bill@twwells.com (T. William Wells) (07/22/89)
This is the call for vote on a new unmoderated group called
news.newusers.questions. Some of you might recall that I originally
proposed news.newusers, but later asked what people thought of
news.newusers.questions. All responses, save one, were positive. The
one negative response said, incorrectly, that since there is no
news.newusers, there couldn't be a news.newusers.questions.
The charter for this group is:
"A forum for relatively inexperienced users of Usenet to ask
questions relating to Usenet and electronic mail. This is the
place where you should feel free to ask that silly question
you'd be embarrassed to ask in any other newsgroup."
(I thought about it for a while and decided that one really has to
include e-mail here since it is so intimately connected to Usenet.)
What we get out of the new group:
Helping new users become better at using Usenet and e-mail.
Decreasing noise in other news groups.
Removing some of the load from system administrators.
Discovering new information that belongs in the
news.announce.newusers postings.
I'm expecting that the range of questions would include (but
certainly wouldn't be limited to):
I asked a question about abbreviations on the net and was
told to RTFM. What does RTFM mean?
I was told that I should have read news.announce.newusers.
But when I subscribed there was nothing there. What do I do
now?
I want <pick your newsreader> to do X, how do I get it to?
What does luser%foobar.com@bletch.net mean and how to I send
e-mail to him?
What is patch?
I want to ask "?" but I can't figure out which newsgroups are
appropriate. What do you suggest?
I just got flamed for "Z", what are the rules here?
I'm changing jobs and want to stay connected to the net, what
should I do?
I'm looking for a newsreader that will do X, does one exist?
What's a good newsgroup for keeping on top of "what's going
on" in netland?
What is my e-mail address and how should I put it into my
signature?
To vote, you send a message to one of two addresses. If you want the
group to be created, send a message to newusers-yes@twwells.com ; if
you do not want the group to be created, send your message to
newusers-no@twwells.com . The contents of the message are irrelevant;
I will classify them solely by which address they are sent to.
If you can't get to newusers-yes@twwells.com , there are several
alternate addresses. Some Internet and BITNET sites may not recognize
my address; if your vote bounces, try
newusers-yes%twwells.com@uunet.uu.net . If you are a UUCP site and
don't have the foggiest idea what to do with this kind of address, you
can still vote if you can route to uunet. For that method, the route
starting at uunet is uunet!twwells!newusers-yes . If you are on
another net, you are on your own. :-) Of course, you can do the same
things for the newusers-no mailbox.
The voting ends on July 18.
Followups to this message should be posted in news.groups.
---
Bill { uunet | novavax | ankh | sunvice } !twwells!bill
bill@twwells.com