....
>The Subject: line of an article is what will first attract
>people to read it. If it's vague or doesn't describe what's
>contained within, no one will read the article. They have
>better things to do with their lives.

>However, Subject: lines that're too wordy tend to be irritating.

>For example:

>Good Subject:
> "xinetd failure Mandriva 10.1, error:"cps time argument
> not a number"

Nope-- too wordy-- the subject gets truncated by most newsreaders. xinetd
failure
would be OK.


>Good Subject:
> "bind 9.2 FC 3 fails to cache multiple cnames"

>Bad Subject:
> "Can't dial to Internet!!! Pulling my hair apart,
> nothing works! HELP !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

At least he mentions "dial" which is a clue. Certainly the rest is useless.


>Bad Subject:
> "HELP!!!! Ftp doesn't work for me at all, how come
> !?!?!"

Similarly ftp is mentioned which is a huge step up.

Ie, both these are neutral subjects, not bad. Bad is
"Help, Mandriva is a piece of ****."

Or
"Help, computer does not work."



.....

>posts the article to both the groups alt.os.linux and
>comp.os.linux.setup at the same time. More accurately, it
>makes the same article accessible from both these different
>newsgroups. This is called "cross-posting". It's usually safe
>to cross-post to up to three or four groups. To list more than
>that is considered excessive and annoying and will earn you
>some heat. Let's not get into why. But it's not as annoying as
>"multi-posting", which is posting copies of the same article
>to several different newsgroups, and you should more readily
>be able to imagine why that's likely to win you undying flames.

The main problem with multi-posting is that answers to one pf the posts do
not get repeated in the other. Thus one gets these disconnected threads
where noone knows that the question has already been answered in another
group.

cross posting is fine, since one rarely knows where the expert is that can
answer your question.
HOwever cross posting to alt.rec.skiing and alt.os.linux.mandriva is very
very rarely a good idea, and if you think it is for your post you should
probably not post it at all.



....
>Why would anyone be cross-posting (or multi-posting, owww!) in
>the first place? Presumably because that way they think
>they'll get a bigger audience and therefore more answers.
>Unfortunately, this is on the way to being about as clever
>thinking as posting a spam mail to the whole of hong kong
>asking for help with the problem would be. Enough said?

It is perfectly legitimate since one rarely knows which group will be the
"best" for your query.


> When you quote another person, edit out whatever isn't
> directly relevant to understanding your reply.

Well, this can be troublesome since it assumes that everyone has the whole
thread ready at hand. Some people trim too much so one cannot tell at all
from their response what the original post was about. Ie, this is a very
fuzzy boundary situation.


...............
>Now here's another part of good posting technique:

> Always put your response below and between the quoted text!

Well, it depends. While often a good idea, please please if you are posting
a one line reply to a 5 page post, put that reply at the top, not the
bottom. That way it can be ignored much more quickly.

..............
>Why NOT "top post"? Well, here are some answers:

> http://www.netmeister.org/news/learn2quote2.html
> http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/usenet/brox.html

Unfortuately these boil down to "I don't like it".


>In this editor's opinion, you have to understand that you are
>not writing a business letter to another company's lawyers,
>which is about the only real life situation in which you will
>affix the entire previous conversation to the end of your reply!

Usenet has a huge advantage in those little > signs at the beginning of the
lines. These make it very easy to keep straight what is quoted and what is
new. For somereason many of the top post cops seem never to have noticed
these, or suffer from selective blindness in not being able to see them.

>If you think so, then you are mistaking the nature of the medium
>you are in - we likely already have access to your previous
>post, thanks to the wonders of electronics, but we might not
>be bothered to go and look at it or might have forgotten it
>and its detail, so we appreciate a little orienting context in
>just the right place, but please not the whole flipping thing.

In general this is a very good guide. Just a touch too proscriptive in
places.