Usenet 1994 October/usenetsourcesnewsgroupsinfomagicoctober1994disk1.iso/answers/music/alternative-faq/part2

Internet Message Format | 1993-12-11 | 10KB

Path: senator-bedfellow.mit.edu!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!nic.hookup.net!swrinde!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!nntp.club.cc.cmu.edu!news.sei.cmu.edu!bb3.andrew.cmu.edu!andrew.cmu.edu!jbbb+
From: Joshua John Buergel <[e-mail]>
Newsgroups: rec.music.info,news.answers,alt.answers,rec.answers,alt.music.alternative
Subject: FAQ: alt.music.alternative Frequently Asked Questions part two of two
Followup-To: alt.music.alternative
Date: Tue,  7 Dec 1993 22:41:06 -0500
Organization: Junior, Math/Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA
Lines: 196
Approved: [e-mail],[e-mail]
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Reply-To: [e-mail]
NNTP-Posting-Host: po5.andrew.cmu.edu
Summary: This posting is the second part a document that contains some frequently asked questions and answers relvant to alt.music.alternative.  It also contains some posting guidlines and should be read by anyone who wishes to post to alt.music.alternative.
Xref: senator-bedfellow.mit.edu rec.music.info:2710 news.answers:15592 alt.answers:1376 rec.answers:3290 alt.music.alternative:57528

Archive-name: music/alternative-faq/part2
Last-modified:  1993/12/04

--==|| Part III ||==--

Netiquette

    What is netiquette?  It's a cute term for some basic rules of
conduct on Usenet.  Computers are a very quick and convenient way to
exchange information.  Unfortunately, they also lend themselves toward
quick responses lacking thought behind them.  People tend to treat
computer communication as more like normal conversation rather than
written correspondance.  Netiquette is just a way of describing some
ways to try and increase the flow of information on Usenet.
    First, and most importantly, THINK before you send that.  It's a
cliche, but somebody is paying for everything that goes over the net.
Maybe you personally aren't paying, but somebody is.  Ask yourself, "If
this were a letter, would I bother sending it?"  Many times, you'll
answer, "No."  If you say it out loud, you'll also get funny looks from
everybody around you.  If the answer is no, don't send it.
    What sort of things shouldn't you do?  One thing you shouldn't do is
send one line responses.  If a question is simple enough to be answered
in one line, just email it to the person.  Another thing you shouldn't
do is quote the entirety of an article.  Just quote the relevant parts.
Don't worry, it's not going to kill you to use that delete key.
    What should you do if there is a question to which the answer is
commonly known?  Nothing.  Odds are, somebody has answered it.  If you
really feel you must answer it, do it in email.  Also, check ahead and
see if somebody else has already answered the question before you.
There have been countless instances of people asking something along the
lines of "Who sang xxx?"  Invariably, there were tons of people who felt
obligated to answer this question.  Often, people get it wrong.  People
won't think you're cool, people will think you're obnoxious.
    Don't post unfounded rumors.  I'm sure most readers are familiar
with the rumors which flew around concerning Lollapalooza 3.  I'm
equally sure people are familiar with all of the numerous, "Does xxx
have AIDS?" questions.  This kind of stuff doesn't raise the level of
information on the net at all, as they tend to be completely inaccurate
and offbase.  Wait until your rumor is confirmed, and then post the
information.  Most of the time you'll find that your rumor was just the
result of idle speculation.
    Another nice thing to do is limit the distribution of your messages,
especially if they are only of regional interest (such as asking about
concert tickets).  Jens Alfke wrote the following about the distribution
line in your messages (used with permission, and slightly edited):

"[...] Too many people don't bother to think about the distribution of
their postings, so we all get deluged with questions and answers about
concerts 2,000 miles away.  [...]

You need to set the "Distribution:" field of the message header. If you're
using "rn" on a Unix console, it'll ask you for the distribution after you
finish editing the message. Some other newsreaders will also prompt you, and
some make you edit the header at the top of the message while you're
composing the message.

The default distribution is "world" but you can limit it. I'm not sure about
all the standard abbreviations, but I'd be surprised if the usual two-letter
US state codes didn't work. [...] I know that "us" restricts it to the
USA. There are more local regions too; for instance, I can limit
postings to "ba" (San Francisco Bay Area) or "apple".

One thing you can look for is newsgroups at your site that don't begin with
the usual "rec", "comp", "soc", "alt", etc. The first word is usually a local
distribution. For instance, over here there is a "ba.food" for discussion of
Bay Area restaurants. If you see "nh.*" newsgroups, that's a clue that you
can limit distribution to "nh".

Ask your local system administrator or mail/news guru for more info."

    If you follow these simple guidelines, alt.music.alternative would
be much nicer to read.  Remember:  don't quote too much, don't post one
line articles, don't answer obvious questions, use email when it is
appropriate, don't post rumors, treat computer communication like
written communication, limit distributions and THINK before you send.

--==|| Part IV ||==--

Mailing Lists

    One of the best ways to acquire information about specific areas of
music or artists is to subscribe to an appropriate mailing list.  There
are tons of them out there and odds are you'll find one or more that
interest you.  The best way to find mailing lists that interest you is
to send a message to the following address:

                     >>>  [e-mail]  <<<

and ask for a copy of the musical list of lists.  You'll get a wonderful
document in turn that has subscription addresses for bunches of mailing
lists.  Before you go hog wild, there are a couple of things to keep in
mind.
    First of all, everything I said about netiquette applies equally to
mailing lists.  This is going into people's mailboxes, and they'll get
annoyed if you're cluttering up their mailboxes with garbage.  Second,
keep in mind that often (read:  always as far as I know) the
administrative address is different from the address for the mailing
list.  This means that your subscription requests, unsubscription
requests and other administrative stuff should get sent to the
administrative address, while stuff indended to be sent to the entire
list should go to the list address.  Pretty simple to remember, that.
For many mailing lists, the mail address will be of the form
[e-mail] and the administrative address will be
[e-mail].  Other lists are run by "listserv"s, which
means a computer administrates them.  For these lists, the mail address
will be [e-mail] and the administrative address will be
[e-mail].  Whatever the situation is, KEEP any information
that you get sent when you subscribe to a list.  It will help you
remember how to unsubscribe.  Trust me, few things annoy people on
mailing lists more than unsubscription requests sent to the main list.
It's really not that hard to remember two email addresses, is it?
    Incidentally, I will recommend one list in particular that has
remained amazingly flame free as well as chock full of content.  The
indie mailing list is a semi-weekly digest packed with reviews of concerts
and albums as well as other helpful information.  To find out more, just
send email to the new editor of the indie list, Sean Murphy
([e-mail]...you might know him as "Grumpy Smurph").
 He also maintains a really great list of independant record labels and
distributors, so ask for that as well.

--==|| Part V ||==--

FTP

    FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol, and is a means of
transferring files across internet.  Not all systems have FTP, you'll
have to figure out if you have it on your own.  There are several sites
that are useful to readers of alt.music.alternative and you can get a
complete list from rec.music.info.  The most important of these sites is
the server at cs.uwp.edu maintained by Dave Datta.  This site has
discographies, lyrics and tons of other information just waiting to be
read.  Do some poking around and you might be surprised.  Anyway, the
remainder of this section was swiped from the FAQ list for
rec.games.hack written by Yu Cao and underwent some modification.

                         Basic FTP instructions

If your machine is directly connected to internet, you can obtain the
source code and official binary releases for some popular computers.

Type in the command:

     ftp cs.uwp.edu

You will be connected to the server, and it will prompt for a username.
Type in the username:

     anonymous

Use your e-mail address for a password, such as:

     [e-mail]

Paying attention to upper and lower case, change directories to the
NetHack base directory, by typing:

     cd pub/music

This directory contains a veritable plethora of musical information.
First, find out what directories are available by typing:

     dir

Of particular interest are two directories, lyrics and artists.  To
change to these directories, simply type one of:

     cd lyrics
     cd artists

Once in these directories, you're going to need to keep typing "dir" to
find out what is available in that directory as well as typing "cd" to
change to directories.  Once you've finally found a file that interests
you, simple type:

     get <filename>

where <filename> is the name of the file you want.

To leave your FTP session, type:

     quit

That's it!  Isn't that easy.  For more information on FTP, don't bug me.
 Bug somebody like that geeky looking guy using the terminal next to
yours.

--==|| That's it! ||==--

This is the end of the FAQ.  I hope it's been helpful in some way.  If
not, don't both telling me, I really don't care that much.  This file
will hopefully be posted to a.m.a. fairly often in an attempt to improve
the signal to nosie ratio.  It will also be sent to anybody who
flagrantly violates any netiquette rules in hopes they will not make the
same mistake again.  Thanks for reading,

Joshua Buergel - [e-mail] - [e-mail]