APANA® - Prefered guidelines and policies on Crossposting
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revision 1.0
written by Eddie Beaumont <URL:mailto:snowy@shire.apana.org.au> 2/4/98
reviwed by Phil Homewood <URL:mailto:phil@rivendell.apana.org.au> 21/4/98--------------------------
CONTENTS
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1.0 Introduction
2.0 Guidelines
3.0 Policy on Crossposting
4.0 Appendix
4.1 Recommended Software
4.2 Relevent Articles/WebSites
4.3 History--------------------------
1.0 - Introduction
--------------------------With the increase in users on the Internet utilizing Usenet for the
passing of information, the server costs of maintaining the exponential
rise in both message size and numbers has made a more pragmatic approach
to quality news messages important.In particular cross-posting and it's commercial brother-in-arms spam
(Bulk Commerical Advertisement) plague most newsgroups. These forms of
nework abuse slow down news-links in sheer volume and elongate the process
of usenet reading because of the constant sifting involved in finding
'real' articles.With the interest of maintaining a professional face on the Internet, it
is necessary to have a common set of guidelines and policy for all APANA
members to follow.Outlaid in the documentation that follows is hopefully a set of simple
guidelines and policy which should enable an easy method of reducing the
risk of excessive posting.--------------------------
2.0 - Guidelines
--------------------------In general, keeping crossposting to a minimal is desired. Before
beginning a cross-post, ask yourself if it is really neccessary. Many
news-groups have an "announce" subhierarchy which is read by usually anyone
interested in that particular area. This is often moderated, and may
require sending your message to the moderator first. A "general" group is
often available too.Where crossposting becomes neccessary, keep the number of groups to less
than 4. Crossposting to more than this can cause cross-hierarchy thread
explosions of postings, as by default most news-readers will reply to all
groups a particular article was sent to.Don't constantly repost an article to keep it within the newsgroup. If
you want an article to remain, please set a high expire time on it (but no
longer than 1 month). This will ensure your article stays around longer.
This can be accomplished by using the "Expires:" header if supported by your
newsreader. For further details, consult your newsreader documentation.--------------------------
3.0 - Policies
--------------------------1. No article shall be crossposted such that it will spawn a thread in
more than three groups.2. Posting the same article multiple times to get around rule 1 is
extremely unsound behavior. It is acceptable to post the same article up
to three times, to avoid the generation of a permanent floating flame war
between groups that are known to be antagonistic towards each other, or to
comply with a group's policy against crossposting.3. Posting the same article every day or every week to get around rules 1
& 2 is unsound behavior. If an article is expected to hang around for a
month it should have an expiry date set a month in the future.4. It is never permissible to post a message more than three times or to
more than ten groups in total, no matter how many times it's posted or how
the followups are set.5. Breaches of these rules can result in action defined in the Rules
of APANA. Currently this action may be in in the form of a fine,
suspension for a specified period or expulsion. It will be the decision
of the local Regional Committee as to what form the action will take. If a
resolution cannot be made by the local Regional Committee, the Management
Committee of APANA has final say.---------------------------
4.0 - Appendix
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4.1 Recommended Software
------------------------Any software that attains the Good NetKeeping Seal of Approval will
help you manage your news better. Packages that currently have this
seal are as follows:
MacOS
HogWasher 1.0b6 (Seal No.: 000006)
MacSOUP 2.3 (Seal No.: 000001)
MT-NewsWatcher 2.4.1 (Seal No.: 000003)
NewsWatcher 2.2b6 (Seal No.: 000002)
NewsWatcher 2.2 (Seal No.: 000002)
NewsWatcher 2.2.2 (Seal No.: 000002)
YA NewsWatcher 3.0b10 (Seal No.: 000004)Unfortunately no Win95/NT or *nix news-readers have passes evaluation
yet, however a copy of the evalution is available on-line at the GNKSA
website.4.2 Recommended Articles/Websites
---------------------------------Most of APANA's cross-posting policy was derived from the Usenet II
website, located at <URL:http://www.usenet2.org>.The Good NetKeeping Seal of Approval (GNKSA) website can be found at
<URL:http://www.xs4all.nl/%7Ejs/gnksa/>,with software evalutions found at
<URL:http://www.xs4all.nl/%7Ejs/gnksa/gnksa-evaluations.html>.4.3 History
---------------------------------revision 1.0 - Initial Version by Eddie Beaumont
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