29 What Groups Other Than Alt.Personals Are There For Meeting People?
Description
This article is from the Internet Personals: Advice for Straights FAQ, by Dean Esmay esmay@syndicomm.com with numerous contributions by others.
29 What Groups Other Than Alt.Personals Are There For Meeting People?
First off, please don't write me to ask how to post ads to these
groups. If you don't know, ask your system administrators how to post
messages to Usenet groups--the method is always the same regardless
of the group's purpose.
If all you're interested in is reading, or posting, singles ads,
you want to restrict yourself to groups that are meant for that
purpose. In the alt.personals.* hierarchy on the Usenet, I am
currently aware of the following groups:
soc.personals (Probably the very best place to find
high-quality ads, but be sure to read
the FAQ for this group before posting
to it--messages in the wrong format are
automatically rejected!)
alt.personals (general place for personal ads and
discussing them)
alt.personals.ads (for personal ads only)
alt.personals.aliens (extraterrestrials)
alt.personals.bi (bisexuals)
alt.personals.big-folks (big people)
alt.personals.bondage (bondage lovers)
alt.personals.fat (fat folks)
alt.personals.fetish (people with sex fetishes)
alt.personals.herpes (people with Herpes)
alt.personals.intercultural (intercultural/foreign relations)
alt.personals.jewish (Jews)
alt.personals.misc (Seems to be the same as alt.personals.ads)
alt.personals.motss (Members Of The Same Sex. Gay/Lesbian ads)
alt.personals.phone (telephone relationships wanted)
alt.personals.poly (Polyamory, people with/wanting multiple partners)
alt.personals.spanking (People into spanking)
alt.personals.spanking.punishment (People into mean spanking I guess)
alt.personals.tall (Tall people)
alt.herpes.personals* (No longer used-use alt.personals.herpes instead)
In addition to these, there are a number of region-specific personals
groups. The ones I am currently aware of include:
alt.nv.personals* (Nevada (bogus))
alt.vegas.personals* (Las Vegas (bogus))
aus.personals (Australia (not Austin!))
ba.personals (San Francisco Bay Area of California)
chi.personals (Chicago)
dfw.personals (Dallas-Fort Worth)
houston.personals (Houston)
la.personals (Los Angeles)
nyc.personals (New York City)
sac.singles (Sacramento)
sat.personals (San Antonio)
sdnet.personals (San Diego)
slo.personals (San Luis Obispo California)
torfree.personals (Toronto Freenet Personals)
nv.personals (The real Nevada group)
pdaxs.ads.personals (Portland, Oregon)
pnw.personals (Pacific Northwest U.S.-- OR, ID, WA)
vegas.personals (The real Las Vegas group)
uiuc.classifieds.personals (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign)
* - alt.nv.personals and alt.vegas.personals are not supported and should not
be used. The official sites for Nevada and Las Vegas are vegas.personals
and nv.personals.
By the way, I strongly advise you to post your ad to as many groups
as may apply to you. So, for example, if you're in Chicago, you
should post to both chi.personals AND alt.personals. This broadens
your exposure.
On the other hand, there is currently a problem of people posting to
groups which are not appropriate for them, solely for the purpose of getting
more responses. The biggest problem appears to be in the regional groups, with
people posting from all over the country (or world!) into groups with no connection with them whatsoever--for example, people in Dallas posting to New York City and Bay Area groups even though they don't live there and rarely travel there.
To be blunt, doing this makes you look like a major dork.
I recommend posting to as many groups as reasonably apply to you--but no more
than that.
THERE ARE ALSO, by the way, a number of interesting "singles" news
groups. These are NOT the place to post personal ads, but they MIGHT
be a good place to meet others and get advice on the dating scene.
Such groups that I'm aware of include:
alt.romance
alt.romance.chat
alt.romance.unhappy
soc.singles
There are also region-specific singles groups. The ones I'm aware of
are:
ba.singles (Bay Area)
dc.romance (Washington D.C.)
dfw.singles (Dallas-Ft Worth)
houston.singles (Houston)
ne.singles (New England)
nyc.singles (New York City)
ont.singles (Ontario, Canada)
ott.singles (Ottawa, Ontario, Canada)
pdx.singles (Portland)
phl.singles (Philadelphia)
sdnet.singles (San Diego)
pnet.talk.singles (PrairieNet singles, central Illinois)
IMPORTANT NOTE: It is generally considered VERY INAPPROPRIATE to post
personal ads to "singles" and "romance" areas. Post your personal
ads only to "personals" groups.
If any of the above groups strikes your fancy, but your Usenet
provider doesn't carry it, I recommend writing to your sysadmins and
requesting them. Most places will carry any or all of these groups if
you just ask for them.
Also, I repeat, please do NOT write me to ask how to post ads to
these groups!
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