Welcome to rec.radio.info!

[rec.radio.info Admin]

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Archive-name: radio/rec-radio-info/welcome
Revision: 1.5 2013/02/21 04:09:48
Posting-Frequency: posted quarterly
URL: http://www.panix.com/~rram/usenet/rri/index.html

Changes followed by "|".

*** Welcome to rec.radio.info! ***

Welcome to rec.radio.info, a group that aims to provide a noise-free
source of information and news for the entire rec.radio hierarchy.

Two introductory articles about rec.radio.info are posted to the group
every month. You are now reading the first article, which explains what
rec.radio.info is, and answers some Frequently Asked Questions. The
second article is titled Posting Guidelines, and you only need to read
it if you want to submit an article to rec.radio.info.

You can skip to the next section of this article by searching for the
next
" -- " string. The sections available are:
- What is the purpose of rec.radio.info?
- Why are messages almost always cross posted to rec.radio.info?
- What is a 'follow-up', and what does 'moderated' mean?
- OK, so now I know what 'moderated' means. Tell me more.
- What type of material is considered inappropriate?
- I do not have access to news, how can I get the information posted to
rec.radio.info?
- Will the material appearing in rec.radio.info be archived somewhere?
- I have a regular posting with timely information, is there a way to
speed up it's delivery, or automate for more convenience?

-- What is the purpose of rec.radio.info?

The purpose or charter of rec.radio.info is to provide the Usenet
community with a resource for information, news, and facts about any and
all things radio.

All the other rec.radio groups are intended for discussions and general
chit chat about radio. Rec.radio.info will contain informational,
factual articles only. Follow-ups are redirected to an appropriate other
group, and further discussion (if any) will not take place in
rec.radio.info.

In order to ensure that rec.radio.info contains only appropriate
articles, it was decided to create the group as a moderated newsgroup.

-- Why are messages almost always cross posted to rec.radio.info?

It provides a "tag" for each article to be assembled into a filtered
presentation in rec.radio.info (even with cross-posting, only one
message, with a unique Message-ID, is propagated across the net). This
tag also facilitates a pre-existing method of dropping or canceling the
articles locally within the discussion groups if you don't want to see
them. This accommodates individuals who want to separate the bulletins
from the discussions, discussions from the bulletins, as well as those
who are adamant about not reading another newsgroup and wanted to see
everything all in one basket.

With the total size of Usenet (in number of newsgroups and total
traffic) doubling every year or so, this is no insignificant
contribution to reducing information noise and chaos. Making the
discussion groups a catch-all, and making extra newsgroups filters on
that catch-all, is also the most realistic way to implement such a
scheme (It's not intuitively obvious what the charter, contents, and
general appropriate topics for each and every newsgroup are. Seeing
FAQ's and charter/intro postings in the home newsgroup is beneficial for
new readers).

By cross-posting one only is adding a few tens of bytes to each bulletin
(to specify the extra group on the Newsgroups line), but are adding the
capability for very powerful filtering features available on most news
servers, listservers and readers. Your local news guru could probably
explain these features in more detail.

In rn, for example, according to Leanne Phillips in her rn kill-file
FAQ, add a line of the form:

/Newsgroups:.*[ ,]rec\.radio\.info/h:j

either in ~/News/KILL (if you don't want to see rec.radio.info articles
anywhere) or ~/News/rec/radio/amateur/misc/KILL (if you don't want to
see them just in rec.radio.amateur.misc). The latter method means your
kill file will only be consulted during rec.radio.amateur.misc (and
hence runs more efficiently), and will probably work for most people.

In nn, according to Bill Wohler in his nn FAQ, add a line of the form:

rec.radio.info:!s/:^

in ~/.nn/kill (if you don't want to see rec.radio.info articles
anywhere), or put the following lines:

sequence
rec.radio.info
rec.radio.

at the end of ~/.nn/init in order to see all the rec.radio.info
bulletins first, then read the remaining rec.radio.* without the
bulletins.

In slrn, according to the srln FAQ, the following scoring rule will
allow you to see rec.radio.info-crossposted bulletins, while still
filtering out most SPAM or "Velveeta" crossposted to more than 2
newsgroups (as such articles usually do not contain a 'Followup-To:'
header):

Score: -9999
Newsgroups: ,.*,
~Followup-To: .

More information about kill files may be obtained from Dave Fawthrop's
Killfile FAQ at:

http://static.slated.org/killfile/killfilefaq.htm |

-- What is a 'follow-up', and what does 'moderated' mean?

If you are new to Usenet and are not familiar with the terminology, you
might want to read the general introductory articles found in the
newsgroup news.announce.newusers. Doing so will make your life on the
net much easier, and will probably save you from making silly beginner's
mistakes.

If you think that at this moment you are reading an echo, a conference,
or a bulletin board, I'd also strongly suggest a trip over to
news.announce.newusers.

For the rest of this article, we will assume you have a basic knowledge
of Usenet terminology and mechanics.

A moderated group means that any article that needs to be posted to the
group has to be accepted by the moderator of the group. Since we need to
ensure that followups to an article (discussion) do not show up in the
rec.radio.info newsgroup, the `Followup-To:' header line contains a
newsgroup that is appropriate for discussions about the specific article.

-- OK, so now I know what 'moderated' means. Tell me more.

Rec.radio.info is a moderated newsgroup, which means that all articles
submitted to the group will have to be approved by the moderator first.

The current moderator of the group is the rec.radio.amateur.moderated
Moderation Team. Submissions to rec.radio.info can be posted, or
e-mailed to:

rec-rad...@panix.com

Comments, criticisms, suggestions or questions about the group can be
e-mailed to:

rec-radio-i...@panix.com

But before you do so, please be sure to check out the "Posting
Guidelines" article.

The influence of the moderator should be minimal and of an
administrative nature, consisting chiefly of weeding out obviously
inappropriate articles, while making sure correct headers etc. are used
for the appropriate ones.

-- What type of material is considered inappropriate?

There are three broad categories of articles which will be rejected by
the moderator:

1) Requests for information: rec.radio.info is strictly a one-way
street. We receive information in our mailbox; we then post it to
rec.radio.info. Requests for specific information belong in the
normal discussion newsgroups. If your request gets answered, you
might consider passing the answer on to rec.radio.info,
though. Especially if you can edit it into a informational, rather
than a discussion, format.

2) Obvious discussion articles, or articles that appear unsubstantiated.

3) Commercial stuff: a relatively unbiased test of a radio product would
be accepted, but any hint of for-profit might be reason for
rejection. For three reasons: This is not the purpose of the list,
for-profit is a controversial topic, and this list may be passed onto
Amateur Packet Radio (where for-profit is prohibited except under
certain provisos).

rec.radio.swap may be more deserving of the posting in any matter.

Similarly, copyrighted material generally cannot be used. If it's
TRULY worthwhile to the net, We would recommend obtaining permission
from the copyright holder. Please note the source, and if permission
was given. We reserve the right to make the final decision concerning
appropriateness in all situations. In most cases, a brief summary
of, or pointer to, the copyrighted information may be all we can
allow.

-- I do not have access to news, how can I get the information posted
to rec.radio.info?

Google has an excellent web interface to Usenet newsgroups. It is
available at:

http://groups.google.com

It supports both reading and posting.

Another excellent web interface to at least the radio-related Usenet
newsgroups is the RadioBanter site:

http://www.radiobanter.com

sponsored by the NewsgroupBanter project:

http://www.newsgroupbanter.com

It, too, supports both reading and posting.

-- Will the material appearing in rec.radio.info be archived somewhere?

Yes. See Google Groups and RadioBanter above.

Effectively this means that anything you post to rec.radio.info will be
permanently stored, so your work will not be lost.

-- I have a regular posting with timely information, is there a way to
speed up it's delivery, or automate for more convenience?

Yes, there is! It may take a bit of chatter with the moderator, but we
are willing to take responsible people and provide them the means of
posting the articles directly from their site. We will try everything we
can as we fully realize that DX (distant signal) and astronomical data
can be somewhat transitory. We are also willing to allow regular posters
of information the same courtesy, even if the information is not as time
critical.

We refer to this as self-moderation, which is partly based on the model
for rec.answers/news.answers. This requires co-operation and goodwill
to be beneficial to the community in the rec.radio hierarchy.

Please direct any comments, questions, or criticisms about this article
to rec-radio-i...@panix.com.

(Adapted, with permission, from the original article written by Mark
Salyzyn, AG4YD, ex-VE6MGS.)