News articles posted to moderated newsgroups first travel as e-mail messages to a moderation address. Most news server software will send messages posted to a moderated newsgroup to the appropriate moderation address automatically, but if you need it, nnq-mod at presby.edu is the moderation address for NNQ.
Messages arriving at the NNQ moderation address are scanned by a software package (or "robot moderator"), designed to allow messages appropriate for NNQ to be posted and to try to return other messages to their senders.
If your message is returned to you by the robot moderator, there are several possibilities:
If the overall content of your message IS appropriate for NNQ, and you want to edit the message and re-send it to the robot moderator, be sure to delete anything "extra" such as any quoted text that is not part of a question or answer, or that is not needed to make the question or answer understandable, any text sent by the robot, and any copies of the NNQ "footer," and re-send the message to the NNQ robot moderator, at nnq-mod at presby.edu.
If the robot moderator continues to return your message to you, and you think that the message that was returned is appropriate for NNQ, and should have been approved by the robot, then send your message to the appeal address (nnq-adm at presby.edu) for a volunteer human moderator to review, and allow a day or two to get a result.
To find an appropriate newsgroup, use:
Also look for resources local to your Internet connection - information from your on-line service, or Internet service provider (ISP), or educational institution. Read your service provider's web pages, and become familiar with the addresses for technical support, billing, home pages, modem speeds, and other ISP-specific questions.
See if you have a local news hierarchy, "local.*", perhaps called "isp.*" or "company.*" or "school.*" or "region.*" or "iso.*" depending on what your ISP, or company, or school, or region, or ISO country code is. Look for an FAQ for your "local.*" hierarchies, and explore.
CHARTER: news.newusers.questions NEWS.NEWUSERS.QUESTIONS (n.n.q) is for questions, answers and advice about using Usenet news and other Internet newsgroups and services. Articles which do not contribute to educating or informing new users about Usenet are inappropriate for this newsgroup.
The complete charter and moderation policy for NNQ are at:
http://web.presby.edu/~nnqadmin/nnq/charter.html NNQ Charter
http://web.presby.edu/~nnqadmin/nnq/admin.html NNQ Administrative Statement
In the items below, "relevant" means "contributes to educating or informing new users."
If the duplicate article(s) were returned to you, the first article sent may have already been posted - look for it in news.newusers.questions before sending that article again.
People reading a "thread" of articles will see the previous message before they see your reply, so you do not need to quote the entire previous message. Delete the sections you aren't directly responding to.
Don't post chain letters on the Internet - they are illegal in many places, and fraudulent everywhere - in the US see: http://www.usps.com/websites/depart/inspect/chainlet.htm US Postal Service - Chain Letters
Keep in mind that every message posted to worldwide net newsgroups is stored on tens of thousands of machines, and may be archived for years at some sites. So, if you are simply "making conversation" in a message then you should probably be sending it in a direct e-mail or on IRC instead of transmitting it to sites around the world as a news article.
Explore the newsgroup soc.penpals but read the group for a week or two before posting a penpal request.
See http://www.intuitive.com/social-faq.html A Guide to Social Newsgroups and Mailing Lists
If you are looking for a relationship that involves more than exchanging e-mail with a penpal, explore the newsgroup news:soc.personals, and visit the alt.personals.* hierarchy or a "local.personals" newsgroup if one exists. You might also read the FAQ for the soc.singles.moderated newsgroup.
If the site covers the same topics as a newsgroup or mailing list, you may want to post the URL and a brief description of the site to an appropriate newsgroup or mailing list. Post the URL to NNQ only if the content is appropriate for NNQ.
Anything posted to newsgroups should be plainly readable by anyone who reads news, regardless of what software or hardware they have. So, don't attach or include HTML, word-processing, picture, or sound files in messages, since many people can't read them.
To reach the widest possible audience, use plain text formatted to 72 columns or less, in ASCII text in NNQ and most other Usenet 8 newsgroups, or in Latin1 (ISO-8859-1) and similar character sets in language-based or national news hierarchies (de.*, fr.*, ru.*, etc.) to be compatible with whatever character sets the people in those hierarchies use.
Handle binaries like long articles - don't post the file (picture, gif, jpeg, jpg, audio, etc.) in NNQ, but post it to the relevant alt.binaries.* newsgroup. Or, make the content available on a Web page or ftp site, and announce the URL of that site to the Web.
Configure your newsreading software to display the Newsgroups: and Followup-To: headers. If an article is cross-posted to many newsgroups, and you are angered by the article, consider that it may have been cross-posted deliberately in hopes of provoking many angry responses. Don't fall into the trap of replying angrily to such a "troll" - learn to spot them and ignore them, instead of giving the poster the satisfaction of seeing angry replies.
To learn which newsgroups are most appropriate for your topic, see:
http://groups.google.com/ Google Groups
Try to post to only one newsgroup, or, if you must, cross-post only to the smallest possible set of *appropriate* newsgroups, and use a "Followup-To:" header to suggest that responses to your posted article should be mailed to you or posted to just one newsgroup.
If you want to suggest that responses to your posted article should be e-mailed to you, add to your message headers:
Followup-To: poster
Or, if you want want to suggest that responses be posted to just one newsgroup, supply that newsgroup name, such as:
Followup-To: news.newusers.questions
For services or items only available locally, explore your local hierarchy. Look for a newsgroup called "local.forsale" or a similar name, and post there.
Other newsgroup groups/hierarchies to explore include:
Businesses that offer products or services over a large area generally find that announcing their offerings on a Web page is more effective over the long run than posting to newsgroups.Create a Web page and then use a web site announcement method, such as:
This individual document is maintained by: Denis McKeon
(dmckeon at swcp.com).
http://www.swcp.com/~dmckeon/nnq-post.html
This individual document may be copied and redistributed freely. It is to be considered material of the Public Domain and we accept no liabilities for use of its contents. If you feel that any of the contents of this page are in violation of your own copyright, please email the maintainer. Please contact the maintainer of the document if you have suggestions for improvements or additions to this document.
Last Updated: Monday, January 3, 2005