I'm not flaming the people who are doing these things, because they're just following the plentiful examples that they see here already. I simply want to point out that there *are* better places for this sort of thing than news.newusers.questions. There are two of them, in fact: misc.test (news:misc.test) and alt.test (news:alt.test).
Why are misc.test and alt.test better than news.newusers.questions for "test" postings?
(1) Nobody really *reads* these newsgroups, so you don't have to worry about people all over the world chuckling at your blank messages and scrambled header lines and typos.
(2) Several sites run software which monitors misc.test and/or alt.test and sends automatic e-mail responses directly to your mailbox, so you can easily verify that your postings really do reach the outside world, and what they look like when they get there. If you don't get any of these automated responses, then either your posts aren't getting out, or else the e-mail address in your "From:" line is invalid; in either case, you should contact your system administrators.
When you've satisfied yourself that this Usenet stuff really does work, *then* you can come back here and safely ask questions, or go over to soc.penpals (news:soc.penpals) and look for someone to exchange e-mail with.
If you are using Netscape, or possibly other Web browsers, you should be able to click on the links news:misc.test and news:alt.test and go directly to misc.test and alt.test.
This individual document is maintained by: Jon Bell
(jbell at presby.edu).
http://web.presby.edu/~nnqadmin/nnq/test.html
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Last Updated: Monday, January 3, 2005