ppd491@leah.Albany.Edu (Peter P. Donohue @ nowhere) (08/24/89)
Comments constantly appear about the ethicality/legality of posting commercial messages on Usenet, so I think it is time to clear up whether it is allowed or not. Here is a quote from "Rules for posting to Usenet" in NEWS.ANNOUNCE.NEWUSERS. "Announcement of professional products or services on Usenet is allowed; however, since someone else is paying the phone bills for this, it is important that it be of overall benefit to Usenet. Post to the appropriate newsgroup -- comp.newprod -- never to a general purpose newsgroup such as "misc.misc". Clearly mark your article as a product announcement in the subject. Never repeat these -- one article per product at the most; preferably group everything into one article. Advertising hype is especially frowned upon -- stick to technical facts. Obnoxious or inappropriate announcements or articles violating this policy will generally be rejected. This policy is, of course, subject to change if it becomes a problem." I was unable to find any other mention of the right or wrong of commercial messages, so this is all we have to go by. IMHO, it appears that most commercial posting would be "frowned upon" but not denied. I would be interested in hearing about the rules of posting, if they are defined better anywheres else. Please post followups to NEWS.NEWUSERS.QUESTIONS. This question came up on MISC.FORSALE, but that is not the appropriate place to have a discussion on it. I do think this is important enough that it should be bounced around on the net, so post your ideas (as opposed to filling up my mailer). -- Peter P. Donohue ppd491@albny1vx.bitnet . "Education is a journey, ppd491@leah.albany.edu . not a destination..."
epsilon@wet.UUCP (Eric P. Scott) (08/25/89)
See the description of "biz" in news.announce.newusers/ Alternative Newsgroup Hierarchies. -=EPS=-
spector@sumax.UUCP (Mitchell Spector) (08/25/89)
In article <1980@leah.Albany.Edu> ppd491@leah.Albany.Edu (Peter P. Donohue @ nowhere) writes: > Comments constantly appear about the ethicality/legality of posting >commercial messages on Usenet, so I think it is time to clear up whether >it is allowed or not.... > [Quote from news.announce.newusers article omitted.] > I was unable to find any other mention of the right or wrong of >commercial messages, so this is all we have to go by. IMHO, it appears >that most commercial posting would be "frowned upon" but not denied. > I would be interested in hearing about the rules of posting, if they >are defined better anywheres else. If you want rules, you're in the wrong place. Usenet has no rules, just socially-based guidelines which are continually evolving as the net grows. There is no overall administrative structure, and there's nobody authorized to impose or enforce rules. (Of course, most sites have a local system administrator with authority, but there is no net-wide authority.) There are guidelines for posting. All stem from just plain common-sense, combined with experience on the net. Some of these have been written down after the fact, to make it easier for new people to fit into net society. There are no penalties for violations of guidelines except social ones, including ostracism. (In an extreme case, this ostracism could take the form of your news feed deciding it doesn't want to have anything to do with you any more, and you'd be cut off from the net. Of course, there may be local policies at your site, with locally determined penalties.) People who are sufficiently obnoxious find themselves the recipients of e-mail and the subjects of follow-ups; the tone of these may range from friendly pointers to merciless flames. After a while, people may start to ignore you or to put you in their kill files. None of this should seem strange. It's just like the rule that you don't start making funny faces in the middle of a class or a business meeting. It isn't illegal to do that, but if you do it often enough, it will cause people not to take you seriously, to ignore you, and possibly to ostracize you completely. So don't ask what the rules are. Ask what people find acceptable, what they find unacceptable, and why. >Peter P. Donohue >ppd491@albny1vx.bitnet >ppd491@leah.albany.edu -- Mitchell Spector Dept. of Computer Science and Software Engineering Seattle University E-mail: spector%sumax.uucp@beaver.cs.washington.edu