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From: [e-mail] (Mees Roelofs)
Newsgroups: rec.sport.rugby.union,rec.answers,news.answers
Subject: rec.sport.rugby.union FAQ: introducing rsru (part 2/4)
Followup-To: rec.sport.rugby.union
Summary: Introduction to the Rugby Union newsgroup and Rugby Union itself
Organization: Planet Pino
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Archive-name: sports/rugby-union-faq/intro-rsru
Posting-frequency: every 30 days
Last-modified: 15 December 2002   (changes marked **)

Introducing rec.sport.rugby.union

1.1 Charter

Discussion on all aspects of Rugby Union worldwide. This includes the day
to day happenings in the sport, discussion of results and transfers, rule
amendments etc.


1.2 Should I subscribe to rec.sport.rugby.union?

If you have an interest in Rugby Union worldwide, this is the group for
you. If you're merely interested in Rugby League, you could try
rec.sport.rugby.league. There is also a number of local newsgroups, for
those interested in Rugby Union in a single country.

Rec.sport.rugby.union is an unmoderated newsgroup. This means anyone can
join the discussion without having to gain expressed permission. However,
please restrict your articles to the subject of Rugby Union.


1.3 History

Rec.sport.rugby.union (usually abbreviated to RSRU) was created along with
rec.sport.rugby.league, thereby ending the existence of the general Rugby
newsgroup rec.sport.rugby, which itself dated back to January 1991. This
was done to end long running flamewars between fans of the two codes. The
RFD for the two old groups to be split was eventually submitted by Paul
McNally on 24 July 1995. The proposal to create rec.sport.rugby.union was
approved by the great majority of voters (177 - 27), resulting in the
control message to be posted on 19 September 1995. See
ftp://ftp.isc.org/pub/usenet/news.announce.newgroups/rec/rec.sport.rugby-reorg
for the complete breakdown.


1.4 Posting conventions and netiquette

1.4.1 Do not post the score of a game in the subject of a posting. Many
subscribers only get to see the games delayed and don't want to know the
score before having seen the game themselves. If your posting contains a
result, add the suffix [spoiler] or [result] in the subject.

1.4.2 If you are making a reply to one point in a long post, please delete
those parts of the post that are not relevant to your comments. If you
wish, you can replace the removed comments with </snip>. Virtually
everybody using a dial-up connection pays more to receive large posts, so
be considerate. If the subject changes as a result please re-edit the
subject header.

1.4.3 Try to keep your discussion to the subject of Rugby Union. If your
discussion moves away from the subject of Rugby Union or gets personal
please try to continue it by e-mail.

1.4.4 Please keep your signature short (preferably 4 lines or less) and put
a sig-separator (--) in the line above the sig itself, as this enables most
newsreaders to automatically slice off the signature upon reply.

1.4.5 Please try to avoid starting flame wars, especially along the lines
of "my team's better than your team", or "your team is boring". If you must
make sweeping statements, please try to justify them. If you mean something
in jest, please use a smiley ;-) In general, try not to be deliberately
offensive to anyone and think about what you have said before you post.
Please try to avoid topics that have been discussed over and over again.
Some of them include 'NH rugby is 10 man and boring', 'RU is a better game
than RL', 'SH rugby is all froth and no substance', 'The English press are
arrogant', 'NH/SH refereeing', 'Creatine', 'Pacific Islanders in the All
Blacks', 'Any S12/NPC side would beat any European side by at least 40
points' and worst of all 'Food poisoning accusations at the 1995 RWC Final'.

1.4.6 Please do not post entirely in capitals as this will annoy a large
group of people whose eyesight you have hurt. Besides, writing in capitals
is considered yelling, which has little or no place in a well-behaving
newsgroup like RSRU.

1.4.7 Crossposting to other newsgroups is encouraged, but only when the
topic of your posting overlaps. Therefore you should see the charters of
the newsgroups you're posting into. Long flamewars between any two codes,
whether it is towards Rugby League, American Football or Aussie Rules, are
to be avoided. Please do not reply to any post sent to a large number of
newsgroups.

1.4.8 Do not judge people by extension of an e-mail address. A .au suffix
does not necessarily mean a person is Australian. A number of subscribers
to rec.sport.rugby.union live in exile and aren't amused at all when
wrongly being called Australian, Pom, Yank or whatever. Also, be aware that
a .uk suffix means more than England alone.

1.4.9 If a thread you're starting up covers one specific area of Rugby, you
might want to indicate this in the subject header by including a prefix
tag, ie [S12] Round 5 results, [6Ns] Italy vs France preview. This flagging
makes it easier to use kill- and watchfilters in one's news reader.

1.4.10 (aka Rule 23) The only way to avoid accusations of whinging is to
say nothing beyond congratulating the other team.

1.4.11 (aka Official RSRU John Hill's Law) A poster automatically loses the
argument should he resort to personal abuse, racism / fascism / nazism
accusations or to criticising spelling or grammar.


1.5 How to post into rec.sport.rugby.union

If you regularly use newsgroups on Usenet you should have no problems
posting to the group. If you are unfamiliar with Usenet then please read
the appropriate documentation for more information. The FAQ Consortium
offers a series of Usenet Primers on http://www.faqs.org/usenet. If this
does not make things clear, the group news.newusers.questions is frequented
by experienced Usenet users who offer help and suggestions on netiquette.
Its official homepage (http://vancouver-webpages.com/nnq) is an excellent
starting place when you're new on Usenet.

Rec.sport.rugby.union is a non-binaries newsgroup. Posting attachments,
other than pgp-encrypted signatures, is not allowed and could lead to
sanctions imposed upon the offender. If you want to
share binaries, upload them to your website or post them into a binaries
newsgroup like alt.binaries.pictures.sports, then post a pointer into RSRU.

Make sure your newsreader is set not to post messages as html into the
group, as this will annoy many subscribers not using Netscape or Outlook.

Promoting anything related to Rugby Union is OK, but please be moderate in
your posting frequency. There is no need at all to tell us about your Rugby
tournament three times a week. Make sure you post your message only once
(it might take some time for your message to appear on the news-server).
Don't post test-messages into rec.sport.rugby.union and use misc.test
instead. That group is "read" by several computers all over the world that
will send you e-mail to confirm your post was successful.

The nature of this newsgroup means that people are going to have strong
opinions about various topics. Reaction to these opinions is the entire
lifeblood of this newsgroup. However, postings that merely tell someone
that he is a "@#%$er" are not postings that refer to Rugby Union and
therefore inappropriate for rec.sport.rugby.union. In other words: if your
posting is a flame about Rugby Union, fine, it belongs here. A flame about
a person does not.

And talking about flames: there are always going to be a few idiots in the
newsgroup, abusing everybody and everything, refusing to have a decent
discussion. This is not the place to give a personal list of RSRU-idiots,
but the advise is: be the smarter of the two and just ignore or killfile
the tosser instead of starting up a needless flamewar. The general rule in
any newsgroup: self-censorship would be *APPRECIATED*.


1.6 Language

No rule on the language to use on rec.sport.rugby.union has been set out in
the group charter.  However, there is some sort of convention that posting
in any language should be allowed, because RSRU aims to be a forum for
Rugby Union fans worldwide. Unfortunately, there are always going to be a
few reactions to a non-English posting that one must speak English in an
English group. It is hereby made clear that this is not mandatory and that
everyone may basically post in his own language. Still, this is a
discussion group, so you might want to write in a language actually
understood by a few of us, in order to get the discussion going.

Please be aware that, despite Rugby being a sport mainly for native
speakers of English, some subscribers to the group don't speak English as
well as you do. Please accept this. After all, according to the Official
RSRU John Hill's Law, flaming a poster for poor spelling and/or grammar
means you've lost the argument.

If you're not sure of your spelling yourself, you could add the suffix
(sp?) to the word you're not sure about.


** 1.7 Common abbreviations on rec.sport.rugby.union

3Ns    - Tri Nations
6Ns    - Six Nations
ABs    - All Blacks
CC     - Currie Cup (South Africa)
ENC    - European Nations Cup
FIRA   - Federation Internationale de Rugby Amateur
IC     - Inside centre
ICC    - Independent citing commissioner
IR(F)B - International Rugby (Football) Board
LH     - Loosehead Prop
MOM    - Man of the match
NH     - Northern Hemisphere (also: North Harbour)
NPC    - National Provincial Championship (New Zealand)
NZ     - New Zealand
OC     - Outside centre
RL     - Rugby League
RS     - Ranfurly Shield
RSRU   - rec.sport.rugby.union
RU     - Rugby Union
RWC    - Rugby World Cup
S12    - Super Twelve
SA     - South Africa (might also be: South Australia)
SANZAR - South Africa, New Zealand, Australia Rugby. Can be the governing
body for S12 and 3Ns, as well as the three nations itself.
SH     - Southern Hemisphere
TH     - Tighthead Prop
TJ     - Touch Judge
TMO    - Television Match Official
UIOLI  - Use it or lose it
ZP     - Zurich Premiership (England)

Acronym Finder (http://www.acronymfinder.com) should help you looking up
acronyms that are not related to Rugby.


1.8 About this FAQ

In the early days of RSRU there was a FAQ, which was maintained by Rhodri
Howell. This, however, was incomplete and had not been posted for several
years, when Mees Roelofs offered to make a new one in December 1999. After
a few beta versions and lots of feedback, the first finalised version was
posted on 1 February 2000. On 30 January 2001 the FAQ gained approval for
posting to *.answers newsgroups.

The status of FAQs is being discussed regularly in all sorts of fora. In my
view, a FAQ is little more than a posting that is being made regularly. The
statements made here are mine; the reason RSRU regulars refer to the FAQ
occasionally is that they share these views, not in the last place because
many of them have helped creating and maintaining the FAQ. Bottom line: the
FAQ is not law, the FAQ is not official, its information is not official
and a group convention is a convention not because the FAQ says so, but
because it is felt so by the readers of the group. In fact, you might want
to go and create your own FAQ and get it approved.

If you have a suggestion for the FAQ, please post it into the group first.
However, if I've neglected to update things in section 2.7 (Current
Holders), just notify me.

You're free to publish this FAQ on your own website. It can be freely
stored or distributed for non-commercial use as long as it is not changed,
and the copyright notices attached to it are left intact. Conversion into
HTML is allowed. However, you must make sure that the FAQ on your website
is up to date. The information in this FAQ is provided "as is"; I do not
accept any responsibility for the content of websites this document links to.

Finally, credits go out to Mike Amm, Paul Bickerstaff, Don Black, Greig
Blanchett, Myk Cameron, Jason Cormier, Ian Daley, Pete Devlin, Stephen
Doyle, Andrew Forsyth, David Gallagher, John Hill, Tom Hodgson, Rhodri
Howell, Tom Joyce, Declan Kealy, Paul Kendall, Klaus Mahlmann, Charlie
Pearce, Henk Scholten, Will Sutton, Bill Taylor, Tom Vavasour and John
Williams.


RSRU FAQ (c) 2000-2003  M.M. Roelofs, Rotterdam (Netherlands)