[8] in comp.os.os2.announce archive
Welcome to comp.os.os2.announce!
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Dave Tholen)
Wed Aug 2 06:47:14 1995
To: os2ann.DISCUSS@bloom-picayune.MIT.EDU
Date: Wed, 2 Aug 1995 06:46:20 GMT
From: tholen@newton.ifa.hawaii.edu (Dave Tholen)
Welcome to comp.os.os2.announce, the newsgroup where 87,000* readers find out
about:
o new OS/2 applications
o updates to FTP archives of OS/2 programs
o OS/2 user group meetings
o new OS/2 publications
o updates to the OS/2 Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) lists
o news about OS/2-related workshops, seminars, and demonstrations
o beta testing programs for coming OS/2 applications
o new releases of OS/2 and ServicePaks for existing versions
o miscellaneous OS/2 informational news
This occasional posting is mainly for the benefit of new subscribers to the
comp.os.os2.announce newsgroup.
First things first
------------------
New readers of comp.os.os2.announce should be aware that this is a moderated
newsgroup, which means that all of the postings that appear here are routed
through a moderator who approves or rejects postings on the basis of whether
they comply with the newsgroup charter. In essence, the moderator is something
of a mailman; he delivers the information, but he rarely originates the
information. Thus questions about items that appear here SHOULD NOT BE
DIRECTED TO THE MODERATOR. Please direct your questions to the person who
submitted the information, who is generally identified in the material that
immediately precedes the text of the submitted material. As traffic continues
to increase in this newsgroup, the moderator finds it necessary to reduce the
amount of time spent per message running the newsgroup, and eliminating
inappropriately directed questions is one way to do that.
Posting to comp.os.os2.announce
-------------------------------
comp.os.os2.announce is a moderated newsgroup. You cannot post a message
to this newsgroup directly. In particular, questions about OS/2 or its
applications are more appropriate for one of the other OS/2 newsgroups.
Also, items of an advocacy nature (awards given to OS/2, OS/2 applications,
or OS/2 books) don't really help people use OS/2 any better, and so they
are often diverted to comp.os.os2.advocacy instead. The moderator's intent
is to provide information that helps readers use OS/2. If you attempt to post
to this newsgroup, some news programs will simply bounce the message back to
you, while others redirect it to the moderator's mailbox.
I usually try to supply the most appropriate newsgroup in the "Followup-To:"
line, so followups to postings should be redirected to one of the unmoderated
newsgroups automatically, thus readers should be able to submit followups
without problems, but they will appear elsewhere, not in this newsgroup. To
have an announcement appear on comp.os.os2.announce, send me the text of the
posting, and please adhere to the rules given below. My Internet address is:
tholen@newton.ifa.hawaii.edu
Those without access to Internet can send mail to:
Dave Tholen
Institute for Astronomy
2680 Woodlawn Drive
Honolulu, HI 96822
Submission guidelines
---------------------
1. Electronic submissions are greatly preferred. Paper submissions received
through the postal service can be processed, though at much greater time
expense to the moderator, whose time is limited. Also, this method
increases the possibility of a typographical error being made in the
text. If you do submit an item specifically for comp.os.os2.announce
through the postal service, please indicate so, otherwise the moderator
may not be able to distinguish the material from other advertising
received via some mailing list of OS/2 users.
2. The subject line must say "for comp.os.os2.announce".
3. No anonymous postings will be accepted. Please supply your name, as you
like it to appear in the header, along with your email address, so that
the moderator can correspond with the submitter in case there is some
question about the material. You may request that your email address be
withheld from the posting, if you are concerned about your personal
mailbox being inundated with inquiries.
4. If you are not the originator of the information, you must supply the
source for the information. The idea here is to cut down on the
occurrence of incorrect information. If the source is a person, please
provide the name of the person and that person's email address, if
available. Also, please make certain that you have the source's
permission to submit the material to comp.os.os2.announce for wide
distribution over the Internet, and let that person know that he/she
will be identified as the source. If that person refuses to be identified
as the source, then the posting will not be accepted. That is, no
anonymous sources will be accepted.
If the source is not a person, such as a BBS or something received via
direct mail, please identify the source and consider whether the material
was intended for public dissemination. In particular, some special offers
are restricted to geographical areas, whereas the default for USENET
distribution is global. Unfortunately, there does not appear to be a
way for the moderator to restrict distribution to a geographical area
that does not include the moderator's area. Thus readers in Europe will
generally not see postings about OS/2 user group meetings in North America,
but North American readers will see postings about meetings elsewhere in
the world.
5. The content of the message should be of an announcement nature. Suitable
categories include:
o new OS/2 applications, or new versions of applications
o updates to FTP archives of OS/2 programs
o OS/2 user group meetings
o new OS/2 publications
o updates to the OS/2 Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) lists
o news about OS/2-related workshops, seminars, and demonstrations
o beta testing programs for coming OS/2 applications
o new releases of OS/2 and ServicePaks for existing versions
o miscellaneous OS/2 informational news
Note that items about awards and other kudos have traditionally been
diverted to comp.os.os2.advocacy, where they seem more appropriate.
6. Line lengths should be restricted to 79 or fewer characters to avoid
wrapping on 80-character displays. I would consider it a bonus if
sentences were separated by the standard two spaces instead of one.
Avoid using lines of 79 hyphens in your text, because the moderator
uses these to delineate the submitted material from moderator-added
material. If you want to speed the processing of your submission,
it would help if you constructed the header in the following way:
Submitted by: Your Name (username@sub-sub-domain.sub-domain.domain)
Source: Source's Name
Date received: 1994 September 1
Date posted: (to be supplied by the moderator)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Note that the date received reflects the moderator's local time zone,
and so it may be modified if the submitter is in a sufficiently
different time zone to produce a different date.
In case you're wondering why I put the dates in this format, it is
because I treat time like any numerical quantity and put the most
significant digit leftmost and the least significant digit rightmost.
Also, this format is used in some countries of the world, so it
certainly isn't inconsistent, especially given the global nature of
USENET.
7. Netiquette frowns upon the use of USENET for commercial purposes. However,
a newsgroup such as comp.os.os2.announce is inherently commercial to a
certain extent, given that readers have a great deal of interest in new
product announcements. The suitability of such announcements will be
determined by the ratio of objective technical information to subjective
marketing hype or advertising fluff. Examples:
objective: Product X is a full 32-bit native OS/2 PM application.
subjective: Product X is the acknowledged world leader in word processing
software!
objective: Product Y carries a list price of $179.
subjective: Product Y outclasses the competition with the lowest
price to performance ratio in the industry!
The moderator reserves the right to edit submissions that contain
mostly useful information but a bit of fluff. Excessively fluffy
submissions will either be returned to the submitter for modification,
if otherwise deemed of interest to the readers, or simply ignored.
8. Heavily cross-posted submissions will be ignored. If I receive a
submission for posting to comp.os.os2.announce, and subsequently read
the exact same posting in most, if not all, the other OS/2 newsgroups,
then there is really no point in wasting additional bandwidth to post
it in comp.os.os2.announce as well. Cross-posting is beneficial only
to the extent that additional readers see the message. If a message
appears in several other OS/2 newsgroups, especially comp.os.os2.misc,
which is the most widely read of the OS/2 newsgroups, then there are
very few additional readers to be gained by an additional posting in
comp.os.os2.announce. In such cases, the annoyance factor outweighs
the benefit of a handful of additional readers.
Summary checklist:
a) "for comp.os.os2.announce" as the subject of the mail
b) your name, as you would like it to appear in the announcement
c) your email address, where the moderator can reach you in the
event of a question
d) note whether you would prefer that your email address be withheld
from the announcement
e) the name of the source
f) the email address of the source, if a person
g) acknowledgment of permission from the source to submit to USENET
h) the text of the announcement, restricted to 79 characters per line
Turnaround Time
---------------
The moderator is a volunteer. Moderating comp.os.os2.announce is
necessarily a lower priority task, therefore some delay will occasionally
occur, depending on workload. More extended absences that would prevent me
from processing submissions will usually be noted in the newsgroup. Note
that I include both the date of submission and the date of posting with
each message, so readers can judge my performance (and it provides me with
a little incentive to not let things slip too much). If the task of
moderating this newsgroup ever becomes too heavy, I would expect to step
down, rather than letting the newsgroup stagnate.
* comp.os.os2.announce readership estimate for 1995 May, taken from the
occasional posting in the newsgroup news.lists. Consult that newsgroup
for information on how the survey is conducted. The margin of error is
approximately +/- 5 percentage points. The monthly readership estimate:
87,000 1995 May
71,000 1995 March
72,000 1995 January
46,000 1994 July
46,000 1994 June
67,000 1994 May (skewed result)
69,000 1994 April (skewed result)
45,000 1994 January
50,000 1993 November
49,000 1993 October
35,000 1993 September
30,000 1993 August
31,000 1993 July
26,000 1993 June
22,000 1993 May
