Help with rec.photo group administration wanted
Robert M Atkins
[Crossposted to *all* rec.photo groups (except moderated) but with
all followups set to rec.photo.misc *only*]
With the help of David Nowitz here at Bell Labs (actually he did all
the work!!), we have together a program which identifies and logs all
new posters to the rec.photo groups. The idea is then to send an email
message to each of them containing a brief summary of the "rules" for
posting, pointers to the charters, FAQs and the like.
I'd like to thank all the others who offered help with the Perl script
to do this job too.
So far it's looking like about 70 new users/day, but some of them may
be old posters who have been away etc. The database only goes back
about 1 month. That number may drop as the database builds in the
infrequent posters.
I'm looking for volunteers to take a list of, say, all the new posters
in rec.photo.equipment.large-format and email them the welcome message
(using a UNIX shell script, this should be painless!). This will
spread the load and I won't have to send out 100 email messages/day
myself! Also, if the user has a question, they won't all come to
me(!), and if the poster for the LF groups is active in the group,
any questions will reach someone who knows about the group.
The search program would probably be run once/day.
I'm happy to take the nature groups at least, and maybe another one
or two. Any volunteers to take other groups. Anyone want the
marketplace group??
Posters will only get the message once, when they first post to *ANY*
rec.photo group, not each time they post to a new group. If they post
to more then one group (or crosspost), their name will be pulled from
the first group in which their post is found by the search program.
The 2nd draft of a standard "welcome" message is as follows:
========================================================================
*******************************************************************
PLEASE DO NOT ACKNOWLEDGE THIS POST! I get enough email already, so
I'll take any "thanks for the email" messages as read!
*******************************************************************
Welcome to the rec.photo groups. For the benefit of all users, there
are some simple rules about posting here. First there are a few
"do not" rules. The most important of these are:
(1) Do not post a commercial advertisment or promotion.
(2) Do not post an encoded binary file (image)
(3) Do not post the same item to more than one group in seperate posts
(crossposting *may* be OK, but see later)
If you have done any of these, PLEASE CANCEL YOUR POST(S). If you do not
know how to do this, contact the help staff at your posting site.
These are the most important rules, but there are a few others
The first is that the only kind of advertising allowed is
the advertising of items of personal equipment. Dealers may not
advertise at all. Also *ALL* ads should be posted to
rec.photo.marketplace, and nowhere else. They should *NOT* be crossposted
to other groups. "Wanted" ads may be posted to the marketplace group
(but again, not by dealers) - and only the marketplace group.
If you have posted an ad in a group other than rec.photo.marketplace,
PLEASE CANCEL IT NOW.
A dealer is someone who regularly trades in equipment with the object
of reselling it rather than using it. The marketplace group is *NOT* a
discussion group. It is like the classified ads section of a newspaper.
If you want to ask what a fair price for an item is, or want advice on
what to buy, post to a *discussion* group (all the groups other than the
marketplace group are discussion groups).
CROSSPOSTING. If you really must crosspost, please pick only appropriate
groups and please use the "Followup To:" header line to pick one group
in which all followup posts should appear. If your post is something of
general interest you should probably just post it to rec.photo.misc, *not*
crosspost it to every group! If you are confused by crossposting and
how to do it, ask your *local* help staff.
SIGNATURE FILES. These are the lines you tag onto the end of each post,
with your name, email address, Web Site etc. Usenet "netiquette" suggests
thay be no longer than 4 lines and *not* contain attempts at ASCII
graphics. They shouldn't be a *blatent* advertisment either, but a
photo store or company name and contact info is OK. You can put a witty
comment in there if you must, but by the 10th or 20th time a reader has
to read it, it may start to be more irritating than witty!
A copy of the group charters (what goes where) is available at the URL:
http://www.cyberenet.net/~eos/info/charter.htm
or via anonymous ftp from cyberenet.com as /home/eos/charters.txt
If there is anything about the groups you don't understand, post a
question in rec.photo.misc and ask.
Finally, welcome again to the rec.photo groups. On the whole, if you
follow these simple rules, you will find the group quite friendly and
helpful - most of the time anyway!
===========================================================================
Bob Atkins - Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, NJ
Nature Photos, Nature Photography Guide, Group Charters, EOS FAQ and more on
Web Pages at http://www.cyberenet.net/~eos/index.html (NOTE NEW URL!)