coolsti said:
Then it should have been a personal messag instead, so you'll have to
suffer me answering too
First of all, what FAQ are you referring to?
The FAQ for the newsgroup is available as a web page at
<URL:
http://jibbering.com/faq/>. Some regualrs have a link to it in
their signature, and the rest of us just refer to it when applicable.
It is also posted in the group twice per week (according to the FAQ
itself, it should be Mondays and Fridays). Indeed, the most recent
posting was 13th of May:
<or if you can't look up by Message-Id:
I am accessing this and all other newsgroups with a free opensource
program called PAN (made for Linux, but nicely ported to windows)
which gets me directly to the list of posted headers and their
bodies.
You are using a news-reader. Good idea, so does most of the rest of
us, and we recommed it to the few who use web-based interfaces.
It is customary to recommend reading a group over a period of time
(either "lurking" for a while or just reading older messages) before
starting to post. It allows the newcomer to get a feeling for the tone
in the group, and it avoids (re)posting frequently asked questions,
where the answer is readily available.
Generally, Usenet groups often have a FAQ. You can pretty much assume
they do. The easiest place to find it is at the end of a Google search.
People who access these forums like me don't get to see such things
as FAQS.
Then they don't read the group before posting. It's unavoidable that
people not familiar with Usenet will also no be familiar with the
established etiquette. It'll change.
Just thought you might want to be aware of this. If my way
of accessing this newsgroup is wrong,
It's not
then the administrator of the newsgroup should do something about
it, like blocking non-logged in access somehow.
There are no administrators. The group comp.lang.javascript is a
non-moderated group, like most other Usenet groups. There is no
central access point that can be set to block access. Each ISP's
newsserver receives a feed of newsgroups from another server, and
propagates new messages back, in a big decentralized network ...
typically running over the internet.
Usenet is *old*, even older than the internet. In the beginning,
messages were propagated between US and Australia on magnetic tapes
Over time, a culture and etiquette has evolved. It's hard to say
exactly what it is, and each group has its own version of it.
For understanding Usenet, there are some links here:
Secondly, if someone gave ME a tip that might help, but didn't have the
time or want to bother to test it, then that would be perfectly ok with me
- if the poster mentioned it was not tested.
Sure. Happens all the time. I *ususally* remember writing that it
isn't tested.
Hope these news groups can be left as non-beaurocratic and as helpful as
they currently are!
One of the problems with being unmoderated, is that groups have to be
self policed. The regulars set the tone and try to keep it. Since being
a regular reader and poster of a newsgroup does not require pedagogical
training, some are better at doing this politely than others
Also, technical groups have a tendency to attract "geeks". It can give
a culture that can seem a little hostile to breaches of etiquette,
even when not intentional. While not necessarily as extreme as this
description, <URL:
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html>,
it's a good read anyway
Good luck, and welcome
/L
