[alabama.mobile.general] Welcome - read this first!

[Greg Bacon]

Posting-Frequency: weekly
Version: $Id: FAQ,v 1.20 2005/11/07 14:39:11 gbacon Exp $
URL: http://home.hiwaay.net/~gbacon/amg/FAQ
Maintainer: Greg Bacon <gba...@hiwaay.net>
Copyright-Notice: see Section 10

[ A recent copy of this document can be obtained via the World Wide Web
at <URL:http://home.hiwaay.net/~gbacon/amg/FAQ>. If you do not have
access to the World Wide Web, you can get a copy by sending email
to gba...@hiwaay.net, the alabama.mobile.general moderator. ]

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Subject: 0. What is this document?

This document contains information for everyone interested in posting to
or simply reading the alabama.mobile.general Usenet newsgroup.

CONTENTS

Welcome to alabama.mobile.general!

1. Why don't my posts show up immediately?
2. So the moderator is just a censor?
3. What if I'm still uncomfortable with moderation?
4. Where is alabama.mobile.general's charter?
5. Is there a searchable archive?
6. Is it acceptable to post commercial advertisements?
7. What is the whitelist?
8. I tried to post, but I got mail saying my post was rejected!
9. Can I check on the status of my post?
10. About this posting

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Subject: Welcome to alabama.mobile.general!
===========================================

The following is a list of questions that you may have or that may arise
as you participate in alabama.mobile.general. As the moderator of
alabama.mobile.general, I hope to make this document as useful as
possible for everyone. Please assist me in achieving this goal by
mailing me if there are subjects you feel should be covered but aren't
or if coverage of some subjects is not adequate.

alabama.mobile.general is newsgroup for the discussion of issues related
to Mobile, Alabama in the USA. That's Mobile (pronounced moh-BEEL) as
in the Alabama city on Mobile Bay. See

<URL:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile%2C_Alabama>

Although the group's name might suggest otherwise, none of the following
are alabama.mobile.general's topic of emphasis:

* mobile phones
* mobile computing
* mobile homes
* mobiles

If you're looking to discuss mobile (as in movable) things, this
probably isn't the group you're after.

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Subject: 1. Why don't my posts show up immediately?
===================================================

alabama.mobile.general is a moderated newsgroup. This means that each
submission goes through a review process before it is posted to the
newsgroup and distributed to computers around the world. The biggest
advantage of moderation is that it only on-topic articles make it to
the group (although some inappropriate articles accidentally slip
through). This means that the group is not and will never be drowned
out by annoyances like spam. Of course, the flip side of this is that
the decision as to whether an article is on- or off-topic lies with the
moderator.

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Subject: 2. So the moderator is just a censor?
==============================================

No. Moderation and censorship are very different. A moderator's job
is to decide for each submission whether that submission is appropriate
for posting to the group. If a moderator were to reject an article
because he disagrees with the contents of the article, that moderator
would definitely be abusing his power.

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Subject: 3. What if I'm still uncomfortable with moderation?
============================================================

There are plenty of other discussion groups related to Alabama. For a
list of them, visit

<URL:http://www.newsville.com/news/groups/alabama.html>

Although it is preferable to discuss Mobile in alabama.mobile.general,
one would certainly be justified in carrying out that discussion in,
say, alabama.general if one objects to alabama.mobile.general being
moderated.

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Subject: 4. Where is alabama.mobile.general's charter?
======================================================

Find alabama.mobile.general's charter at

<URL:http://home.hiwaay.net/~gbacon/amg/charter.txt>

If you're interested in making changes to the charter, propose it
publicly to the newsgroup.

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Subject: 5. Is there a searchable archive?
==========================================

Google archives articles posted to alabama.mobile.general. If you want
to search this archive, use Google's advanced group search page at
<URL:http://groups.google.com/advanced_group_search>. Be sure to enter
alabama.mobile.general in the Newsgroup field.

Be advised that Google uses a vague, arbitrary, censorious policy with
respect to the advertisements that it accepts. For example, Google
does not accept ads for sites that sell guns or gun parts. See

<URL:http://www.bowmansbrigade.com/google1.htm>

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Subject: 6. Is it acceptable to post commercial advertisements?
===============================================================

Opinions on this subject vary widely. Certainly, though, Mobile area
entrepeneurs and consumers can both benefit from commercial
announcements and advertisements. As a compromise, commercial posts
from Mobile area entrepeneurs are acceptable so long as they are not
too frequent and also meet the standards of netiquette that apply (at
least in theory) to all Usenet articles: lines around 72 characters in
length, no binaries, no MIME attachments, etc. The post should also
clearly indicate that it relates to a Mobile-area venture.

For the sake of people who are not interested in reading commercial
posts, the Subject: header of all approved commercial posts will begin
with the special tag [AD]. (As a courtesy, commercial posters may wish
to form their Subject: lines in this way prior to submitting their
posts.) This allows newsreaders with decent killfile functionality to
kill ads automatically.

Another solution to this problem would be to create a Mobile newsgroup
specifically for commercial posts--alabama.mobile.forsale perhaps.
There does not seem to be sufficient demand currently to warrant such
a change.

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Subject: 7. What is the whitelist?
==================================

In the interest of facilitating a conversational atmosphere, readers
of alabama.mobile.general asked the moderator to create a system
under which posts from regular posters would bypass the ordinary
review and go directly to the group. The whitelist (i.e., the
opposite of a blacklist) is the list of posters whose posts go on
the fast track.

There are no hard-and-fast rules for getting on the whitelist, but
it's usually a simple matter of posting on-topic a few times.

Keep in mind that the whitelist is fairly unsophisticated. It
compares the poster's address to the addresses on the whitelist
without regard to case. This might trip people who post from
different accounts or munge (spamblock) their return addresses.
If there's a question, mail the moderator; he's a reasonable guy.

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Subject: 8. I tried to post, but I got mail saying my post was rejected!
========================================================================

Before a post lands in the moderator's inbox for review, software
screens it to make sure it doesn't have an empty body or MIME
attachments. (If your newsreader posts HTML-encoded articles,
please disable this "feature".) Humans read Usenet, so please post
in plain text, a wonderful human-readable format.

Was your article crossposted (i.e., posted to multiple newsgroups)?
The alabama.mobile.general charter forbids crossposted articles.

If your posts continue to elicit rejection notices, mail the moderator,
and he'll do his best to help you.

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Subject: 9. Can I check on the status of my post?
=================================================

Yes! Visit <URL:http://home.hiwaay.net/~gbacon/amg/queue.cgi> to
view the articles in the alabama.mobile.general moderation queue.

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Subject: 10. About this posting
===============================

(c) Copyright 2002 Greg Bacon.
Redistribution of this document is hereby freely granted so long as the
document is redistributed in its entirety (here interpreted as all text
which were not automated generated by software as part of the
distribution process); in particular, with attributions and this
copyright notice. The author would appreciate hearing about any
interesting redistributions.

Comments about, suggestions about or corrections to this posting are
welcomed. If you would like to ask the author to change this posting
in some way, the method he appreciates most is for you to actually make
the desired modifications to a copy of the posting, and then to send
him the modified posting, or a context diff between the posted version
and your modified version (if you do the latter, make sure to include
in your mail the "Version:" line from the posted version). Submitting
changes in this way makes dealing with them easier for him and helps to
avoid misunderstandings about what you are suggesting.

Many people have in the past provided feedback and corrections; I
thank them for their input. Remaining ambiguities, errors, and
difficult-to-read passages are not their fault. :-)

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