about membership

If i want to be member of this group, what i'll do.

If i want to be member of this group, what i'll do.

Just start posting messages, as you've done here. You don't have to sign
up.
--
Curtis Croulet
Temecula, California
33°27'59"N, 117°05'53"W

wrote:
If i want to be member of this group, what i'll do.
v 1.18
Hint: The following text was written for people who are new
to Usenet and who recently started to post via Google. It
might also be useful to experienced netizens.

Dear Google poster,

nice to see you on Usenet. Obviously you posted using Google.
groups.google.com is an archive that collects postings from something
called Usenet. Maybe you didn't yet notice that you have arrived
in Usenet but you think that you're using a Web forum.

This is not true. For example, the majority of people who create
posts and who read posts are not using Google Groups. Google Groups
is just one of the many interfaces to Usenet. Programs to access
and post to Usenet are called 'newsreaders'.

Posting via Google has some drawbacks for you and the other Usenet
users:

1. Some readers find that the amount of worthless postings they
see coming via Google leads them to filter out all Google Groups
postings altogether.

One reason is that Google is often used to send spam. Therefore
Google has limited the number of postings a user can send in total,
and in a single newsgroup, to some 10 to 20 postings per day.

2. If a group becomes moderated - meaning that all posts need to
be approved by a human being before they appear in the group,
perhaps to ensure that they are not spam - Google does not immediately
make the change and send messages for moderation. Although currently
no groups are affected by this, it means that messages to
newly-moderated groups may get lost.

3. Google collects postings much slower than other Usenet providers;
you'll see answers to your postings a couple of minutes later than
other netizens.

4. Google can't decode "rot13" encoded postings immediately. As a
workaround, you can use web services like http://www.rot13.de .

5. By incorrectly decoding and unfolding subject lines which contain
non-ASCII (e.g. accented) characters and which were originally
correctly encoded or folded, Google Groups believes - wrongly -
that a new subject has been started, and so places the post in a
new thread.

Actually, it's so common for non-ASCII characters to be incorrectly
encoded or for encoded characters to be incorrectly line-wrapped
that it's safer to abstain from using non-ASCII characters in newly
chosen subject lines of your own Usenet postings, whether you're
using Google Groups or an ordinary Usenet newsreader.

6. If you've put your foot into your mouth and want to retract
posted article, you normally would do this by "cancelling" your
article using your newsreader. With Google, you have to use
http://groups.google.com/groups/msgs_remove You have to enter the
e-mail address used in the posting (which must be existing and
replyable) and its message id or Google URL and swear that it's
your own posting.

You're then led through a three-stage procedure.

Actually, it's easy if you own a "Google Groops" account and are
logged in, a simple click on the "Remove" link in the "Options" of
your own postings (same e-mail address) is enough to remove the
posting. You don't have to swear anything, and the posting vanishes
right after you confirm that you really want to remove it.

7. Some sites on Usenet deliberately alter their articles so that
they will never get sent to Google Groups. You won't be able to
see these articles, much less reply to them.

8. Many netizens find it annoying to see a posting which only has
an e-mail address as the sender. One of the reasons is that when
you're replying to such a posting, the newsreader will create an
attribution line like: wrote: which is pretty
stupid; it sounds as if the e-mail address had written the original
article.

You should enter your real name as "nickname". You can only enter
a "nickname" if you registered as "member" of the group. You can
register as a member of the group using
http://groups.google.com/group/group/subscribe and change the
nickname for all groups with http://groups.google.com/groups/mysubs.

9. If you post something really embarrassing that you don't want
people to find and use against you in the future - or perhaps you're
just privacy conscious - you can add a header to your posts called
"X-no-archive" with the value "yes". This tells well-behaved Usenet
servers that they should disseminate the article to other servers,
but not keep it beyond the ordinary life of Usenet articles.
(Depending on server and group, anywhere between a few days (binary
groups on busy servers) and months.) Not everybody does obey
"X-no-archive".

Unfortunately Google is trying to be both a Usenet server and an
information archival system, and those two goals conflict. So the
way that Google implements the "X-no-archive" header is to display
this text:

The author of this message requested that it not be archived.
This message will be removed from Groups in x days (date/time).

Equally unfortunately, the time that Google keeps a message is not
the same as the time that Usenet servers keep a message. This may
lead to messages being available on Usenet - and replied to on
Usenet - but invisible to Google Groups users.

Due to this mechanism, a number of articles are missing in Google
(about seven percent of de.* in 2003/2004 according to
http://www.iicm.edu/thesis/mpirker.pdf p. 36).

Additionally, authors can request later that their articles are
removed from Google (see 6.).

Also, Google reserves the right to not show articles for legal
reasons.

10. Google erases text in between brackets from the subject line
(including the brackets). If you want to reply to a posting using
Google, you should click "options" above the article, then "show
original" and check whether the article was marked with a so-called
"tag", and manually recreate the original subject line.

Recommendation:

In order to be able to use Usenet optimally, you should install a
news reader. Note that there may already be one installed on your
computer; e.g. Mozilla Thunderbird and Microsoft Outlook Express
have (to a differing degree) Usenet news reading and posting
capabilities. You'll find one that suits you best - and recommendations
for configuration - by reading the FAQs posted on news.software.readers,
or maybe asking there.

Also, you'll need a news server, because it's not possible to access
Google with a news reader. Maybe your Internet service provider,
your University or your employer operates one for you. Else you
can search for commercial or non-commercial offers to the public,
e.g. consulting the Usenet provider list on or referenced by the
Big 8 News Service Providers FAQ list
http://www.big-8.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=faqs:news_providers.

If you insist to post via the Web, check http://www.newsoffice.de.

A web interace is only partially useful for general news reading,
because it's slower than a news reading program, and most of the
displaying and filter options a news reading program has are missing.

Have fun in Usenet!

Ignatios Souvatzis, translator from German/Editor.
Lots of (not only language-related) suggestions by Simon Cozens.

From the original document
by Michael Dahms, who in turn thanks for hints by Gunther Schmidt,
Boris 'pi' Piwinger, Michael Scheer, Thomas Hühn, Steve Tell, Stefan
Ram, Patrick Schaaf, Marc Haber, Martin Theodor Ludwig, Patrick
Borer, Armin Ehrbar, Swen Sauerwald, Philip Newton, Matthias Wallner,
Kari Bonanza, Wolf Ivo Lademann, Thomas Rachel, Karsten Huppert,
Peter Tobias, Oliver Ding, Michael Heydekamp, Andreas Kohlbach,
Raimund Nisius, Bernd Gramlich, Joachim Pimiskern, Victor Kafke,
Kai-Martin Knaak, Ernst Strasser, Sven Paulus, Uwe Premer, Christian
Janoff, Niels Bock, Matthias Fuhrmann, Martin Schnitkemper, Michael
Beiß, David Seppi, Andreas Keppler, Frank Kalder, Roman Racine,
Christoph Schneegans, Thomas Lahn, Marco Schmidt, Ignatios Souvatzis.

Special thanks to Florian Rehnisch for the basic analysis of the Google
archive list.

On Dec 25, 10:45*am, Golden California Girls
quoted, in part:

Posting via Google has some drawbacks for you and the other Usenet
users:

Of course, for those who know what Usenet is, and know how to use a
newsreader... once one's ISP no longer includes Usenet access, as is
becoming increasingly prevalent these days, unless one feels like
spending extra money, there really is no reasonable alternative to
Google Groups.

John Savard

In sci.astro.amateur message 515dd14b-d814-4570-886a-a10e9f506958@x16g2
000prn.googlegroups.com, Thu, 25 Dec 2008 15:48:48, Quadibloc
posted:

Of course, for those who know what Usenet is, and know how to use a
newsreader... once one's ISP no longer includes Usenet access, as is
becoming increasingly prevalent these days, unless one feels like
spending extra money, there really is no reasonable alternative to
Google Groups.

What's wrong with using a free news server, at least for those who do
not want binary newsgroups?

--
(c) John Stockton, nr London UK. replyYYWW merlyn demon co uk Turnpike 6.05.
Web URL:http://www.uwasa.fi/~ts/http/tsfaq.html - Timo Salmi: Usenet Q&A.
Web URL:http://www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/news-use.htm : about usage of News.
No Encoding. Quotes precede replies. Snip well. Write clearly. Mail no News.

On Dec 26, 3:42*pm, Dr J R Stockton wrote:

What's wrong with using a free news server, at least for those who do
not want binary newsgroups?

Nothing wrong with it, if you can find a usable one. I have found and
used a couple, but they've both disappeared now.

John Savard

In sci.astro.amateur message ef1b8023-a5f5-4934-9070-0917c176aec5@r15g2
000prd.googlegroups.com, Sat, 27 Dec 2008 02:18:52, Quadibloc
posted:
On Dec 26, 3:42*pm, Dr J R Stockton wrote:

What's wrong with using a free news server, at least for those who do
not want binary newsgroups?

Nothing wrong with it, if you can find a usable one. I have found and
used a couple, but they've both disappeared now.

Which does not prove that they have all disappeared. I connected to one
about ten minutes ago. The impecunious are not yet forced into using
Google.

--
(c) John Stockton, nr London, UK. Turnpike v6.05 MIME.
Web URL:http://www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/ - FAQqish topics, acronyms & links;
Astro stuff via astron-1.htm, gravity0.htm ; quotings.htm, pascal.htm, etc.
No Encoding. Quotes before replies. Snip well. Write clearly. Don't Mail News.

Dr J R Stockton wrote:
In sci.astro.amateur message ef1b8023-a5f5-4934-9070-0917c176aec5@r15g2
000prd.googlegroups.com, Sat, 27 Dec 2008 02:18:52, Quadibloc
posted:
On Dec 26, 3:42 pm, Dr J R Stockton wrote:

What's wrong with using a free news server, at least for those who do
not want binary newsgroups?
Nothing wrong with it, if you can find a usable one. I have found and
used a couple, but they've both disappeared now.

Which does not prove that they have all disappeared. I connected to one
about ten minutes ago. The impecunious are not yet forced into using
Google.

Yet you fail to reveal the URL of this free news server to which you so
recently connect, and which revelation is required to prove your point?

On Sun, 28 Dec 2008 09:03:17 -0800, lal_truckee
wrote:

Yet you fail to reveal the URL of this free news server to which you so
recently connect, and which revelation is required to prove your point?

Teranews has a free server, and it works reasonably well. They do have a
spam control system that sometimes fails, causing messages to get
delayed significantly. That got annoying to me, so I stopped using it.
But it's still far better than using Google or some other web-based
interface. It's been operating for years and shows no sign of going
away. Certainly some of the free servers are much less stable.

These days I'm using a pay service provided by Forte, the developer of
Agent newsreader. This service is super reliable, retains messages for
months on both text and binary groups, and sets me back a whopping $2.95
per month. That's so cheap as to be virtually indistinguishable from
free as far as I'm concerned.
_________________________________________________

Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com

In sci.astro.amateur message
, Sun, 28 Dec 2008 09:03:17, lal_truckee
posted:

Yet you fail to reveal the URL of this free news server to which you so
recently connect, and which revelation is required to prove your point?

You have my word that it exists. Proof is not required. KETFOB.

--
(c) John Stockton, Surrey, UK. Turnpike v6.05 MIME.
Web URL:http://www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/ - FAQish topics, acronyms, & links.
Proper = 4-line sig. separator as above, a line exactly "-- " (SonOfRFC1036)
Do not Mail News to me. Before a reply, quote with "" or " " (SonOfRFC1036)