitly).
Remember that both mail and news take system resources. Pay attention
to any specific rules covering their uses your organization may have.
Messages and articles should be brief and to the point. Dont wander
off-topic, dont ramble and dont send mail or post messages solely to
point out other peoples errors in typing or spelling. These, more
than any other behavior, mark you as an immature beginner.
Subject lines should follow the conventions of the group.
Forgeries and spoofing are not approved behavior.
Advertising is welcomed on some lists and Newsgroups, and abhorred on
others! This is another example of knowing your audience before you
post. Unsolicited advertising which is completely off-topic will most
certainly guarantee that you get a lot of hate mail.
If you are sending a reply to a message or a posting be sure you
summarize the original at the top of the message, or include just
enough text of the original to give a context. This will make sure
readers understand when they start to read your response. Since
NetNews, especially, is proliferated by distributing the postings from
one host to another, it is possible to see a response to a message
before seeing the original. Giving context helps everyone. But do not
include the entire original!
Again, be sure to have a signature which you attach to your message.
This will guarantee that any peculiarities of mailers or newsreaders
which strip header information will not delete the only reference in
the message of how people may reach you.
Be careful when you reply to messages or postings. Frequently replies
are sent back to the address which originated the post - which in many
cases is the address of a list or group! You may accidentally send a
personal response to a great many people, embarrassing all involved.
Its best to type in the address instead of relying on "reply."
Delivery receipts, non-delivery notices, and vacation programs are
neither totally standardized nor totally reliable across the range of
systems connected to Internet mail. They are invasive when sent to
mailing lists, and some people consider delivery receipts an invasion
of privacy. In short, do not use them.
If you find a personal message has gone to a list or group, send an
apology to the person and to the group.
If you should find yourself in a disagreement with one person, make
your responses to each other via mail rather than continue to send
messages to the list or the group. If you are debating a point on
which the group might have some interest, you may summarize for them
later.
Dont get involved in flame wars. Neither post nor respond to
incendiary material.
Avoid sending messages or posting articles which are no more than
gratuitous replies to replies.
Be careful with monospacing fonts and diagrams. These will display
differently on different systems, and with different mailers on the
same system.
There are Newsgroups and Mailing Lists which discuss topics of wide
varieties of interests. These represent a diversity of lifestyles,
religions, and cultures. Posting articles or sending messages to a
group whose point of view is offensive to you simply to tell them they
are offensive is not acceptable. Sexually and racially harassing
messages may also have legal implications. There is software available
to filter items you might find objectionable.
3.1.2 Mailing List Guidelines
There are several ways to find information about what mailing lists
exist on the Internet and how to join them. Make sure you understand
your organizations policy about joining these lists and posting to
them. In general it is always better to check local resources first
before trying to find information via the Internet. Nevertheless,
there are a set of files posted periodically to news.answers which
list the Internet mailing lists and how to subscribe to them. This is
an invaluable resource for finding lists on any topic. See also
references [9,13,15] in the Selected Bibliography.
Send subscribe and unsubscribe messages to the appropriate address.
Although some mailing list software is smart enough to catch these,
not all can ferret these out. It is your responsibility to learn how
the lists work, and to send the correct mail to the correct place.
Although many many mailing lists adhere to the convention of having a
"-request" alias for sending subscribe and unsubscribe messages, not
all do. Be sure you know the conventions used by the lists to which
you subscribe.
Save the subscription messages for any lists you join. These usually
tell you how to unsubscribe as well.
In general, its not possible to retrieve messages once you have sent
them. Even your system administrator will not be able to get a message
back once you have sent it. This means you must make sure you really
want the message to go as you have written it.
The auto-reply feature of many mailers is useful for in-house
communication, but quite annoying when sent to entire mailing lists.
Examine "Reply-To" addresses when replying to messages from lists.
Most auto-replys will go to all members of the list.
Dont send large files to mailing lists when Uniform Resource Locators
(URLs) or pointers to ftp-able versions will do. If you want to send
it as multiple files, be sure to follow the culture of the group. If
you dont know what that is, ask.
Consider unsubscribing or setting a "nomail" option (when its
available) when you cannot check your mail for an extended period.
When sending a message to more than one mailing list, especially if
the lists are closely related, apologize for cross-posting.
If you ask a question, be sure to post a summary. When doing so, truly
summarize rather than send a cumulation of the messages you receive.
Some mailing lists are private. Do not send mail to these lists
uninvited. Do not report mail from these lists to a wider audience.
If you are caught in an argument, keep the discussion focused on
issues rather than the personalities involved.
3.1.3 NetNews Guidelines
NetNews is a globally distributed system which allows people to
communicate on topics of specific interest. It is divided into
hierarchies, with the major divisions being: sci - science related
discussions; comp - computer related discussions; news - for
discussions which center around NetNews itself; rec - recreational
activities; soc - social issues; talk - long-winded never-ending
discussions; biz - business related postings; and alt - the alternate
hierarchy. Alt is so named because creating an alt group does not go
through the same process as creating a group in the other parts of the
hierarchy. There are also regional hierarchies, hierarchies which are
widely distributed such as Bionet, and your place of business may have
its own groups as well. Recently, a "humanities" hierarchy was added,
and as time goes on its likely more will be added. For longer
discussions on News see references [2,8,22,23] in the Selected
Bibliography.
In NetNews parlance, "Posting" refers to posting a new article to a
group, or responding to a post someone else has posted.
"Cross-Posting" refers to posting a message to more than one group. If
you introduce Cross-Posting to a group, or if you direct
"Followup-To:" in the header of your posting, warn readers! Readers
will usually assume that the message was posted to a specific group
and that followups will go to that group. Headers change this
behavior.
Read all of a discussion in progress (we call this a thread) before
posting replies. Avoid posting "Me Too" messages, where content is
limited to agreement with previous posts. Content of a follow-up post
should exceed quoted content.
Send mail when an answer to a question is for one person only.
Remember that News has global distribution and the whole world
probably is NOT interested in a personal response. However, dont
hesitate to post when something will be of general interest to the
Newsgroup participants.
Check the "Distribution" section of the header, but dont depend on
it. Due to the complex method by which News is delivered, Distribution
headers are unreliable. But, if you are posting something which will
be of interest to a limited number or readers, use a distribution line
that attempts to limit the distribution of your article to those
people. For example, set the Distribution to be "nj" if you are
posting an article that will be of interest only to New Jersey
readers.
If you feel an article will be of interest to more than one Newsgroup,
be sure to CROSSPOST the article rather than individually post it to
those groups. In general, probably only five-to-six groups will have
similar enough interests to warrant this.
Consider using Reference sources (Computer Manuals, Newspapers, help
files) before posting a question. Asking a Newsgroup where answers are
readily available elsewhere generates grumpy "RTFM" (read the fine
manual - although a more vulgar meaning of the word beginning with "f"
is usually implied) messages.
Although there are Newsgroups which welcome advertising, in general it
is considered nothing less than criminal to advertise off-topic
products. Sending an advertisement to each and every group will pretty
much guarantee your loss of connectivity.
If you discover an error in your post, cancel it as soon as possible.
DO NOT attempt to cancel any articles but your own. Contact your
administrator if you dont know how to cancel your post, or if some
other post, such as a chain letter, needs canceling.
If youve posted something and dont see it immediately, dont assume
its failed and re-post it.
Some groups permit (and some welcome) posts which in other
circumstances would be considered to be in questionable taste. Still,
there is no guarantee that all people reading the group will
appreciate the material as much as you do. Use the Rotate utility
(which rotates all the characters in your post by 13 positions in the
alphabet) to avoid giving offense. The Rot13 utility for Unix is an
example.
In groups which discuss movies or books it is considered essential to
mark posts which disclose significant content as "Spoilers". Put this
word in your Subject: line. You may add blank lines to the beginning
of your post to keep content out of sight, or you may Rotate it.
Forging of news articles is generally censured. You can protect
yourself from forgeries by using software which generates a
manipulation detection "fingerprint", such as PGP (in the US).
Postings via anonymous servers are accepted in some Newsgroups and
disliked in others. Material which is inappropriate when posted under
ones own name is still inappropriate when posted anonymously.
Expect a slight delay in seeing your post when posting to a moderated
group. The moderator may change your subject line to have your post
conform to a particular thread.
Dont get involved in flame wars. Neither post nor respond to
incendiary material.
3.2 Administrator Guidelines
3.2.1 General Issues
Clarify any policies your site has regarding its subscription to
NetNews groups and about subscribing to mailing lists.
Clarify any policies your site has about posting to NetNews groups or
to mailing lists, including use of disclaimers in .sigs.
Clarify and publicize archive policy. (How long are articles kept?)
Investigate accusations about your users promptly and with an open
mind.
Be sure to monitor the health of your system.
Consider how long to archive system logs, and publicize your policy on
logging.
3.2.2 Mailing Lists
Keep mailing lists up to date to avoid the "bouncing mail" problem.
Help list owners when problems arise.
Inform list owners of any maintenance windows or planned downtime.
Be sure to have "-request" aliases for list subscription and
administration.
Make sure all mail gateways operate smoothly.
3.2.3. NetNews
Publicize the nature of the feed you receive. If you do not get a full
feed, people may want to know why not.
Be aware that the multiplicity of News Reader clients may cause the
News Server being blamed for problems in the clients.
Honor requests from users immediately if they request cancellation of
their own posts or invalid posts, such as chain letters.
Have "Usenet", "Netnews" and "News" aliased and make sure someone
reads the mail.
3.3 Moderator Guidelines
3.3.1 General Guidelines
Make sure your Frequestly Asked Questions (FAQ) is posted at regular
intervals. Include your guidelines for articles/messages. If you are
not the FAQ maintainer, make sure they do so.
Make sure you maintain a good welcome message, which contains
subscribe and unsubscribe information.
Newsgroups should have their charter/guidelines posted regularly.
Keep mailing lists and Newsgroups up to date. Post messages in a
timely fashion. Designate a substitute when you go on vacation or out
of town.
4.0 Information Services (Gopher, Wais, WWW, ftp, telnet)
In recent Internet history, the Net has exploded with new and varied
Information services. Gopher, Wais, World Wide Web (WWW), Multi-User
Dimensions (MUDs) Multi-User Dimensions which are Object Oriented
(MOOs) are a few of these new areas. Although the ability to find
information is exploding, "Caveat Emptor" remains constant. For more
information on these services, check references [14,28] in the
Selected Bibliography.
4.1 User Guidelines
4.1.1. General guidelines
Remember that all these services belong to someone else. The people
who pay the bills get to make the rules governing usage. Information
may be free - or it may not be! Be sure you check.
If you have problems with any form of information service, start
problem solving by checking locally: Check file configurations,
software setup, network connections, etc. Do this before assuming the
problem is at the providers end and/or is the providers fault.
Although there are naming conventions for file-types used, dont
depend on these file naming conventions to be enforced. For example, a
".doc" file is not always a Word file.
Information services also use conventions, such as www.xyz.com. While
it is useful to know these conventions, again, dont necessarily rely
on them.
Know how file names work on your own system.
Be aware of conventions used for providing information during
sessions. FTP sites usually have files named README in a top level
directory which have information about the files available. But, dont
assume that these files are necessarily up-to-date and/or accurate.
Do NOT assume that ANY information you find is up-to-date and/or
accurate. Remember that new technologies allow just about anyone to be
a publisher, but not all people have discovered the responsibilities
which accompany publishing.
Remember that unless you are sure that security and authentication
technology is in use, that any information you submit to a system is
being transmitted over the Internet "in the clear", with no protection
from "sniffers" or forgers.
Since the Internet spans the globe, remember that Information Services
might reflect culture and life-style markedly different from your own
community. Materials you find offensive may originate in a geography
which finds them acceptable. Keep an open mind.
When wanting information from a popular server, be sure to use a
mirror server thats close if a list is provided.
Do not use someone elses FTP site to deposit materials you wish other
people to pick up. This is called "dumping" and is not generally
acceptable behavior.
When you have trouble with a site and ask for help, be sure to provide
as much information as possible in order to help debug the problem.
When bringing up your own information service, such as a homepage, be
sure to check with your local system administrator to find what the
local guidelines are in affect.
Consider spreading out the system load on popular sites by avoiding
"rush hour" and logging in during off-peak times.
4.1.2 Real Time Interactive Services Guidelines (MUDs MOOs IRC)
As in other environments, it is wise to "listen" first to get to know
the culture of the group.
Its not necessary to greet everyone on a channel or room personally.
Usually one "Hello" or the equivalent is enough. Using the automation
features of your client to greet people is not acceptable behavior.
Warn the participants if you intend to ship large quantities of
information. If all consent to receiving it, you may send, but sending
unwanted information without a warning is considered bad form just as
it is in mail.
Dont assume that people who you dont know will want to talk to you.
If you feel compelled to send private messages to people you dont
know, then be willing to accept gracefully the fact that they might be
busy or simply not want to chat with you.
Respect the guidelines of the group. Look for introductory materials
for the group. These may be on a related ftp site.
Dont badger other users for personal information such as sex, age, or
location. After you have built an acquaintance with another user,
these questions may be more appropriate, but many people hesitate to
give this information to people with whom they are not familiar.
If a user is using a nickname alias or pseudonym, respect that users
desire for anonymity. Even if you and that person are close friends,
it is more courteous to use his nickname. Do not use that persons
real name online without permission.
4.2 Administrator Guidelines
4.2.1 General Guidelines
Make clear whats available for copying and what is not.
Describe whats available on your site, and your organization. Be sure
any general policies are clear.
Keep information, especially READMEs, up-to-date. Provide READMEs in
plain ascii text.
Present a list of mirrors of your site if you know them. Make sure you
include a statement of copyright applicable to your mirrors. List
their update schedule if possible.
Make sure that popular (and massive) information has the bandwidth to
support it.
Use conventions for file extensions - .txt for ascii text; .html or
.htm for HTML; .ps for Postscript; .pdf for Portable Document Format;
.sgml or .sgm for SGML; .exe for non-Unix executables, etc.
For files being transferred, try to make filenames unique in the first
eight characters.
When providing information, make sure your site has something unique
to offer. Avoid bringing up an information service which simply points
to other services on the Internet.
Dont point to other sites without asking first.
Remember that setting up an information service is more than just
design and implementation. Its also maintenance.
Make sure your posted materials are appropriate for the supporting
organization.
Test applications with a variety of tools. Dont assume everything
works if youve tested with only one client. Also, assume the low end
of technology for clients and dont create applications which can only
be used by Graphical User Interfaces.
Have a consistent view of your information. Make sure the look and
feel stays the same throughout your applications.
Be sensitive to the longevity of your information. Be sure to date
time-sensitive materials, and be vigilant about keeping this
information well maintained.
Export restrictions vary from country to country. Be sure you
understand the implications of export restrictions when you post.
Tell users what you plan to do with any information you collect, such
as WWW feedback. You need to warn people if you plan to publish any of
their statements, even passively by just making it available to other
users.
Make sure your policy on user information services, such as homepages,
is well known.
5.0 Selected Bibliography
This bibliography was used to gather most of the information in the
sections above as well as for general reference. Items not
specifically found in these works were gathered from the IETF-RUN
Working Groups experience.
[1] Angell, D., and B. Heslop, "The Elements of E-mail Style",
New York: Addison-Wesley, 1994.

[2] "Answers to Frequently Asked Questions about Usenet"
Original author: jerry@eagle.UUCP (Jerry Schwarz)
Maintained by: netannounce@deshaw.com (Mark Moraes)
Archive-name: usenet-faq/part1

[3] Cerf, V., "Guidelines for Conduct on and Use of
Internet", at:
http://www.isoc.org/policy/conduct/conduct.html

[4] Dern, D., "The Internet Guide for New Users", New York:
McGraw-Hill, 1994.

[5] "Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette"
Original author: brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton)
Maintained by: netannounce@deshaw.com (Mark Moraes)
Archive-name: emily-postnews/part1

[6] Gaffin, A., "Everybodys Guide to the Internet", Cambridge,
Mass., MIT Press, 1994.

[7] "Guidelines for Responsible Use of the Internet"
from the US house of Representatives gopher, at:
gopher://gopher.house.gov:70/OF-1%3a208%3aInternet%20Etiquette

[8] How to find the right place to post (FAQ)
by buglady@bronze.lcs.mit.edu (Aliza R. Panitz)
Archive-name: finding-groups/general

[9] Hambridge, S., and J. Sedayao, "Horses and Barn Doors:
Evolution of Corporate Guidelines for Internet Usage",
LISA VII, Usenix, November 1-5, 1993, pp. 9-16.
ftp://ftp.intel.com/pub/papers/horses.ps or horses.ascii>

[10] Heslop, B., and D. Angell, "The Instant Internet guide :
Hands-on Global Networking", Reading, Mass., Addison-Wesley,
1994.

[11] Horwitz, S., "Internet Etiquette Tips",
ftp://ftp.temple.edu/pub/info/help-net/netiquette.infohn

[12] Internet Activities Board, "Ethics and the Internet", RFC
1087,
IAB, January 1989.
ftp://ds.internic.net/rfc/rfc1087.txt

[13] Kehoe, B., "Zen and the Art of the Internet: A Beginners
Guide", Netiquette information is spread through the chapters
of this work. 3rd ed. Englewood Cliffs, NJ., Prentice-Hall,
1994.

[14] Kochmer, J., "Internet Passport: NorthWestNets Guide
to our World Online", 4th ed. Bellevue, Wash.,
NorthWestNet, Northwest Academic Computing Consortium, 1993.

[15] Krol, Ed, "The Whole Internet: Users Guide and
Catalog", Sebastopol, CA, OReilly & Associates,
1992.

[16] Lane, E. and C. Summerhill, "Internet Primer for
Information Professionals: a basic guide to Internet
networking
technology", Westport, CT, Meckler, 1993.

[17] LaQuey, T., and J. Ryer, "The Internet Companion",
Chapter 3 "Communicating with People", pp 41-74. Reading,
MA, Addison-Wesley, 1993.

[18] Mandel, T., "Surfing the Wild Internet", SRI International
Business Intelligence Program, Scan No. 2109. March, 1993.
gopher://gopher.well.sf.ca.us:70/00/Communications/surf-wild

[19] Martin, J., "Theres Gold in them thar Networks! or Searching
for
Treasure in all the Wrong Places", FYI 10, RFC 1402,
January 1993. ftp://ds.internic.net/rfc/rfc1402.txt

[20] Pioch, N., "A Short IRC Primer", Text conversion
by Owe Rasmussen. Edition 1.1b, February 28, 1993.
http://www.kei.com/irc/IRCprimer1.1.txt

[21] Polly, J., "Surfing the Internet: an Introduction",
Version 2.0.3. Revised May 15, 1993.
ftp://ftp.nysernet.org/pub/resources/guides/surfing.2.0.3.txt

[22] "A Primer on How to Work With the Usenet Community"
Original author: chuq@apple.com (Chuq Von Rospach)
Maintained by: netannounce@deshaw.com (Mark Moraes)
Archive-name: usenet-primer/part1

[23] Rinaldi, A., "The Net: User Guidelines and Netiquette",
September 3, 1992.
http://www.fau.edu/rinaldi/net/index.htm

[24] "Rules for posting to Usenet"
Original author: spaf@cs.purdue.edu (Gene Spafford)
Maintained by: netannounce@deshaw.com (Mark Moraes)
Archive-name: posting-rules/part1

[25] Shea, V., "Netiquette", San Francisco: Albion Books,
1994?.

[26] Strangelove, M., with A. Bosley, "How to Advertise
on the Internet", ISSN 1201-0758.

[27] Tenant, R., "Internet Basics", ERIC Clearinghouse of
Information
Resources, EDO-IR-92-7. September, 1992.
gopher://nic.merit.edu:7043/00/introducing.the.internet/internet.basics.eric-digest
gopher://vega.lib.ncsu.edu:70/00/library/reference/guides/tennet

[28] Wiggins, R., "The Internet for everyone: a guide for
users and providers", New York, McGraw-Hill, 1995.


6.0 Security Considerations
Security issues are not discussed in this memo.
7.0 Authors Address
Sally Hambridge
Intel Corporation
2880 Northwestern Parkway
SC3-15
Santa Clara, CA 95052

Phone: 408-765-2931
Fax: 408-765-3679
EMail: sallyh@ludwig.sc.intel.com
RFC 1855
Netiquette Guidelines
Status of This Memo
This memo provides information for the Internet community. This memo
does not specify an Internet standard of any kind. Distribution of
this memo is unlimited.
Abstract
This document provides a minimum set of guidelines for Network
Etiquette (Netiquette) which organizations may take and adapt for
their own use. As such, it is deliberately written in a bulleted
format to make adaptation easier and to make any particular item easy
(or easier) to find. It also functions as a minimum set of guidelines
for individuals, both users and administrators. This memo is the
product of the Responsible Use of the Network (RUN) Working Group of
the IETF.
Table of Contents
1.0 Introduction
2.0 One-to-One Communication
3.0 One-to-Many Communication
4.0 Information Services
5.0 Selected Bibliography
6.0 Security Considerations
7.0 Authors Address
1.0 Introduction
In the past, the population of people using the Internet had "grown
up" with the Internet, were technically minded, and understood the
nature of the transport and the protocols. Today, the community of
Internet users includes people who are new to the environment. These
"Newbies" are unfamiliar with the culture and dont need to know about
transport and protocols. In order to bring these new users into the
Internet culture quickly, this Guide offers a minimum set of behaviors
which organizations and individuals may take and adapt for their own
use. Individuals should be aware that no matter who supplies their
Internet access, be it an Internet Service Provider through a private
account, or a student account at a University, or an account through a
corporation, that those organizations have regulations about ownership
of mail and files, about what is proper to post or send, and how to
present yourself. Be sure to check with the local authority for
specific guidelines.
Weve organized this material into three sections: One-to-one
communication, which includes mail and talk; One-to-many
communications, which includes mailing lists and NetNews; and
Information Services, which includes ftp, WWW, Wais, Gopher, MUDs and
MOOs. Finally, we have a Selected Bibliography, which may be used for
reference.

2.0 One-to-One Communication (electronic mail, talk)
We define one-to-one communications as those in which a person is
communicating with another person as if face-to-face: a dialog. In
general, rules of common courtesy for interaction with people should
be in force for any situation and on the Internet its doubly
important where, for example, body language and tone of voice must be
inferred. For more information on Netiquette for communicating via
electronic mail and talk, check references [1,23,25,27] in the
Selected Bibliography.
2.1 User Guidelines
2.1.1 For mail:
Unless you have your own Internet access through an Internet provider,
be sure to check with your employer about ownership of electronic
mail. Laws about the ownership of electronic mail vary from place to
place.
Unless you are using an encryption device (hardware or software), you
should assume that mail on the Internet is not secure. Never put in a
mail message anything you would not put on a postcard.
Respect the copyright on material that you reproduce. Almost every
country has copyright laws.
If you are forwarding or re-posting a message youve received, do not
change the wording. If the message was a personal message to you and
you are re-posting to a group, you should ask permission first. You
may shorten the message and quote only relevant parts, but be sure you
give proper attribution.
Never send chain letters via electronic mail. Chain letters are
forbidden on the Internet. Your network privileges will be revoked.
Notify your local system administrator if your ever receive one.
A good rule of thumb: Be conservative in what you send and liberal in
what you receive. You should not send heated messages (we call these
"flames") even if you are provoked. On the other hand, you shouldnt
be surprised if you get flamed and its prudent not to respond to
flames.
In general, its a good idea to at least check all your mail subjects
before responding to a message. Sometimes a person who asks you for
help (or clarification) will send another message which effectively
says "Never Mind". Also make sure that any message you respond to was
directed to you. You might be cc:ed rather than the primary recipient.
Make things easy for the recipient. Many mailers strip header
information which includes your return address. In order to ensure
that people know who you are, be sure to include a line or two at the
end of your message with contact information. You can create this file
ahead of time and add it to the end of your messages. (Some mailers do
this automatically.) In Internet parlance, this is known as a ".sig"
or "signature" file. Your .sig file takes the place of your business
card. (And you can have more than one to apply in different
circumstances.)
Be careful when addressing mail. There are addresses which may go to a
group but the address looks like it is just one person. Know to whom
you are sending.
Watch ccs when replying. Dont continue to include people if the
messages have become a 2-way conversation.
In general, most people who use the Internet dont have time to answer
general questions about the Internet and its workings. Dont send
unsolicited mail asking for information to people whose names you
might have seen in RFCs or on mailing lists.
Remember that people with whom you communicate are located across the
globe. If you send a message to which you want an immediate response,
the person receiving it might be at home asleep when it arrives. Give
them a chance to wake up, come to work, and login before assuming the
mail didnt arrive or that they dont care.
Verify all addresses before initiating long or personal discourse.
Its also a good practice to include the word "Long" in the subject
header so the recipient knows the message will take time to read and
respond to. Over 100 lines is considered "long".
Know whom to contact for help. Usually you will have resources close
at hand. Check locally for people who can help you with software and
system problems. Also, know whom to go to if you receive anything
questionable or illegal. Most sites also have "Postmaster" aliased to
a knowledgeable user, so you can send mail to this address to get help
with mail.
Remember that the recipient is a human being whose culture, language,
and humor have different points of reference from your own. Remember
that date formats, measurements, and idioms may not travel well. Be
especially careful with sarcasm.
Use mixed case. UPPER CASE LOOKS AS IF YOURE SHOUTING.
Use symbols for emphasis. That *is* what I meant. Use underscores for
underlining. War and Peace is my favorite book.
Use smileys to indicate tone of voice, but use them sparingly. :-) is
an example of a smiley (Look sideways). Dont assume that the
inclusion of a smiley will make the recipient happy with what you say
or wipe out an otherwise insulting comment.
Wait overnight to send emotional responses to messages. If you have
really strong feelings about a subject, indicate it via FLAME ON/OFF
enclosures. For example:
FLAME ON:
This type of argument is not worth the bandwidth it takes to send it.
Its illogical and poorly reasoned. The rest of the world agrees with
me.
FLAME OFF
Do not include control characters or non-ASCII attachments in messages
unless they are MIME attachments or unless your mailer encodes these.
If you send encoded messages make sure the recipient can decode them.
Be brief without being overly terse. When replying to a message,
include enough original material to be understood but no more. It is
extremely bad form to simply reply to a message by including all the
previous message: edit out all the irrelevant material.
Limit line length to fewer than 65 characters and end a line with a
carriage return.
Mail should have a subject heading which reflects the content of the
message.
If you include a signature keep it short. Rule of thumb is no longer
than 4 lines. Remember that many people pay for connectivity by the
minute, and the longer your message is, the more they pay.
Just as mail (today) may not be private, mail (and news) are (today)
subject to forgery and spoofing of various degrees of detectability.
Apply common sense "reality checks" before assuming a message is
valid.
If you think the importance of a message justifies it, immediately
reply briefly to an e-mail message to let the sender know you got it,
even if you will send a longer reply later.
"Reasonable" expectations for conduct via e-mail depend on your
relationship to a person and the context of the communication. Norms
learned in a particular e-mail environment may not apply in general to
your e-mail communication with people across the Internet. Be careful
with slang or local acronyms.
The cost of delivering an e-mail message is, on the average, paid
about equally by the sender and the recipient (or their
organizations). This is unlike other media such as physical mail,
telephone, TV, or radio. Sending someone mail may also cost them in
other specific ways like network bandwidth, disk space or CPU usage.
This is a fundamental economic reason why unsolicited e-mail
advertising is unwelcome (and is forbidden in many contexts).
Know how large a message you are sending. Including large files such
as Postscript files or programs may make your message so large that it
cannot be delivered or at least consumes excessive resources. A good
rule of thumb would be not to send a file larger than 50 Kilobytes.
Consider file transfer as an alternative, or cutting the file into
smaller chunks and sending each as a separate message.
Dont send large amounts of unsolicited information to people.
If your mail system allows you to forward mail, beware the dreaded
forwarding loop. Be sure you havent set up forwarding on several
hosts so that a message sent to you gets into an endless loop from one
computer to the next to the next.
2.1.2 For talk:
Talk is a set of protocols which allow two people to have an
interactive dialogue via computer.
Use mixed case and proper punctuation, as though you were typing a
letter or sending mail.
Dont run off the end of a line and simply let the terminal wrap; use
a Carriage Return (CR) at the end of the line. Also, dont assume your
screen size is the same as everyone elses. A good rule of thumb is to
write out no more than 70 characters, and no more than 12 lines (since
youre using a split screen).
Leave some margin; dont write to the edge of the screen.
Use two CRs to indicate that you are done and the other person may
start typing. (blank line).
Always say goodbye, or some other farewell, and wait to see a farewell
from the other person before killing the session. This is especially
important when you are communicating with someone a long way away.
Remember that your communication relies on both bandwidth (the size of
the pipe) and latency (the speed of light).
Remember that talk is an interruption to the other person. Only use as
appropriate. And never talk to strangers.
The reasons for not getting a reply are many. Dont assume that
everything is working correctly. Not all versions of talk are
compatible.
If left on its own, talk re-rings the recipient. Let it ring one or
two times, then kill it.
If a person doesnt respond you might try another tty. Use finger to
determine which are open. If the person still doesnt respond, do not
continue to send.
Talk shows your typing ability. If you type slowly and make mistakes
when typing it is often not worth the time of trying to correct, as
the other person can usually see what you meant.
Be careful if you have more than one talk session going!
2.2 Administrator Issues
Be sure you have established written guidelines for dealing with
situations especially illegal, improper, or forged traffic.
Handle requests in a timely fashion - by the next business day.
Respond promptly to people who have concerns about receiving improper
or illegal messages. Requests concerning chain letters should be
handled immediately.
Explain any system rules, such as disk quotas, to your users. Make
sure they understand implications of requesting files by mail such as:
Filling up disks; running up phone bills, delaying mail, etc.
Make sure you have "Postmaster" aliased. Make sure you have "Root"
aliased. Make sure someone reads that mail.
Investigate complaints about your users with an open mind. Remember
that addresses may be forged and spoofed.
3.0 One-to-Many Communication (Mailing Lists, NetNews)
Any time you engage in One-to-Many communications, all the rules for
mail should also apply. After all, communicating with many people via
one mail message or post is quite analogous to communicating with one
person with the exception of possibly offending a great many more
people than in one-to-one communication. Therefore, its quite
important to know as much as you can about the audience of your
message.
3.1 User Guidelines
3.1.1 General Guidelines for mailing lists and NetNews
Read both mailing lists and newsgroups for one to two months before
you post anything. This helps you to get an understanding of the
culture of the group.
Do not blame the system administrator for the behavior of the system
users.
Consider that a large audience will see your posts. That may include
your present or your next boss. Take care in what you write. Remember
too, that mailing lists and Newsgroups are frequently archived, and
that your words may be stored for a very long time in a place to which
many people have access.
Assume that individuals speak for themselves, and what they say does
not represent their organization (unless stated explicitly).
Remember that both mail and news take system resources. Pay attention
to any specific rules covering their uses your organization may have.
Messages and articles should be brief and to the point. Dont wander
off-topic, dont ramble and dont send mail or post messages solely to
point out other peoples errors in typing or spelling. These, more
than any other behavior, mark you as an immature beginner.
Subject lines should follow the conventions of the group.
Forgeries and spoofing are not approved behavior.
Advertising is welcomed on some lists and Newsgroups, and abhorred on
others! This is another example of knowing your audience before you
post. Unsolicited advertising which is completely off-topic will most
certainly guarantee that you get a lot of hate mail.
If you are sending a reply to a message or a posting be sure you
summarize the original at the top of the message, or include just
enough text of the original to give a context. This will make sure
readers understand when they start to read your response. Since
NetNews, especially, is proliferated by distributing the postings from
one host to another, it is possible to see a response to a message
before seeing the original. Giving context helps everyone. But do not
include the entire original!
Again, be sure to have a signature which you attach to your message.
This will guarantee that any peculiarities of mailers or newsreaders
which strip header information will not delete the only reference in
the message of how people may reach you.
Be careful when you reply to messages or postings. Frequently replies
are sent back to the address which originated the post - which in many
cases is the address of a list or group! You may accidentally send a
personal response to a great many people, embarrassing all involved.
Its best to type in the address instead of relying on "reply."
Delivery receipts, non-delivery notices, and vacation programs are
neither totally standardized nor totally reliable across the range of
systems connected to Internet mail. They are invasive when sent to
mailing lists, and some people consider delivery receipts an invasion
of privacy. In short, do not use them.
If you find a personal message has gone to a list or group, send an
apology to the person and to the group.
If you should find yourself in a disagreement with one person, make
your responses to each other via mail rather than continue to send
messages to the list or the group. If you are debating a point on
which the group might have some interest, you may summarize for them
later.
Dont get involved in flame wars. Neither post nor respond to
incendiary material.
Avoid sending messages or posting articles which are no more than
gratuitous replies to replies.
Be careful with monospacing fonts and diagrams. These will display
differently on different systems, and with different mailers on the
same system.
There are Newsgroups and Mailing Lists which discuss topics of wide
varieties of interests. These represent a diversity of lifestyles,
religions, and cultures. Posting articles or sending messages to a
group whose point of view is offensive to you simply to tell them they
are offensive is not acceptable. Sexually and racially harassing
messages may also have legal implications. There is software available
to filter items you might find objectionable.
3.1.2 Mailing List Guidelines
There are several ways to find information about what mailing lists
exist on the Internet and how to join them. Make sure you understand
your organizations policy about joining these lists and posting to
them. In general it is always better to check local resources first
before trying to find information via the Internet. Nevertheless,
there are a set of files posted periodically to news.answers which
list the Internet mailing lists and how to subscribe to them. This is
an invaluable resource for finding lists on any topic. See also
references [9,13,15] in the Selected Bibliography.
Send subscribe and unsubscribe messages to the appropriate address.
Although some mailing list software is smart enough to catch these,
not all can ferret these out. It is your responsibility to learn how
the lists work, and to send the correct mail to the correct place.
Although many many mailing lists adhere to the convention of having a
"-request" alias for sending subscribe and unsubscribe messages, not
all do. Be sure you know the conventions used by the lists to which
you subscribe.
Save the subscription messages for any lists you join. These usually
tell you how to unsubscribe as well.
In general, its not possible to retrieve messages once you have sent
them. Even your system administrator will not be able to get a message
back once you have sent it. This means you must make sure you really
want the message to go as you have written it.
The auto-reply feature of many mailers is useful for in-house
communication, but quite annoying when sent to entire mailing lists.
Examine "Reply-To" addresses when replying to messages from lists.
Most auto-replys will go to all members of the list.
Dont send large files to mailing lists when Uniform Resource Locators
(URLs) or pointers to ftp-able versions will do. If you want to send
it as multiple files, be sure to follow the culture of the group. If
you dont know what that is, ask.
Consider unsubscribing or setting a "nomail" option (when its
available) when you cannot check your mail for an extended period.
When sending a message to more than one mailing list, especially if
the lists are closely related, apologize for cross-posting.
If you ask a question, be sure to post a summary. When doing so, truly
summarize rather than send a cumulation of the messages you receive.
Some mailing lists are private. Do not send mail to these lists
uninvited. Do not report mail from these lists to a wider audience.
If you are caught in an argument, keep the discussion focused on
issues rather than the personalities involved.
3.1.3 NetNews Guidelines
NetNews is a globally distributed system which allows people to
communicate on topics of specific interest. It is divided into
hierarchies, with the major divisions being: sci - science related
discussions; comp - computer related discussions; news - for
discussions which center around NetNews itself; rec - recreational
activities; soc - social issues; talk - long-winded never-ending
discussions; biz - business related postings; and alt - the alternate
hierarchy. Alt is so named because creating an alt group does not go
through the same process as creating a group in the other parts of the
hierarchy. There are also regional hierarchies, hierarchies which are
widely distributed such as Bionet, and your place of business may have
its own groups as well. Recently, a "humanities" hierarchy was added,
and as time goes on its likely more will be added. For longer
discussions on News see references [2,8,22,23] in the Selected
Bibliography.
In NetNews parlance, "Posting" refers to posting a new article to a
group, or responding to a post someone else has posted.
"Cross-Posting" refers to posting a message to more than one group. If
you introduce Cross-Posting to a group, or if you direct
"Followup-To:" in the header of your posting, warn readers! Readers
will usually assume that the message was posted to a specific group
and that followups will go to that group. Headers change this
behavior.
Read all of a discussion in progress (we call this a thread) before
posting replies. Avoid posting "Me Too" messages, where content is
limited to agreement with previous posts. Content of a follow-up post
should exceed quoted content.
Send mail when an answer to a question is for one person only.
Remember that News has global distribution and the whole world
probably is NOT interested in a personal response. However, dont
hesitate to post when something will be of general interest to the
Newsgroup participants.
Check the "Distribution" section of the header, but dont depend on
it. Due to the complex method by which News is delivered, Distribution
headers are unreliable. But, if you are posting something which will
be of interest to a limited number or readers, use a distribution line
that attempts to limit the distribution of your article to those
people. For example, set the Distribution to be "nj" if you are
posting an article that will be of interest only to New Jersey
readers.
If you feel an article will be of interest to more than one Newsgroup,
be sure to CROSSPOST the article rather than individually post it to
those groups. In general, probably only five-to-six groups will have
similar enough interests to warrant this.
Consider using Reference sources (Computer Manuals, Newspapers, help
files) before posting a question. Asking a Newsgroup where answers are
readily available elsewhere generates grumpy "RTFM" (read the fine
manual - although a more vulgar meaning of the word beginning with "f"
is usually implied) messages.
Although there are Newsgroups which welcome advertising, in general it
is considered nothing less than criminal to advertise off-topic
products. Sending an advertisement to each and every group will pretty
much guarantee your loss of connectivity.
If you discover an error in your post, cancel it as soon as possible.
DO NOT attempt to cancel any articles but your own. Contact your
administrator if you dont know how to cancel your post, or if some
other post, such as a chain letter, needs canceling.
If youve posted something and dont see it immediately, dont assume
its failed and re-post it.
Some groups permit (and some welcome) posts which in other
circumstances would be considered to be in questionable taste. Still,
there is no guarantee that all people reading the group will
appreciate the material as much as you do. Use the Rotate utility
(which rotates all the characters in your post by 13 positions in the
alphabet) to avoid giving offense. The Rot13 utility for Unix is an
example.
In groups which discuss movies or books it is considered essential to
mark posts which disclose significant content as "Spoilers". Put this
word in your Subject: line. You may add blank lines to the beginning
of your post to keep content out of sight, or you may Rotate it.
Forging of news articles is generally censured. You can protect
yourself from forgeries by using software which generates a
manipulation detection "fingerprint", such as PGP (in the US).
Postings via anonymous servers are accepted in some Newsgroups and
disliked in others. Material which is inappropriate when posted under
ones own name is still inappropriate when posted anonymously.
Expect a slight delay in seeing your post when posting to a moderated
group. The moderator may change your subject line to have your post
conform to a particular thread.
Dont get involved in flame wars. Neither post nor respond to
incendiary material.
3.2 Administrator Guidelines
3.2.1 General Issues
Clarify any policies your site has regarding its subscription to
NetNews groups and about subscribing to mailing lists.
Clarify any policies your site has about posting to NetNews groups or
to mailing lists, including use of disclaimers in .sigs.
Clarify and publicize archive policy. (How long are articles kept?)
Investigate accusations about your users promptly and with an open
mind.
Be sure to monitor the health of your system.
Consider how long to archive system logs, and publicize your policy on
logging.
3.2.2 Mailing Lists
Keep mailing lists up to date to avoid the "bouncing mail" problem.
Help list owners when problems arise.
Inform list owners of any maintenance

XPost und FollowUp beachten wegen Umzugsunwilligkeit.

Liebe Pfleger zu dag°!

Ich bitte um schnellste Verabreichung von mindestens
10 gruenen Froschpillen!!!!!1

TOFU wegen Einweisung und weil ich zu faul bin, den
doppelt reinkopierten RFC 1855 rauszuloeschen.

Fuer mich bitte eine lila Beruhigungspille.°

Mfg, Gaby°

Jasper Riedel schrieb in de.sci.medizin.misc:
> Swen Sauerwald wrote in message news:...
>> On 26 Jun 2003 05:51:01 -0700, Jasper Riedel wrote:
>>
>> >Swen Sauerwald wrote in message
>> >news:...
>>
>> Es heißt Einleitungszeile, nicht Zweizeiler oder gar Roman!
>>
>
> Wenn ihr Administratoren so gemein zu den Leuten seid,
> dann wandern immer mehr Personen in die Hackerszene ab,
> und letztlich wird es auch mehr Terrorismus geben,
> aber das ist euch vermutlich egal.
>
> Deshalb lest euch alle BITTE mal durch was ich hier gefunden
> habe:
>
> RFC 1855
> Netiquette Guidelines
> Status of This Memo
> This memo provides information for the Internet community. This memo
> does not specify an Internet standard of any kind. Distribution of
> this memo is unlimited.
> Abstract
> This document provides a minimum set of guidelines for Network
> Etiquette (Netiquette) which organizations may take and adapt for
> their own use. As such, it is deliberately written in a bulleted
> format to make adaptation easier and to make any particular item easy
> (or easier) to find. It also functions as a minimum set of guidelines
> for individuals, both users and administrators. This memo is the
> product of the Responsible Use of the Network (RUN) Working Group of
> the IETF.
> Table of Contents
> 1.0 Introduction
> 2.0 One-to-One Communication
> 3.0 One-to-Many Communication
> 4.0 Information Services
> 5.0 Selected Bibliography
> 6.0 Security Considerations
> 7.0 Authors Address
> 1.0 Introduction
> In the past, the population of people using the Internet had "grown
> up" with the Internet, were technically minded, and understood the
> nature of the transport and the protocols. Today, the community of
> Internet users includes people who are new to the environment. These
> "Newbies" are unfamiliar with the culture and dont need to know about
> transport and protocols. In order to bring these new users into the
> Internet culture quickly, this Guide offers a minimum set of behaviors
> which organizations and individuals may take and adapt for their own
> use. Individuals should be aware that no matter who supplies their
> Internet access, be it an Internet Service Provider through a private
> account, or a student account at a University, or an account through a
> corporation, that those organizations have regulations about ownership
> of mail and files, about what is proper to post or send, and how to
> present yourself. Be sure to check with the local authority for
> specific guidelines.
> Weve organized this material into three sections: One-to-one
> communication, which includes mail and talk; One-to-many
> communications, which includes mailing lists and NetNews; and
> Information Services, which includes ftp, WWW, Wais, Gopher, MUDs and
> MOOs. Finally, we have a Selected Bibliography, which may be used for
> reference.
>
> 2.0 One-to-One Communication (electronic mail, talk)
> We define one-to-one communications as those in which a person is
> communicating with another person as if face-to-face: a dialog. In
> general, rules of common courtesy for interaction with people should
> be in force for any situation and on the Internet its doubly
> important where, for example, body language and tone of voice must be
> inferred. For more information on Netiquette for communicating via
> electronic mail and talk, check references [1,23,25,27] in the
> Selected Bibliography.
> 2.1 User Guidelines
> 2.1.1 For mail:
> Unless you have your own Internet access through an Internet provider,
> be sure to check with your employer about ownership of electronic
> mail. Laws about the ownership of electronic mail vary from place to
> place.
> Unless you are using an encryption device (hardware or software), you
> should assume that mail on the Internet is not secure. Never put in a
> mail message anything you would not put on a postcard.
> Respect the copyright on material that you reproduce. Almost every
> country has copyright laws.
> If you are forwarding or re-posting a message youve received, do not
> change the wording. If the message was a personal message to you and
> you are re-posting to a group, you should ask permission first. You
> may shorten the message and quote only relevant parts, but be sure you
> give proper attribution.
> Never send chain letters via electronic mail. Chain letters are
> forbidden on the Internet. Your network privileges will be revoked.
> Notify your local system administrator if your ever receive one.
> A good rule of thumb: Be conservative in what you send and liberal in
> what you receive. You should not send heated messages (we call these
> "flames") even if you are provoked. On the other hand, you shouldnt
> be surprised if you get flamed and its prudent not to respond to
> flames.
> In general, its a good idea to at least check all your mail subjects
> before responding to a message. Sometimes a person who asks you for
> help (or clarification) will send another message which effectively
> says "Never Mind". Also make sure that any message you respond to was
> directed to you. You might be cc:ed rather than the primary recipient.
> Make things easy for the recipient. Many mailers strip header
> information which includes your return address. In order to ensure
> that people know who you are, be sure to include a line or two at the
> end of your message with contact information. You can create this file
> ahead of time and add it to the end of your messages. (Some mailers do
> this automatically.) In Internet parlance, this is known as a ".sig"
> or "signature" file. Your .sig file takes the place of your business
> card. (And you can have more than one to apply in different
> circumstances.)
> Be careful when addressing mail. There are addresses which may go to a
> group but the address looks like it is just one person. Know to whom
> you are sending.
> Watch ccs when replying. Dont continue to include people if the
> messages have become a 2-way conversation.
> In general, most people who use the Internet dont have time to answer
> general questions about the Internet and its workings. Dont send
> unsolicited mail asking for information to people whose names you
> might have seen in RFCs or on mailing lists.
> Remember that people with whom you communicate are located across the
> globe. If you send a message to which you want an immediate response,
> the person receiving it might be at home asleep when it arrives. Give
> them a chance to wake up, come to work, and login before assuming the
> mail didnt arrive or that they dont care.
> Verify all addresses before initiating long or personal discourse.
> Its also a good practice to include the word "Long" in the subject
> header so the recipient knows the message will take time to read and
> respond to. Over 100 lines is considered "long".
> Know whom to contact for help. Usually you will have resources close
> at hand. Check locally for people who can help you with software and
> system problems. Also, know whom to go to if you receive anything
> questionable or illegal. Most sites also have "Postmaster" aliased to
> a knowledgeable user, so you can send mail to this address to get help
> with mail.
> Remember that the recipient is a human being whose culture, language,
> and humor have different points of reference from your own. Remember
> that date formats, measurements, and idioms may not travel well. Be
> especially careful with sarcasm.
> Use mixed case. UPPER CASE LOOKS AS IF YOURE SHOUTING.
> Use symbols for emphasis. That *is* what I meant. Use underscores for
> underlining. War and Peace is my favorite book.
> Use smileys to indicate tone of voice, but use them sparingly. :-) is
> an example of a smiley (Look sideways). Dont assume that the
> inclusion of a smiley will make the recipient happy with what you say
> or wipe out an otherwise insulting comment.
> Wait overnight to send emotional responses to messages. If you have
> really strong feelings about a subject, indicate it via FLAME ON/OFF
> enclosures. For example:
> FLAME ON:
> This type of argument is not worth the bandwidth it takes to send it.
> Its illogical and poorly reasoned. The rest of the world agrees with
> me.
> FLAME OFF
> Do not include control characters or non-ASCII attachments in messages
> unless they are MIME attachments or unless your mailer encodes these.
> If you send encoded messages make sure the recipient can decode them.
> Be brief without being overly terse. When replying to a message,
> include enough original material to be understood but no more. It is
> extremely bad form to simply reply to a message by including all the
> previous message: edit out all the irrelevant material.
> Limit line length to fewer than 65 characters and end a line with a
> carriage return.
> Mail should have a subject heading which reflects the content of the
> message.
> If you include a signature keep it short. Rule of thumb is no longer
> than 4 lines. Remember that many people pay for connectivity by the
> minute, and the longer your message is, the more they pay.
> Just as mail (today) may not be private, mail (and news) are (today)
> subject to forgery and spoofing of various degrees of detectability.
> Apply common sense "reality checks" before assuming a message is
> valid.
> If you think the importance of a message justifies it, immediately
> reply briefly to an e-mail message to let the sender know you got it,
> even if you will send a longer reply later.
> "Reasonable" expectations for conduct via e-mail depend on your
> relationship to a person and the context of the communication. Norms
> learned in a particular e-mail environment may not apply in general to
> your e-mail communication with people across the Internet. Be careful
> with slang or local acronyms.
> The cost of delivering an e-mail message is, on the average, paid
> about equally by the sender and the recipient (or their
> organizations). This is unlike other media such as physical mail,
> telephone, TV, or radio. Sending someone mail may also cost them in
> other specific ways like network bandwidth, disk space or CPU usage.
> This is a fundamental economic reason why unsolicited e-mail
> advertising is unwelcome (and is forbidden in many contexts).
> Know how large a message you are sending. Including large files such
> as Postscript files or programs may make your message so large that it
> cannot be delivered or at least consumes excessive resources. A good
> rule of thumb would be not to send a file larger than 50 Kilobytes.
> Consider file transfer as an alternative, or cutting the file into
> smaller chunks and sending each as a separate message.
> Dont send large amounts of unsolicited information to people.
> If your mail system allows you to forward mail, beware the dreaded
> forwarding loop. Be sure you havent set up forwarding on several
> hosts so that a message sent to you gets into an endless loop from one
> computer to the next to the next.
> 2.1.2 For talk:
> Talk is a set of protocols which allow two people to have an
> interactive dialogue via computer.
> Use mixed case and proper punctuation, as though you were typing a
> letter or sending mail.
> Dont run off the end of a line and simply let the terminal wrap; use
> a Carriage Return (CR) at the end of the line. Also, dont assume your
> screen size is the same as everyone elses. A good rule of thumb is to
> write out no more than 70 characters, and no more than 12 lines (since
> youre using a split screen).
> Leave some margin; dont write to the edge of the screen.
> Use two CRs to indicate that you are done and the other person may
> start typing. (blank line).
> Always say goodbye, or some other farewell, and wait to see a farewell
> from the other person before killing the session. This is especially
> important when you are communicating with someone a long way away.
> Remember that your communication relies on both bandwidth (the size of
> the pipe) and latency (the speed of light).
> Remember that talk is an interruption to the other person. Only use as
> appropriate. And never talk to strangers.
> The reasons for not getting a reply are many. Dont assume that
> everything is working correctly. Not all versions of talk are
> compatible.
> If left on its own, talk re-rings the recipient. Let it ring one or
> two times, then kill it.
> If a person doesnt respond you might try another tty. Use finger to
> determine which are open. If the person still doesnt respond, do not
> continue to send.
> Talk shows your typing ability. If you type slowly and make mistakes
> when typing it is often not worth the time of trying to correct, as
> the other person can usually see what you meant.
> Be careful if you have more than one talk session going!
> 2.2 Administrator Issues
> Be sure you have established written guidelines for dealing with
> situations especially illegal, improper, or forged traffic.
> Handle requests in a timely fashion - by the next business day.
> Respond promptly to people who have concerns about receiving improper
> or illegal messages. Requests concerning chain letters should be
> handled immediately.
> Explain any system rules, such as disk quotas, to your users. Make
> sure they understand implications of requesting files by mail such as:
> Filling up disks; running up phone bills, delaying mail, etc.
> Make sure you have "Postmaster" aliased. Make sure you have "Root"
> aliased. Make sure someone reads that mail.
> Investigate complaints about your users with an open mind. Remember
> that addresses may be forged and spoofed.
> 3.0 One-to-Many Communication (Mailing Lists, NetNews)
> Any time you engage in One-to-Many communications, all the rules for
> mail should also apply. After all, communicating with many people via
> one mail message or post is quite analogous to communicating with one
> person with the exception of possibly offending a great many more
> people than in one-to-one communication. Therefore, its quite
> important to know as much as you can about the audience of your
> message.
> 3.1 User Guidelines
> 3.1.1 General Guidelines for mailing lists and NetNews
> Read both mailing lists and newsgroups for one to two months before
> you post anything. This helps you to get an understanding of the
> culture of the group.
> Do not blame the system administrator for the behavior of the system
> users.
> Consider that a large audience will see your posts. That may include
> your present or your next boss. Take care in what you write. Remember
> too, that mailing lists and Newsgroups are frequently archived, and
> that your words may be stored for a very long time in a place to which
> many people have access.
> Assume that individuals speak for themselves, and what they say does
> not represent their organization (unless stated explicitly).
> Remember that both mail and news take system resources. Pay attention
> to any specific rules covering their uses your organization may have.
> Messages and articles should be brief and to the point. Dont wander
> off-topic, dont ramble and dont send mail or post messages solely to
> point out other peoples errors in typing or spelling. These, more
> than any other behavior, mark you as an immature beginner.
> Subject lines should follow the conventions of the group.
> Forgeries and spoofing are not approved behavior.
> Advertising is welcomed on some lists and Newsgroups, and abhorred on
> others! This is another example of knowing your audience before you
> post. Unsolicited advertising which is completely off-topic will most
> certainly guarantee that you get a lot of hate mail.
> If you are sending a reply to a message or a posting be sure you
> summarize the original at the top of the message, or include just
> enough text of the original to give a context. This will make sure
> readers understand when they start to read your response. Since
> NetNews, especially, is proliferated by distributing the postings from
> one host to another, it is possible to see a response to a message
> before seeing the original. Giving context helps everyone. But do not
> include the entire original!
> Again, be sure to have a signature which you attach to your message.
> This will guarantee that any peculiarities of mailers or newsreaders
> which strip header information will not delete the only reference in
> the message of how people may reach you.
> Be careful when you reply to messages or postings. Frequently replies
> are sent back to the address which originated the post - which in many
> cases is the address of a list or group! You may accidentally send a
> personal response to a great many people, embarrassing all involved.
> Its best to type in the address instead of relying on "reply."
> Delivery receipts, non-delivery notices, and vacation programs are
> neither totally standardized nor totally reliable across the range of
> systems connected to Internet mail. They are invasive when sent to
> mailing lists, and some people consider delivery receipts an invasion
> of privacy. In short, do not use them.
> If you find a personal message has gone to a list or group, send an
> apology to the person and to the group.
> If you should find yourself in a disagreement with one person, make
> your responses to each other via mail rather than continue to send
> messages to the list or the group. If you are debating a point on
> which the group might have some interest, you may summarize for them
> later.
> Dont get involved in flame wars. Neither post nor respond to
> incendiary material.
> Avoid sending messages or posting articles which are no more than
> gratuitous replies to replies.
> Be careful with monospacing fonts and diagrams. These will display
> differently on different systems, and with different mailers on the
> same system.
> There are Newsgroups and Mailing Lists which discuss topics of wide
> varieties of interests. These represent a diversity of lifestyles,
> religions, and cultures. Posting articles or sending messages to a
> group whose point of view is offensive to you simply to tell them they
> are offensive is not acceptable. Sexually and racially harassing
> messages may also have legal implications. There is software available
> to filter items you might find objectionable.
> 3.1.2 Mailing List Guidelines
> There are several ways to find information about what mailing lists
> exist on the Internet and how to join them. Make sure you understand
> your organizations policy about joining these lists and posting to
> them. In general it is always better to check local resources first
> before trying to find information via the Internet. Nevertheless,
> there are a set of files posted periodically to news.answers which
> list the Internet mailing lists and how to subscribe to them. This is
> an invaluable resource for finding lists on any topic. See also
> references [9,13,15] in the Selected Bibliography.
> Send subscribe and unsubscribe messages to the appropriate address.
> Although some mailing list software is smart enough to catch these,
> not all can ferret these out. It is your responsibility to learn how
> the lists work, and to send the correct mail to the correct place.
> Although many many mailing lists adhere to the convention of having a
> "-request" alias for sending subscribe and unsubscribe messages, not
> all do. Be sure you know the conventions used by the lists to which
> you subscribe.
> Save the subscription messages for any lists you join. These usually
> tell you how to unsubscribe as well.
> In general, its not possible to retrieve messages once you have sent
> them. Even your system administrator will not be able to get a message
> back once you have sent it. This means you must make sure you really
> want the message to go as you have written it.
> The auto-reply feature of many mailers is useful for in-house
> communication, but quite annoying when sent to entire mailing lists.
> Examine "Reply-To" addresses when replying to messages from lists.
> Most auto-replys will go to all members of the list.
> Dont send large files to mailing lists when Uniform Resource Locators
> (URLs) or pointers to ftp-able versions will do. If you want to send
> it as multiple files, be sure to follow the culture of the group. If
> you dont know what that is, ask.
> Consider unsubscribing or setting a "nomail" option (when its
> available) when you cannot check your mail for an extended period.
> When sending a message to more than one mailing list, especially if
> the lists are closely related, apologize for cross-posting.
> If you ask a question, be sure to post a summary. When doing so, truly
> summarize rather than send a cumulation of the messages you receive.
> Some mailing lists are private. Do not send mail to these lists
> uninvited. Do not report mail from these lists to a wider audience.
> If you are caught in an argument, keep the discussion focused on
> issues rather than the personalities involved.
> 3.1.3 NetNews Guidelines
> NetNews is a globally distributed system which allows people to
> communicate on topics of specific interest. It is divided into
> hierarchies, with the major divisions being: sci - science related
> discussions; comp - computer related discussions; news - for
> discussions which center around NetNews itself; rec - recreational
> activities; soc - social issues; talk - long-winded never-ending
> discussions; biz - business related postings; and alt - the alternate
> hierarchy. Alt is so named because creating an alt group does not go
> through the same process as creating a group in the other parts of the
> hierarchy. There are also regional hierarchies, hierarchies which are
> widely distributed such as Bionet, and your place of business may have
> its own groups as well. Recently, a "humanities" hierarchy was added,
> and as time goes on its likely more will be added. For longer
> discussions on News see references [2,8,22,23] in the Selected
> Bibliography.
> In NetNews parlance, "Posting" refers to posting a new article to a
> group, or responding to a post someone else has posted.
> "Cross-Posting" refers to posting a message to more than one group. If
> you introduce Cross-Posting to a group, or if you direct
> "Followup-To:" in the header of your posting, warn readers! Readers
> will usually assume that the message was posted to a specific group
> and that followups will go to that group. Headers change this
> behavior.
> Read all of a discussion in progress (we call this a thread) before
> posting replies. Avoid posting "Me Too" messages, where content is
> limited to agreement with previous posts. Content of a follow-up post
> should exceed quoted content.
> Send mail when an answer to a question is for one person only.
> Remember that News has global distribution and the whole world
> probably is NOT interested in a personal response. However, dont
> hesitate to post when something will be of general interest to the
> Newsgroup participants.
> Check the "Distribution" section of the header, but dont depend on
> it. Due to the complex method by which News is delivered, Distribution
> headers are unreliable. But, if you are posting something which will
> be of interest to a limited number or readers, use a distribution line
> that attempts to limit the distribution of your article to those
> people. For example, set the Distribution to be "nj" if you are
> posting an article that will be of interest only to New Jersey
> readers.
> If you feel an article will be of interest to more than one Newsgroup,
> be sure to CROSSPOST the article rather than individually post it to
> those groups. In general, probably only five-to-six groups will have
> similar enough interests to warrant this.
> Consider using Reference sources (Computer Manuals, Newspapers, help
> files) before posting a question. Asking a Newsgroup where answers are
> readily available elsewhere generates grumpy "RTFM" (read the fine
> manual - although a more vulgar meaning of the word beginning with "f"
> is usually implied) messages.
> Although there are Newsgroups which welcome advertising, in general it
> is considered nothing less than criminal to advertise off-topic
> products. Sending an advertisement to each and every group will pretty
> much guarantee your loss of connectivity.
> If you discover an error in your post, cancel it as soon as possible.
> DO NOT attempt to cancel any articles but your own. Contact your
> administrator if you dont know how to cancel your post, or if some
> other post, such as a chain letter, needs canceling.
> If youve posted something and dont see it immediately, dont assume
> its failed and re-post it.
> Some groups permit (and some welcome) posts which in other
> circumstances would be considered to be in questionable taste. Still,
> there is no guarantee that all people reading the group will
> appreciate the material as much as you do. Use the Rotate utility
> (which rotates all the characters in your post by 13 positions in the
> alphabet) to avoid giving offense. The Rot13 utility for Unix is an
> example.
> In groups which discuss movies or books it is considered essential to
> mark posts which disclose significant content as "Spoilers". Put this
> word in your Subject: line. You may add blank lines to the beginning
> of your post to keep content out of sight, or you may Rotate it.
> Forging of news articles is generally censured. You can protect
> yourself from forgeries by using software which generates a
> manipulation detection "fingerprint", such as PGP (in the US).
> Postings via anonymous servers are accepted in some Newsgroups and
> disliked in others. Material which is inappropriate when posted under
> ones own name is still inappropriate when posted anonymously.
> Expect a slight delay in seeing your post when posting to a moderated
> group. The moderator may change your subject line to have your post
> conform to a particular thread.
> Dont get involved in flame wars. Neither post nor respond to
> incendiary material.
> 3.2 Administrator Guidelines
> 3.2.1 General Issues
> Clarify any policies your site has regarding its subscription to
> NetNews groups and about subscribing to mailing lists.
> Clarify any policies your site has about posting to NetNews groups or
> to mailing lists, including use of disclaimers in .sigs.
> Clarify and publicize archive policy. (How long are articles kept?)
> Investigate accusations about your users promptly and with an open
> mind.
> Be sure to monitor the health of your system.
> Consider how long to archive system logs, and publicize your policy on
> logging.
> 3.2.2 Mailing Lists
> Keep mailing lists up to date to avoid the "bouncing mail" problem.
> Help list owners when problems arise.
> Inform list owners of any maintenance windows or planned downtime.
> Be sure to have "-request" aliases for list subscription and
> administration.
> Make sure all mail gateways operate smoothly.
> 3.2.3. NetNews
> Publicize the nature of the feed you receive. If you do not get a full
> feed, people may want to know why not.
> Be aware that the multiplicity of News Reader clients may cause the
> News Server being blamed for problems in the clients.
> Honor requests from users immediately if they request cancellation of
> their own posts or invalid posts, such as chain letters.
> Have "Usenet", "Netnews" and "News" aliased and make sure someone
> reads the mail.
> 3.3 Moderator Guidelines
> 3.3.1 General Guidelines
> Make sure your Frequestly Asked Questions (FAQ) is posted at regular
> intervals. Include your guidelines for articles/messages. If you are
> not the FAQ maintainer, make sure they do so.
> Make sure you maintain a good welcome message, which contains
> subscribe and unsubscribe information.
> Newsgroups should have their charter/guidelines posted regularly.
> Keep mailing lists and Newsgroups up to date. Post messages in a
> timely fashion. Designate a substitute when you go on vacation or out
> of town.
> 4.0 Information Services (Gopher, Wais, WWW, ftp, telnet)
> In recent Internet history, the Net has exploded with new and varied
> Information services. Gopher, Wais, World Wide Web (WWW), Multi-User
> Dimensions (MUDs) Multi-User Dimensions which are Object Oriented
> (MOOs) are a few of these new areas. Although the ability to find
> information is exploding, "Caveat Emptor" remains constant. For more
> information on these services, check references [14,28] in the
> Selected Bibliography.
> 4.1 User Guidelines
> 4.1.1. General guidelines
> Remember that all these services belong to someone else. The people
> who pay the bills get to make the rules governing usage. Information
> may be free - or it may not be! Be sure you check.
> If you have problems with any form of information service, start
> problem solving by checking locally: Check file configurations,
> software setup, network connections, etc. Do this before assuming the
> problem is at the providers end and/or is the providers fault.
> Although there are naming conventions for file-types used, dont
> depend on these file naming conventions to be enforced. For example, a
> ".doc" file is not always a Word file.
> Information services also use conventions, such as www.xyz.com. While
> it is useful to know these conventions, again, dont necessarily rely
> on them.
> Know how file names work on your own system.
> Be aware of conventions used for providing information during
> sessions. FTP sites usually have files named README in a top level
> directory which have information about the files available. But, dont
> assume that these files are necessarily up-to-date and/or accurate.
> Do NOT assume that ANY information you find is up-to-date and/or
> accurate. Remember that new technologies allow just about anyone to be
> a publisher, but not all people have discovered the responsibilities
> which accompany publishing.
> Remember that unless you are sure that security and authentication
> technology is in use, that any information you submit to a system is
> being transmitted over the Internet "in the clear", with no protection
> from "sniffers" or forgers.
> Since the Internet spans the globe, remember that Information Services
> might reflect culture and life-style markedly different from your own
> community. Materials you find offensive may originate in a geography
> which finds them acceptable. Keep an open mind.
> When wanting information from a popular server, be sure to use a
> mirror server thats close if a list is provided.
> Do not use someone elses FTP site to deposit materials you wish other
> people to pick up. This is called "dumping" and is not generally
> acceptable behavior.
> When you have trouble with a site and ask for help, be sure to provide
> as much information as possible in order to help debug the problem.
> When bringing up your own information service, such as a homepage, be
> sure to check with your local system administrator to find what the
> local guidelines are in affect.
> Consider spreading out the system load on popular sites by avoiding
> "rush hour" and logging in during off-peak times.
> 4.1.2 Real Time Interactive Services Guidelines (MUDs MOOs IRC)
> As in other environments, it is wise to "listen" first to get to know
> the culture of the group.
> Its not necessary to greet everyone on a channel or room personally.
> Usually one "Hello" or the equivalent is enough. Using the automation
> features of your client to greet people is not acceptable behavior.
> Warn the participants if you intend to ship large quantities of
> information. If all consent to receiving it, you may send, but sending
> unwanted information without a warning is considered bad form just as
> it is in mail.
> Dont assume that people who you dont know will want to talk to you.
> If you feel compelled to send private messages to people you dont
> know, then be willing to accept gracefully the fact that they might be
> busy or simply not want to chat with you.
> Respect the guidelines of the group. Look for introductory materials
> for the group. These may be on a related ftp site.
> Dont badger other users for personal information such as sex, age, or
> location. After you have built an acquaintance with another user,
> these questions may be more appropriate, but many people hesitate to
> give this information to people with whom they are not familiar.
> If a user is using a nickname alias or pseudonym, respect that users
> desire for anonymity. Even if you and that person are close friends,
> it is more courteous to use his nickname. Do not use that persons
> real name online without permission.
> 4.2 Administrator Guidelines
> 4.2.1 General Guidelines
> Make clear whats available for copying and what is not.
> Describe whats available on your site, and your organization. Be sure
> any general policies are clear.
> Keep information, especially READMEs, up-to-date. Provide READMEs in
> plain ascii text.
> Present a list of mirrors of your site if you know them. Make sure you
> include a statement of copyright applicable to your mirrors. List
> their update schedule if possible.
> Make sure that popular (and massive) information has the bandwidth to
> support it.
> Use conventions for file extensions - .txt for ascii text; .html or
> .htm for HTML; .ps for Postscript; .pdf for Portable Document Format;
> .sgml or .sgm for SGML; .exe for non-Unix executables, etc.
> For files being transferred, try to make filenames unique in the first
> eight characters.
> When providing information, make sure your site has something unique
> to offer. Avoid bringing up an information service which simply points
> to other services on the Internet.
> Dont point to other sites without asking first.
> Remember that setting up an information service is more than just
> design and implementation. Its also maintenance.
> Make sure your posted materials are appropriate for the supporting
> organization.
> Test applications with a variety of tools. Dont assume everything
> works if youve tested with only one client. Also, assume the low end
> of technology for clients and dont create applications which can only
> be used by Graphical User Interfaces.
> Have a consistent view of your information. Make sure the look and
> feel stays the same throughout your applications.
> Be sensitive to the longevity of your information. Be sure to date
> time-sensitive materials, and be vigilant about keeping this
> information well maintained.
> Export restrictions vary from country to country. Be sure you
> understand the implications of export restrictions when you post.
> Tell users what you plan to do with any information you collect, such
> as WWW feedback. You need to warn people if you plan to publish any of
> their statements, even passively by just making it available to other
> users.
> Make sure your policy on user information services, such as homepages,
> is well known.
> 5.0 Selected Bibliography
> This bibliography was used to gather most of the information in the
> sections above as well as for general reference. Items not
> specifically found in these works were gathered from the IETF-RUN
> Working Groups experience.
> [1] Angell, D., and B. Heslop, "The Elements of E-mail Style",
> New York: Addison-Wesley, 1994.
>
> [2] "Answers to Frequently Asked Questions about Usenet"
> Original author: jerry@eagle.UUCP (Jerry Schwarz)
> Maintained by: netannounce@deshaw.com (Mark Moraes)
> Archive-name: usenet-faq/part1
>
> [3] Cerf, V., "Guidelines for Conduct on and Use of
> Internet", at:
> http://www.isoc.org/policy/conduct/conduct.html
>
> [4] Dern, D., "The Internet Guide for New Users", New York:
> McGraw-Hill, 1994.
>
> [5] "Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette"
> Original author: brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton)
> Maintained by: netannounce@deshaw.com (Mark Moraes)
> Archive-name: emily-postnews/part1
>
> [6] Gaffin, A., "Everybodys Guide to the Internet", Cambridge,
> Mass., MIT Press, 1994.
>
> [7] "Guidelines for Responsible Use of the Internet"
> from the US house of Representatives gopher, at:
> gopher://gopher.house.gov:70/OF-1%3a208%3aInternet%20Etiquette
>
> [8] How to find the right place to post (FAQ)
> by buglady@bronze.lcs.mit.edu (Aliza R. Panitz)
> Archive-name: finding-groups/general
>
> [9] Hambridge, S., and J. Sedayao, "Horses and Barn Doors:
> Evolution of Corporate Guidelines for Internet Usage",
> LISA VII, Usenix, November 1-5, 1993, pp. 9-16.
> ftp://ftp.intel.com/pub/papers/horses.ps or horses.ascii>
>
> [10] Heslop, B., and D. Angell, "The Instant Internet guide :
> Hands-on Global Networking", Reading, Mass., Addison-Wesley,
> 1994.
>
> [11] Horwitz, S., "Internet Etiquette Tips",
> ftp://ftp.temple.edu/pub/info/help-net/netiquette.infohn
>
> [12] Internet Activities Board, "Ethics and the Internet", RFC
> 1087,
> IAB, January 1989.
> ftp://ds.internic.net/rfc/rfc1087.txt
>
> [13] Kehoe, B., "Zen and the Art of the Internet: A Beginners
> Guide", Netiquette information is spread through the chapters
> of this work. 3rd ed. Englewood Cliffs, NJ., Prentice-Hall,
> 1994.
>
> [14] Kochmer, J., "Internet Passport: NorthWestNets Guide
> to our World Online", 4th ed. Bellevue, Wash.,
> NorthWestNet, Northwest Academic Computing Consortium, 1993.
>
> [15] Krol, Ed, "The Whole Internet: Users Guide and
> Catalog", Sebastopol, CA, OReilly & Associates,
> 1992.
>
> [16] Lane, E. and C. Summerhill, "Internet Primer for
> Information Professionals: a basic guide to Internet
> networking
> technology", Westport, CT, Meckler, 1993.
>
> [17] LaQuey, T., and J. Ryer, "The Internet Companion",
> Chapter 3 "Communicating with People", pp 41-74. Reading,
> MA, Addison-Wesley, 1993.
>
> [18] Mandel, T., "Surfing the Wild Internet", SRI International
> Business Intelligence Program, Scan No. 2109. March, 1993.
> gopher://gopher.well.sf.ca.us:70/00/Communications/surf-wild
>
> [19] Martin, J., "Theres Gold in them thar Networks! or Searching
> for
> Treasure in all the Wrong Places", FYI 10, RFC 1402,
> January 1993. ftp://ds.internic.net/rfc/rfc1402.txt
>
> [20] Pioch, N., "A Short IRC Primer", Text conversion
> by