soc.penpals FAQ
M. Dale Konrad
SOC.PENPALS FAQ
Last updated December 21, 1999
Maintained by M. Dale Konrad <photo...@freudian.com >
Copyright 1999,2000 by M. Dale Konrad
All Rights Reserved
Welcome!
Formed in 1992 soc.penpals has for many people the jumping off point to
many wonderful years of searching the UseNet.
Please take a moment and read the Soc.Penpals Charter, and Netiquettue
On soc.penapls
soc.penpals is a place to meet people to correspond with, a UseNet
classifieds for penpals to meet.
Long winded on going discussions are outside of the scope of the charter
and soc.penpals newsgroup.
Soc.penpals Charter
A full copy of the charter may be viewed at
ftp://ftp.uu.net/.vol/9/news.announce.newgroups/soc/soc.penpals
Name of Newsgroup: SOC.PENPALS
Status: UNMODERATED
Charter: This newsgroup is to make it possible for people on the net to
make friends and penpals. This will also give people a chance to have
correspondents in other places of the world, which is helpful for
travel and tourism. Included will be postings of information about
people interested in becoming a penpal and also general
information/questions about certain geographical locations are also
accepted.
Rationale: It's true that you can meet people through other newsgroups
but you do not always have the guarantee that they will want to have
penpals. Having this newsgroup makes it easier to make friends without
possibly searching endlessly. As one person said to me during the rfd:
"You can't tell much about a person from an opinion or two in a post".
In soc.penpals, people would list post some of their interests so
others would get an idea about whether they'd like to correspond with
them or not. Also, this newsgroup has often been compared to
alt.personals. There is one major difference. There would not be any
anonymous postings. As one person put it: "...a lot hide behind
anonymity to spew abuse and intolerance". Therefore, without the
anonymous postings, we may get rid of some of that.
___________________________________________________________________________
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*** Netiquette on soc.penapls ***
Most of the concepts here are the same as in news.announce.newusers. In
fact,it is *strongly* recommended that you read the etiquette guidelines
innews.announce.newusers (or in any other introductory text on news
readers)before you post any articles.
* soc.penpals is NOT a discussion group. It is a
classifieds for finding penpals
* Please do not post personals. There are groups
specifically charter for this purpose
* Please do not post requests seeking cyber sex. There
are groups specifically chartered for this purpose.
* Please do not post binaries. There are
groups specifically chartered for this purpose.
* Try to keep posts short, remember that someone has to pay for all
bytes to be transmitted around the world.
* Please do not post advertisements. Soc-penpals is a non-commercial
newsgroup.
* Please be careful when asking giving advice.
When asking for advice, please remember this
is usenet, and double check with a trusted source before using
anything you receive on the net.
* Please respond via e-mail. This makes it easier for everyone
Who is seeking a penpal or information to find why they came here.
* If someone takes the time and energy to respond to a post which you
haveposted, *please* response via
e-mail. A simple "thank you" goes a long way.
* Please read all follow-ups before posting one of your own; in many
cases,someone else has already covered the
same point.
* Please limit the amount of material included from previous postings as
much as possible, and try to be concise. Signatures should
be excised. Remember that soc.penpals reaches 42,000 readers a month at
about 200,000 servers. Many users have to pay for connect time
or per byte transfers please make sure you include enough
of the original article so as to make your follow-up sensible.
* Please avoid cross-postings to other newsgroups unless you are
absolutely sure there is relevance to the other
group(s).
* Please check your Subject line carefully! This is a very busy
newsgroup, Subject lines that are vague might not
catch the eye of the very people who might have something to offer.
* Please remember that this newsgroup has a world-wide readership.
First, readers whose primary language is not English might not
know what you are saying when posting.
Second, please be understanding and patient with spelling or style
errors made by people who are obviously posting from a non-English
speaking country. (For that matter, spelling and/or grammatical errors
should not be pointed out via the newsgroup, but through private
e-mail if you feel it is absolutely necessary to show someone the
error.)
* Before posting an article to soc.penpals, please be sure it is
actually relevant, it is not the only newsgroup on
Usenet. Many post fit best into talk.bizarre or alt.usenet.kooks.
* While this is a NOT a newsgroup for non-adults to participate
in, posts from children and teens are often seen in this
newsgroup.
* Please refrain from name-calling, tantrums or other hysterics-- we get
enough of that from our trolls.
* A very good article on Netiquette, or network behavior is available
here http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1855.html
* An excellent article on dealing with flames, and trolls is available
here http://ddi.digital.net/~gandalf/trollfaq.html
* For a very good news filter download the program from this site
* A very good (but long) history of the internet is located here.
http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2235.html
* An excellant article on spam, spewing, and freedom of speech on the
net may be found here www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2635.html
Mother Nature
at the moment?
Mother Nature
at the moment?