🚀 go-pugleaf

  I normally hate 'me too' type messages, but what Don is saying here is 
fundamental.

In article <33301918.4772@freenet.carleton.ca>,
Don McCallum <aa515@freenet.carleton.ca> wrote:
>I personally think that having a charter is an aid in the self
>policing role of a newsgroups normal or regular users.
>
>I personally think it is easier to say to a newsgroup abuser that
>"this newsgroups charter does not permit ... blah blah blah", and
>doing so is less likely to create flames than just stepping in and
>saying "heh! .... your not supposed to do that".
>
>This is even better if the charter is in a web page that can be
>quoted.
>
>cheers,

  The charter need not be looked at as some sort of 'contract', or formal 
document.   Pretty much every successful group has a FAQ, and About, or a 
Charter (Or many of the above).   This allows new users a much lower 
introduction time by having an idea of the purpose of the group up front, 
rather than having to read the group for an extremely long time before 
finding these things out.


  Some groups are obvious what their purpose is:  ott.vietnamese .  Other 
groups are less obvious (Such as the no-personal ads nature of ott.singles).

  Ott.singles was originally started with an ABOUT and a FAQ.   The ABOUT 
file still exists on the 'go singles' menu of the NCF.   Once a critical 
mass of users existed, this was not needed as much as it was when the 
group first started.   The existence of ott.personals also made things a 
lot easier by making it obvious that these two types of postings 
should be separated.



  Personally I believe that charters or FAQ's should be written for each 
newsgroup, making life easier for new users.  It's a matter of volunteer 
time - ONAG is itself quite busy on other things, so it would be nice if 
a representative of each group made up a simple file describing the group 
enough to get new users climatized quickly.


Thanks.

-- 
 Russell McOrmond, Consultant: <http://www.flora.org/russell/>
 Community Volunteer: <http://www.flora.org/> <http://www.ox.org/ox/>
 If I seem distracted, please forgive me.  I'm engaged to be married!