Description

This article is from the British comedy FAQ, by James Kew j.kew@ic.ac.uk with numerous contributions by others.

1. Netiquette? What's that? (alt.comedy.british)

If you're new to Usenet, may I humbly suggest you read the articles on
Netiquette in news.announce.newusers, which are also available by FTP from:

ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.announce.newusers/

This group has a global readership of (very) approximately 40,000 people.
Your boss may be reading... or your next boss.

+ Proof-read your articles before posting. A neat, well-thought-out,
typo-free article is much more likely to attract a positive response.
+ Your article will be distributed world-wide. Consider your audience;
avoid being too parochial.
+ Don't be aggressive; this group is fairly gentle and flamewars are
frowned upon. Particularly the eternal "UK-vs-US" argument...
+ Tastes in comedy vary greatly; respect the opinions of others. If you
disagree with someone, explain why; "AYBS is crap!" isn't much of a
contribution.
+ Keep your signature small; 4 lines is sufficient.
+ Make sure your articles are properly broken into lines. About 76
characters on each line is a good maximum to stick to. Some text
editors can give you the impression that your paragraphs are broken
into lines when in fact they are not; check to make sure this is not
the case.
+ If you need to post a test message, please post it to a test
newsgroup; there's probably one in your local hierarchy (for example,
I'd post to ic.test). Postings to misc.test will generate automatic
responses from some sites.

A few notes on follow-ups:

+ Ask yourself whether a posted follow-up is needed: do you have
something new to add to the discussion?
+ Limit the amount of quoted text to only that which is necessary.
There's no need to quote an entire article just to add a brief
comment.
+ Consider changing the subject line if the thread is wandering away
from its original subject.
+ Reply by e-mail if appropriate or requested by the poster.

 

Continue to:

• Index
• next: 2. What do all the abbreviations mean? (alt.comedy.british)

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tv, British comedy, episode, show, series