Internet Info 1997 December/Internet_Info_CD-ROM_Walnut_Creek_December_1997.iso/faqs/alt/humor/best-of-usenet/alt.humor.best-of-usenet_FAQ

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From: [e-mail] (best of usenet humor)
Newsgroups: alt.humor.best-of-usenet,alt.humor.best-of-usenet.d,alt.answers,news.answers
Subject: alt.humor.best-of-usenet FAQ
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Date: 20 Oct 1997 08:20:29 GMT
Organization: best of usenet humor
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Keywords: ahbou,humor,humour,repost
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Originator: [e-mail]
Xref: senator-bedfellow.mit.edu alt.humor.best-of-usenet:6986 alt.humor.best-of-usenet.d:3652 alt.answers:29751 news.answers:115030

Archive-name: best-of-usenet-humor
Posting-Frequency: semi-monthly
Maintainer: Shane Travis <[e-mail]>
Last-modified: October 1st, 1997

alt.humor.best-of-usenet Frequently Asked Questions

Submissions go to:                   [e-mail].
Questions for the moderators go to:  [e-mail].

New to this update:
- Transitional implementation phase of requiring 'Message-ID:' header is
    now over: this header is required on all submissions. (Q3 part 2, Q12)
- Updated information for decrypting posts under Agent 1.5 and slrn. (Q5)
- Updated information on the archive site. (Q7)
- 'X-Posting-Moderator:' header now used on all posts. (Q11)
- Explanation for SPAM in a.h.b-o-u. (Q14, NEW)


Herein lie the answers to the following questions:

Q1: What is alt.humor.best-of-usenet about?  How do I post an article?
Q2: Post <x> wasn't funny . . . why was it posted?
Q3: My contribution wasn't posted to alt.humor.best-of-usenet.  Why?
Q4: Why do moderators encrypt articles?
Q5: How can I read an encrypted post?
Q6: Why the disclaimers in the header and the signature?
Q7: Is there an e-mail distribution or FTP archive?
Q8: Can I read by gopher or WWW?
Q9: Can I mail articles rather than post them?
Q10: How often are articles processed?  How are they processed?
Q11: Which moderator posted a given article?
Q12: Why are some articles posted multiple times?
Q13: What if I don't want my writings posted to alt.humor.best-of-usenet?
Q14: Why does SPAM show up in alt.humor.best-of-usenet?
Q15: What other things do the moderators think readers should know?


Q1: What is alt.humor.best-of-usenet about?  How do I post an article?
----------------------------------------------------------------------
The newsgroup alt.humor.best-of-usenet is for posting original usenet
articles from other newsgroups, that the submitter believes represents the
best of usenet humor.

Some moderated newsgroups have a description like "what the moderator
thinks is funny"; this is not true for a.h.b-o-u.  The group is moderated
to minimize the number of reposts, followups, and unrelated posts.  For
specific rejection criteria, see Q2 and Q3.  Note that a.h.b-o-u is
moderated by a team of moderators.

To post an article, you can save it to a file, start a new post to
newsgroup alt.humor.best-of-usenet, and include this article in your
post.  The article will be mailed to the moderator submission address,
[e-mail].

If your newsreader has the ability to mail or forward a post, you can
also mail a post to [e-mail], the moderator posting
address.

Please do not use tin's "x"post feature; use "m"ail instead.  "x"post
munges the headers a lot, and sometimes cuts out parts of the original
poster's name, depending on your tin options.  If these parts are missing
your article will fail acceptance criteria.


Q2: Post <x> wasn't funny . . . why was it posted?
-----------------------------------------------
Unlike rec.humor.funny, alt.humor.best-of-usenet is not tightly moderated,
nor does the moderator-team's judgment about a post's humor affect whether
or not it gets posted.  On the other hand, the group should reflect what
the contributor believes to be the BEST of usenet humor, not just "a funny
post".

This means the following might be submitted and subsequently posted:
(1) Posts that someone thought were humorous, even if not everyone gets it.
(2) Posts that aren't particularly funny, or are in very bad taste.
(3) Posts that, while humorous, may be offensive to women, ethnic or
    racial minorities, small rodents, or cartoon characters.

Remember, there's no particular difficulty or honor involved in getting
your post into alt.humor.best-of-usenet, so it's not necessary to keep
submitting articles until one is accepted.  Choose the best.

Feel free to comment on posts in alt.humor.best-of-usenet.d or in e-mail
to the submitter.


Q3: My contribution wasn't posted to alt.humor.best-of-usenet.  Why?
--------------------------------------------------------------------
The following will not be posted (well, sometimes the moderators slip up):

(1) Articles sent to any address other than [e-mail],
    or an alias (like [e-mail], the old submission address) that
    points to it.  IN PARTICULAR, articles posted to the moderator
    contact mail address ([e-mail]) will not be posted.

(2) Articles that don't arrive with the original 'From:', 'Subject:',
    'Newsgroups:' or 'Message-ID:' headers.  The absence of any of these
    required headers is considered grounds for rejecting the article.

(3) Articles which are not submitted in their entirety.  Any submission
    which is found to have been modified by the submitter in any way
    (including editing for humor value) may be rejected.  If only a small
    part of the post is funny, then either it's not worth submitting, or
    you should include with the submission a "Submitter's note:"
    indicating where in the post the humor can be found.

(4) Articles asking for reposts of old articles. Such requests are best
    handled by a post to alt.humor.best-of-usenet.d or by using one of the
    usenet-related search-engines. If you submit them they go into a black
    hole.

(5) Commercially published articles (Dave Barry's "Fish Tale" about
    blowing up the whale, for example).

(6) Copier humor; examples include (but are not limited to):  "Super High
    Intensity Training", "Mouse Balls", "Administratium", and "Recipe for
    a Woman/Man". These are the sorts of things which get hung by the
    photocopier at work, and everyone who thinks they are funny takes a
    copy for themselves.  They are not original, did not originate in a
    newsgroup, and therefore don't qualify.  (Besides, they've probably
    been posted to rec.humor in the last month.)

(7) Urban legends--the $250 cookie recipe, for example (submissions from
    a.f.urban are fine, but it should be in the post you're submitting,
    not the many-times-circulated legend that started the topic).

(8) Articles that have been badly mangled by newsreaders, so that the
    original formatting has become illegible.  This includes saving a
    thread of articles to a single file, without editing of any sorts,
    and submitting them as one article (see below).

(9) Articles submitted only because the .sig is humorous.  If the .sig
    is really stupid and it's bigger than 4x80 (the accepted maximum
    size for usenet .sigs), you can post it to alt.fan.warlord instead.
    The FAQ for a.f.w. is at http://www.math.fu-berlin.de/~guckes/afw/
    and should be read before posting in that group.

Generally, the moderators don't send non-acceptance notices, but if the
moderator that gets your post has questions they'll write back.


Q4: Why do moderators encrypt articles?
---------------------------------------
Moderators of a.h.b-o-u do not edit articles for content (except for ads
and addresses--see Q10).  All modification to submissions are done for the
purposes of readability and conformity.  As a result of this policy, some
articles are rot13-encrypted because the moderator feels that they may be
offensive to certain groups.  These articles are usually preceded by a
disclaimer from the moderators advising that the article may be offensive.

Posts are encrypted for the same reason that a bookstore owner might put
offensive material on a higher shelf--as a courtesy to the customer. Each
moderator makes individual decisions on which articles to encrypt (tending
to err on the side of caution after the "Barney the Nazi Dinosaur" incident;
see Q6).

Numerous moderators makes for numerous standards of what may or may not
be considered offensive.  Generally, moderators try to encrypt articles
based on previous experiences with the tolerance levels of the cyberspace
community.  If you found an unencrypted posting to be offensive or did not
understand why a given post was encrypted, please contact the moderators
via the mailing list so that we can take your opinions into consideration
for future postings.


Q5: How can I read an encrypted post?
-------------------------------------
Some articles are rot13-encrypted, and most newsreaders have the decoding
built-in. Thanks to the various readers that have submitted the following
instructions:

rn/trn: ctl-x
tin: d
nn: D
slrn: ESC-r
gnus: ctrl-c ctrl-r
PSU NetNews: "rot13"
anu-news: read/rot13
vms vnews: x
Yarn (offline reader): x
WinVN: ctrl-r
FreeAgent: ctrl-r
Agent (version 1.4 or older): ctrl-r
Agent (version 1.5 or newer): ctrl-3
Most MS-Windows newsreaders: ROT13 from one of the menus

The encryption itself is very simple, every letter is shifted 13 bytes,
i.e., a->n, B->O, M->Z, o->b, etc.  Non-letters are untouched.

If all else fails, pipe it through a script like this (or use this as the
base for a program of your own design, in whatever language/OS you prefer):

#! /bin/sh
tr 'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ'\
   'nopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijklmNOPQRSTUVWXYZABCDEFGHIJKLM'

(For the purists that say I should've used 'a-zA-Z' instead, remember
that some "popular" systems don't have the letters as consecutive values.)


Q6: Why the disclaimers in the header and the signature?
--------------------------------------------------------
Because the moderators hope to not be forced to resign moderating--or to
resign their jobs--under duress, because of postings submitted by others.


Q7: Is there an e-mail distribution or FTP archive?
---------------------------------------------------
For quite some time, older articles could be found at Titus' Newsgroups
Archive (http://www.krl.caltech.edu/~brown/news/bou-html). As of September
2nd 1997, however, this site became defunct. Those desiring older articles
will probably have the best luck using usenet-archiving services such as
Deja News, AltaVista, etc.

There is no e-mail distribution of a.h.b-o-u articles.


Q8: Can I read by gopher or WWW?
--------------------------------
Via WWW:
gopher://news.ysu.edu:2070/1ls%20alt.humor.best-of-usenet

Via gopher:
Path=ls alt.humor.best-of-usenet
Name=alt.humor.best-of-usenet
Host=news.ysu.edu
Port=2070
Type=1

(command line: gopher -p "ls alt.humor.best-of-usenet" news.ysu.edu 2070)


Q9: Can I mail articles rather than post them?
----------------------------------------------
Yes.  If your news-posting software doesn't handle posts to moderated
newsgroups correctly, or if you prefer using e-mail, or for whatever other
reason, you can mail posts directly to [e-mail].  This is
the same address as that to which news software automatically forwards all
submitted posts.  There is no need to trim headers or perform any other
formatting when submitting an article; while we appreciate the thought,
you might accidentally remove a needed header and our script does a good
job of extracting relevant information.


Q10: How often are articles processed?  How are they processed?
--------------------------------------------------------------
An article is delivered in a rotating fashion to one of several group
moderators for alt.humor.best-of-usenet.  The length of time from delivery
to posting is dependent upon the recipient--each moderator does articles
as they have time, and some clean out their queues more frequently than
others.

To prepare the articles for posting, most of the original post's headers
are removed, and the submitter's headers are edited down to the 'From:'
line and the original 'Subject:' line, which is edited to contain a
reference to one or more newsgroups where the post was originally found.

Finally a script is run that tacks on the remainder of necessary headers
and the disclaimers, and the article is posted.

All .sig files and sign-offs are removed from the submitted post as a
matter of course.  A particular moderator may choose to leave this in if,
in his estimation, it adds to the humor value of the submission.  If you
don't want to leave things to chance, make sure to include a note saying
that the .sig should be kept and explaining why.

Moderators remove or XXX out e-mail, snail-mail and website addresses
contained within submissions, to protect both themselves and the subject
of the submission.  This removal is routine where the addresses are
intended to advertise or solicit, and at the discretion of individual
moderators in all other situations.  Submissions which contain multiple
instances of such addresses may be rejected at the moderator's discretion.


Q11: Which moderator posted a given article?
--------------------------------------------
All posts to a.h.b-o-u should contain following header line:

X-Posting-Moderator: John Doe

This header may contain a name, an e-mail address, a SPAM-blocking e-mail
address, an IP address, etc., but it will be unique to each moderator and
consistent throughout all posts by that moderator.


Q12: Why are some articles posted multiple times?
-------------------------------------------------
When articles are submitted, they go into a queue and are forwarded to one
of the moderators in a round-robin style (see Q10).  If many people submit
an article, or the same person submits the same article multiple times,
then it is likely that several different moderators will get copies of
that article to format and post.

We try and catch the duplicates by reading the newsgroup before posting
submissions, but we are only human and occasionally make mistakes.  Also,
moderators reside in both North America and Europe; propagation delays of
several days have been observed between the posting of an article on one
continent and its arrival on another.  This sort of thing makes it
impossible for even the most careful moderator to catch all the mistakes.

To reduce duplication, the 'Message-ID:' header from the original message
is now required with each submission.  This header, prepended with the
string 'ahbou=' becomes the new 'Message-ID:' header for the article when
it is posted to a.h.b-o-u.  This means that if an article is posted twice
by different moderators, the identical 'Message-ID:' headers will ensure
that the duplicate is thrown away automatically as it reaches each site.


Q13: What if I don't want my writings posted to alt.humor.best-of-usenet?
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
In an attempt to remain compliant with the wishes of the original author
of a submission, moderators will not approve any submission which has
either of the following:
- Inclusion of the Deja-News-blocking 'X-No-Archive: yes' in the headers
    or body of the article, or
- An explicit message in the .sig which clearly states the author's desire
    that the article not be reposted.

The major drawback in this policy is that it relies on the integrity and
complicity of the submitters.  If the relevant header or portion of the
signature is removed from the submission, through either ignorance or
malice, then unless the recipient moderator locates the original article
(which is neither required nor always possible) he has no way of knowing
that it was ever there.  Thus, while moderators agree to do the best job
they can to enforce this scheme, there will always be those submissions
that fall through the cracks.


Q14: Why does SPAM show up in alt.humor.best-of-usenet?
-------------------------------------------------------
The newsgroup alt.humor.best-of-usenet is moderated, which means that only
approved postings should appear in the newsgroup.  Unfortunately, some sites
have reported seeing non-moderated postings in a.h.b-o-u. Unapproved posts
can take many forms: submissions which were not forwarded to the moderators,
follow-up articles commenting on a post in a.h.b-o-u, and (most annoyingly)
SPAM of all sorts.

It has been suggested that these posts appear in a.h.b-o-u as the result
of bribes paid to the moderators.  The moderators are insulted by this
insinuation and would like to make it especially clear the amounts offered
so far have been pitifully insufficient.  Realistic proposals only may be
sent to <[e-mail]>.

Unapproved postings in a.h.b-o-u result from a site-specific breakdown in
the moderation/approval system for moderated newsgroups.  The system has
two parts: (1) When a user attempts to post an unapproved article to a
moderated newsgroup, it is instead diverted to the moderators' e-mail
address; (2) When an unapproved article is offered to a server by a remote
location, it is rejected.  Obviously the system is subject to
misadjustment, failure and forgery.

If you are seeing unapproved SPAM in a.h.b-o-u on a regular basis, you may
wish to take the matter up with the System Administrator of your Internet
Service Provider.  You can usually reach them by directing an e-mail to
root@[your ISP name] or postmaster@[your ISP name].  Politely let them
know that this group is moderated, and have them make any inquiries to the
moderator mailing list ([e-mail]).  If, on the other hand
--and this is comparatively rare--the article carries forged approval, you
may wish to point out to the originating service provider that the user
may be violating his terms of service.

The fact that moderated alt.* newsgroups are relatively uncommon makes it
all the more likely that an administrator is unaware of the Moderated
status of a.h.b-o-u.  There is always the possibility, however, that the
management of your ISP--for reasons of idealism, laziness or law (to
support its claim to be a common carrier and thus not responsible for what
it transmits)--chooses not to recognize the principle of newsgroup
moderation.


Q15: What other things do the moderators think readers should know?
-------------------------------------------------------------------
(1) Submissions that contain more than one article are a hassle.  The
    ideal way to submit these: save the best two or three articles of
    the thread to a file, separate each article by a line of dashes or
    equal signs, and edit the headers as described in Q9.

(2) Posts that use mime base64 encoding, uuencoding, rot13 encoding and
    the like are a pain.   Please use standard octet-stream encoding.

(3) If a post is from a commercial source, drop a line to the moderators
    list, [e-mail], and one of the moderators will cancel
    it.  We try to catch these, not always successfully.

(4) It's not necessary to PGP-sign your posts.  The moderators cut this
    out anyway.

(5) There exists an unmoderated group with a function similar to a.h.b-o-u
    called alt.usenet.reposts.  Postings to this group are not restricted
    in any way, and may be merely 'interesting' as opposed to humorous.


The moderators as a group may be contacted by sending e-mail to
[e-mail].  Submissions go to [e-mail].