Approved: gbacon@hiwaay.net (alabama.mobile.general) From: Greg Bacon Newsgroups: alabama.mobile.general Subject: [alabama.mobile.general] Welcome - read this first! Summary: This posting describes the newsgroup alabama.mobile.general, including where to find more information and how to post articles to the group. It should be read by anyone who wishes to participate in the alabama.mobile.general newsgroup. Posting-Frequency: weekly Version: $Id: FAQ,v 1.20 2005/11/07 14:39:11 gbacon Exp $ URL: http://home.hiwaay.net/~gbacon/amg/FAQ Maintainer: Greg Bacon Copyright-Notice: see Section 10 [ A recent copy of this document can be obtained via the World Wide Web at . If you do not have access to the World Wide Web, you can get a copy by sending email to gbacon@hiwaay.net, the alabama.mobile.general moderator. ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Subject: 0. What is this document? This document contains information for everyone interested in posting to or simply reading the alabama.mobile.general Usenet newsgroup. CONTENTS Welcome to alabama.mobile.general! 1. Why don't my posts show up immediately? 2. So the moderator is just a censor? 3. What if I'm still uncomfortable with moderation? 4. Where is alabama.mobile.general's charter? 5. Is there a searchable archive? 6. Is it acceptable to post commercial advertisements? 7. What is the whitelist? 8. I tried to post, but I got mail saying my post was rejected! 9. Can I check on the status of my post? 10. About this posting ------------------------------------ Subject: Welcome to alabama.mobile.general! =========================================== The following is a list of questions that you may have or that may arise as you participate in alabama.mobile.general. As the moderator of alabama.mobile.general, I hope to make this document as useful as possible for everyone. Please assist me in achieving this goal by mailing me if there are subjects you feel should be covered but aren't or if coverage of some subjects is not adequate. alabama.mobile.general is newsgroup for the discussion of issues related to Mobile, Alabama in the USA. That's Mobile (pronounced moh-BEEL) as in the Alabama city on Mobile Bay. See Although the group's name might suggest otherwise, none of the following are alabama.mobile.general's topic of emphasis: * mobile phones * mobile computing * mobile homes * mobiles If you're looking to discuss mobile (as in movable) things, this probably isn't the group you're after. ------------------------------------ Subject: 1. Why don't my posts show up immediately? =================================================== alabama.mobile.general is a moderated newsgroup. This means that each submission goes through a review process before it is posted to the newsgroup and distributed to computers around the world. The biggest advantage of moderation is that it only on-topic articles make it to the group (although some inappropriate articles accidentally slip through). This means that the group is not and will never be drowned out by annoyances like spam. Of course, the flip side of this is that the decision as to whether an article is on- or off-topic lies with the moderator. ------------------------------------ Subject: 2. So the moderator is just a censor? ============================================== No. Moderation and censorship are very different. A moderator's job is to decide for each submission whether that submission is appropriate for posting to the group. If a moderator were to reject an article because he disagrees with the contents of the article, that moderator would definitely be abusing his power. ------------------------------------ Subject: 3. What if I'm still uncomfortable with moderation? ============================================================ There are plenty of other discussion groups related to Alabama. For a list of them, visit Although it is preferable to discuss Mobile in alabama.mobile.general, one would certainly be justified in carrying out that discussion in, say, alabama.general if one objects to alabama.mobile.general being moderated. ------------------------------------ Subject: 4. Where is alabama.mobile.general's charter? ====================================================== Find alabama.mobile.general's charter at If you're interested in making changes to the charter, propose it publicly to the newsgroup. ------------------------------------ Subject: 5. Is there a searchable archive? ========================================== Google archives articles posted to alabama.mobile.general. If you want to search this archive, use Google's advanced group search page at . Be sure to enter alabama.mobile.general in the Newsgroup field. Be advised that Google uses a vague, arbitrary, censorious policy with respect to the advertisements that it accepts. For example, Google does not accept ads for sites that sell guns or gun parts. See ------------------------------------ Subject: 6. Is it acceptable to post commercial advertisements? =============================================================== Opinions on this subject vary widely. Certainly, though, Mobile area entrepeneurs and consumers can both benefit from commercial announcements and advertisements. As a compromise, commercial posts from Mobile area entrepeneurs are acceptable so long as they are not too frequent and also meet the standards of netiquette that apply (at least in theory) to all Usenet articles: lines around 72 characters in length, no binaries, no MIME attachments, etc. The post should also clearly indicate that it relates to a Mobile-area venture. For the sake of people who are not interested in reading commercial posts, the Subject: header of all approved commercial posts will begin with the special tag [AD]. (As a courtesy, commercial posters may wish to form their Subject: lines in this way prior to submitting their posts.) This allows newsreaders with decent killfile functionality to kill ads automatically. Another solution to this problem would be to create a Mobile newsgroup specifically for commercial posts--alabama.mobile.forsale perhaps. There does not seem to be sufficient demand currently to warrant such a change. ------------------------------------ Subject: 7. What is the whitelist? ================================== In the interest of facilitating a conversational atmosphere, readers of alabama.mobile.general asked the moderator to create a system under which posts from regular posters would bypass the ordinary review and go directly to the group. The whitelist (i.e., the opposite of a blacklist) is the list of posters whose posts go on the fast track. There are no hard-and-fast rules for getting on the whitelist, but it's usually a simple matter of posting on-topic a few times. Keep in mind that the whitelist is fairly unsophisticated. It compares the poster's address to the addresses on the whitelist without regard to case. This might trip people who post from different accounts or munge (spamblock) their return addresses. If there's a question, mail the moderator; he's a reasonable guy. ------------------------------------ Subject: 8. I tried to post, but I got mail saying my post was rejected! ======================================================================== Before a post lands in the moderator's inbox for review, software screens it to make sure it doesn't have an empty body or MIME attachments. (If your newsreader posts HTML-encoded articles, please disable this "feature".) Humans read Usenet, so please post in plain text, a wonderful human-readable format. Was your article crossposted (i.e., posted to multiple newsgroups)? The alabama.mobile.general charter forbids crossposted articles. If your posts continue to elicit rejection notices, mail the moderator, and he'll do his best to help you. ------------------------------------ Subject: 9. Can I check on the status of my post? ================================================= Yes! Visit to view the articles in the alabama.mobile.general moderation queue. ------------------------------------ Subject: 10. About this posting =============================== (c) Copyright 2002 Greg Bacon. Redistribution of this document is hereby freely granted so long as the document is redistributed in its entirety (here interpreted as all text which were not automated generated by software as part of the distribution process); in particular, with attributions and this copyright notice. The author would appreciate hearing about any interesting redistributions. Comments about, suggestions about or corrections to this posting are welcomed. If you would like to ask the author to change this posting in some way, the method he appreciates most is for you to actually make the desired modifications to a copy of the posting, and then to send him the modified posting, or a context diff between the posted version and your modified version (if you do the latter, make sure to include in your mail the "Version:" line from the posted version). Submitting changes in this way makes dealing with them easier for him and helps to avoid misunderstandings about what you are suggesting. Many people have in the past provided feedback and corrections; I thank them for their input. Remaining ambiguities, errors, and difficult-to-read passages are not their fault. :-) ------------------------------------