Usenet 1994 January/usenetsourcesnewsgroupsinfomagicjanuary1994.iso/answers/singles-faq

Internet Message Format | 1993-12-02 | 30KB

Path: senator-bedfellow.mit.edu!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!usc!math.ohio-state.edu!magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu!csn!copper!mercury.cair.du.edu!mnemosyne.cs.du.edu!nyx10!tlode
From: [e-mail] (trygve lode)
Newsgroups: soc.singles,soc.answers,news.answers
Subject: soc.singles Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ); monthly posting
Summary: Explanation of common terms and abbreviations used on soc.singles
         (and many other conversational newsgroups) and general hints for
         posting articles there.
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 2 Dec 93 09:00:00 GMT
Expires: Mon, 17 Jan 1994 00:00:00 GMT
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Followup-To: soc.singles
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Xref: senator-bedfellow.mit.edu soc.singles:189257 soc.answers:693 news.answers:15393

Archive-name: singles-faq
Last-modified: 1993/11/11


FAQ         Frequently Asked Question(s)
MOTOS       Member Of The Opposite Sex
MOTSS       Member Of The Same Sex
MOTAS       Member Of The Appropriate Sex
MOTIS       Member Of the Inappropriate Sex
SO          Significant Other
RP          Romantic Partner
POSSLQ      Person of Opposite Sex Sharing Living Quarters
LO          Lust Object (occasionally also Love Object)
RI          Romantic Interest
POW         ProblemOlderWoman
PYM         ProblemYoungerMan  (also ProblemYoungerMutant)
POM         ProblemOlderMan
PYW         ProblemYoungerWoman
NG          Nice Guy/Gal
SNAG        Sensitive New-Age Guy
LJBF        Let's Just Be Friends   (now considered a verb)
PDA         Public Display of Affection
LDR         Long Distance Relationship
LTR         Long Term Relationship
SMV         Sexual Market Value
LAFS        Love At First Sight
            (Alternatively, "Love At First Site" for those in a hurry.)
IMHO        In My Humble Opinion   (engineers often prefer to use JMHO)
IMNSHO      In My Not-So-Humble Opinion
OTOH        On The Other Hand
YMMV        Your Milage May Vary
BTW         By The Way
WTH         What The Heck
TLA         Three Letter Abbreviation
FWIW        For What It's Worth
POV         Point Of View
RL          Real Life
[TM]        TradeMark
ROTFL       Rolling On The Floor Laughing
TL&EH       True Love & Eternal Happiness
NIFOC       Nude In Front Of Computer
FYI         For Your Information
FYA         For Your Amusement
RSN         Real Soon Now
FOAF        Friend Of A Friend  (Generally used for apocryphal stories.)
BIF         Basis In Fact
NBIF        No Basis In Fact
WFYITBWNBLJO   Waiting For You In The Bathtub Wearing Nothing But Lime Jell-O
Sie         Gender-neutral pronoun equivalent to "She or He"
Hir         Gender-neutral pronoun equivalent to "Him or Her" or
            possessive pronoun equivalent to "His or Her"


Q:  What is a 'boink'?

A:  Any publicly announced gathering of soc.singles participants and
    lurkers.  Frequently these last for days and involve the flying in
    of out-of-town soc.singles celebrities.

Q:  Should I post personals ads on soc.singles?

A:  No.  Personal ads belong in the alt.personals groups; there are even
    groups for people with specific tastes (e.g. alt.personals.poly,
    alt.personals.bondage, alt.personals.hamster.duct-tape).  If you
    want to post a request for pen-friends rather than a personal ad,
    there's also soc.penpals which is dedicated for just that very
    thing.  Do not post personals in soc.singles, you will annoy the
    readership and not get any positive responses.

Q:  OK, if I'm not supposed to post personals, what kinds of articles
    should I post?

A:  Think of soc.singles as the electronic version of something that's
    partway between a cocktail party and a soap opera.  Appropriate
    posts should be both interactive and entertaining--that is, their
    content should both invite the participation of others in the
    electronic conversation and be entertaining to its readers.  You
    might pose an open question to the readership about some aspect of
    the human condition as it applies to singleness or you might reply
    to another contributor's post and add an observation that sheds
    light on a different aspect of the issue under discussion or just
    makes some people out there laugh and shoot Pepsi out through their
    noses onto their computer keyboards.  Personal ads are a good
    example of what sort of posting isn't appropriate because they are
    neither of these--they aren't conducive to public discussion nor are
    they entertaining.

    Remember, the best way to get a positive response on any group is to
    post something that will pique the interest of the other readers and
    entertain them as well.  On soc.singles, the best thing to do is
    simply to post a message that expresses a stunningly profound
    observation that is fundamental to the human condition as it relates
    to singleness, one that is unobvious yet clarifies many of the more
    confusing interactions between singles and MOTAS and is expressed
    with succinctness, humor, an easy, flowing writing style, and--
    perhaps most importantly--good spelling and the effective use of an
    editor.  Some days we'll just settle for someone who can spell and
    use an editor.  Then, wait for fan mail while composing your next
    opus.

    When in doubt, the best thing to do is read the newsgroup for a
    while--at least until you get a feel for what's going on.  (This is
    generally a good approach for any newsgroup, not just soc.singles.)
    You may find it easier to leap into a conversation in progress;
    don't feel shy about "butting in," one of the advantages of the net
    is that everyone can get a word in without interrupting anyone else
    or being thought rude for speaking up.  Keep reading until you get
    to a message that inspires an interesting comment or observation of
    your own and put that in a followup message; or, if you're feeling
    really brave, start a whole new thread and invite others' comments
    on a subject that you think is interesting.

Q:  Do I have to be single to post on soc.singles?

A:  No.  The only requirement is that you have been single at some time
    in your life, know someone who was, or are interested in some of the
    subjects that people meeting either of these conditions have been
    known to talk about.

Q:  Is there anything besides personal ads that should be avoided?

A:  Of course there are other things that are best avoided--perhaps the
    most important of these are emotional issues for which other
    newsgroups have been created.  Topics like abortion, politics,
    religion, anything by Robert McElwaine, and other such things are
    best avoided, not because they aren't valid issues, but because,
    like personal ads, it's too easy for them to take over the newsgroup
    and drive off those of us who participate on soc.singles because we
    like soc.singles.  Remember, anyone who wants to debate abortion can
    go to talk.abortion and anyone who wants to post and read personals
    can go to alt.personals*--but if soc.singles gets turned into
    soc.talk.alt.personals.abortion.religion.politics.McElwaine, there's
    no newsgroup where the soc.singlers can go to continue their
    discussions.

    It's also good form to avoid messages that are pretty much
    content-free: don't, for example, quote an entire message that you
    agree with and then append "Yeah, what she said" to the end.  Test
    messages should also be avoided--if you're unsure whether your
    messages are getting out or not, post something to misc.test and
    you'll get confirmation messages from various sites around the world
    to let you know your posting software is working.

    On soc.singles, like any other group, it's best to avoid the urge to
    post spelling flames--if you catch a spelling error or a typo in
    someone else's post, it does very little good to post a public
    message about it, since the other readers will either have noticed
    the error themselves--and don't need to be told about it--or they
    won't care--in which case they don't need to be told about it.  If
    it's an informational post that's going to be reposted later or a
    signature, you may want to inform the poster in e-mail, but unless
    you can turn the spelling error into an outrageously witty
    observation (e.g. the original poster has just made a screamingly
    funny Freudian slip in print), there's no reason to post spelling
    flames publicly.

    If you get the urge to add to a pun chain, please don't quote all
    the puns so far and then add a pun that already appears earlier in
    the message; if you're going to add a pun, make sure it's not one
    that another poster has already added.  Indeed, with any kind of
    witty rejoinder that someone else's article inspires in you, it's a
    good idea to read any followups that have already been posted before
    posting your witty response, just to make sure that three or four
    people won't have made the same remark already.

    Finally, don't ever post chain letters, regardless of whether
    they're disguised as plans to create "mailing lists" for big bucks
    or not--posting such a message on soc.singles or any other newsgroup
    is likely to get your account revoked.

Q:  Sometimes, soc.singles seems very intimidating--it's like everybody
    knows everyone else and it's hard just to jump in to all the ongoing
    conversations.

A:  Remember that every poster on soc.singles had to post his or her first
    message sometime and, even now, it's no more difficult for you to
    press the followup-key than it is for anyone else.  Sometimes it
    helps just to read the newsgroup for a while--get a feel for what's
    going on and what the other posters are like, what sorts of topics
    have already been beaten to death many times over, and what sorts of
    insights, knowlege, and experience you might have to add that others
    might not think of.  When you do decide to leap into the fray and
    post something, don't be discouraged if it doesn't get a response
    right away or even if it gets a negative response--after all, the
    net is an imperfect medium and it's easy to be misunderstood, so
    don't feel too bad if you sometimes don't get your ideas across in
    quite the way you had intended.  If you keep your cool and continue
    participating, people will get to know you, you'll get to know them,
    and misunderstandings will become less frequent.

Q:  What if I don't like any of the current discussions or just find them
    all boring?

A:  On the net, just like in real life, when you don't like something,
    you're better off working constructively to change it instead of
    just complaining about it.  If you'd like to talk about something
    else, then post a message about it and add enough of your thoughts
    about it that the other contributors will have something to bite on.
    Writing, "what do you think about single people who bring their pet
    squids on dates?" is good, but "what do you think about single
    people who bring their pet squids on dates?  I was on a date last
    week with someone who insisted in bringing 'Sigmund' the squid along
    and taking pieces of food off my plate to feed to Sigmund without
    asking first." is even better.

    In general, the worst thing that you can do is post a message along
    the lines of "this group sucks; I've read every single message on
    this group every day for five years now and each one has been worse
    than having my toenails ripped out using a badly misaligned electric
    can opener."  Remember that all the people posting to and reading
    soc.singles are real people and tend to react rather like people
    would if you were to walk into a party and sulk in the corner,
    loudly shouting out "this party sucks" every few minutes while the
    people all around you are busily having a good time.  If the
    messages aren't to your liking, either try to contribute positively
    towards making the group more what you'd like it to be, use
    killfiles more extensively, or locate another group that is more to
    your liking.  Just announcing your displeasure is unlikely to
    motivate the other participants to post things that you'll want to
    read, since obviously they must be enjoying the current tone and
    content of soc.singles or they wouldn't be contributing to it.

Q:  I finally worked up the courage to post my first message and
    nobody responded to it.  Do you think that the soc.singlers are
    conspiring to ignore me?

A:  Alas, the contributors to soc.singlers are far too disorganized to
    conspire against anyone.  Most messages don't generate responses
    anyway, otherwise the volume of soc.singles would be even greater
    than it is.  So, you may need to post a few messages before anyone
    responds to something you've written.  If you want to maximize your
    chances of getting a response, try to make sure that your articles
    contain room for others to respond--they should invite others to add
    their thoughts to yours and, ideally, say something new and
    different that will get the attention of your readers.  Sometimes
    messages can even be too good--they can simply cover the whole
    subject and do it so authoritatively that there's nothing left for
    anyone to say, so not getting a response to a message doesn't mean
    that people aren't reading it or aren't interested by it.

Q:  Sometimes I write stuff that is just so incredible I think I should
    crosspost it to every other newsgroup on the net.  Is that OK?

A:  No.  In general on any newsgroup, crossposting should not be done
    more than necessary.  Inevitably, when you crosspost a discussion
    about your taste in swimwear to soc.singles, alt.personals,
    rec.scuba, rec.nude, and alt.culture.urdu, the thread will quickly
    diverge in directions that most of the groups don't want to read
    about.  If you do this too often, people from the various groups
    will start showing up at your house and tearing up your flowerbeds.
    If you reply to a message that is crossposted, be sure to trim off
    the newsgroups for which your reply is not appropriate.

Q:  What is this "editing" stuff I keep hearing about?

A:  "Editing," which is most commonly used in the phrase "please learn
    how to edit your messages" refers to deleting unnecessary quoted
    material.  It's not at all unusual for newcomers to the net to reply
    to long messages by quoting the entire thing and then responding to
    a comment made somewhere in the middle of the original post by
    adding a single sentence onto the end.  It's much better to delete
    quoted text from the original message if it isn't necessary to what
    you're trying to say.  Remember that many people out there, when
    they see huge reams of quoted material that obviously hasn't been
    edited down, will simply skip over to the next message without
    bothering to read your sterling prose at the end, so a little
    attention to the mechanisms of cleaning up quoted material will help
    you get your points across.  Also be sure to delete any quoted
    material left at the end of your message--it's easy to respond to
    something in the middle or even the beginning and forget to lop off
    the quoted stuff at the end that you aren't responding to.

    Don't be too industrious when deleting text, though--be sure to
    leave enough quoted text so that the readers will know what you're
    talking about even if they don't remember the message that you're
    responding to and be careful not to trim off the attributions (the
    names of the people saying the things you're quoting) that go with
    the text you leave in.  (Do feel encouraged to delete the names of
    people whose comments have been entirely deleted, though.)

Q:  How about editing subject headers?

A:  This is an important and much-neglected art.  Often the topic will
    have strayed far from its original one and a discussion on gerbil
    rolfing will be carried out under the heading "Favorite skiing
    lingerie."  When this happens, it's entirely appropriate to change
    the heading to something a little closer to the topic under
    discussion.  On the other hand, it's best not to change the topic
    too often, especially when it's a hotly debated topic that is only
    peripherally (if at all) involved with singledom and it is likely
    that many people will be killing the topic (see the section on
    killfiles later in this file) in an attempt to avoid reading about
    it.  Sometimes, when you do change the subject header, you may wish
    to list what the previous topic was as well; for example, if the
    topic being discussed under "Spiders vs. Lemon Pate'" had strayed to
    an in-depth examination of the sexual habits of people with mohawks,
    you might want to change the subject to "Mohawk Sex (was: Spiders
    vs. Lemon Pate')" which would allow those who are following the
    discussion under one heading to continue to follow it under the new
    heading.

Q:  What else can I do to improve my ASCII appearance?

A:  Soc.singles is read by something on the order of 60,000 people
    worldwide, all of whom are basing their impressions of you as a
    person entirely on the messages you post, so it's worthwhile to make
    sure your messages are clear and readable.  Probably the single most
    common mistake is not putting in carriage returns when they are
    needed, either typing in an entire paragraph or message in a single
    line (which looks sloppy, is difficult to quote properly, and may be
    truncated by some offline readers) or only putting in a return after
    >80 columns (which looks even worse, since on most systems this will
    show up as alternating full lines and really short lines).  Most of
    the time, it's best to limit your lines to no more than 72 columns,
    which leaves enough extra space that they will still be easily
    readable even when quoted a time or two.  Even if your system can
    handle reformatting messages so they look nice anyway, remember that
    most systems don't do this and, if you aren't careful with inserting
    carriage returns, your messages will be harder to read by others.

    Other obvious elements like correct spelling, punctuation, and
    grammar help make your message more readable too (and will make you
    all the more likely to generate positive responses rather than
    grammar flames).  Another thing to avoid is typing in your messages
    in all-caps (LIKE THIS) which makes it seem like you're shouting--
    plus it makes it less likely that you'll be taken seriously, since
    the percentage of words in all-caps in a message has been linked in
    several studies to the psychoceramicity (crackpottedness) of the
    author.

Q:  What do these weird combinations of punctuation marks I see
    frequently in people's messages mean?

A:  These are called "smileys" since the most common ones used are
    little pictograms representing a smiling face:  ":-)".  Because the
    net is inherently a text medium, it lacks many of the nuances of
    ordinary face-to-face conversation like facial expressions and tone
    of voice, so people try to make up for them in various ways, the
    most popular being the "smiley."

    Standard smileys include:

      :-)  :)    smile              8-)  B-)    smile w/ glasses
      ;-)        wink               :->         ironic/lecherous smile
      :-(        sad/unhappy        :-O         surprise

    There's an ongoing debate as to whether smileys are a good thing or
    a bad thing; some people like to use them whenever possible, others
    feel that writing should stand on its own without having to point
    out whether something was supposed to be funny or not.

    You'll also note unrepentant programmer types adding variants of C
    compiler directives to their posts; for example,

            #dripping_sarcasm_mode(ON)

    and

            #overuse_of_CAPITAL_LETTERS(OFF)

    In general, it should be pretty obvious even to the non-programmer
    what the writer means to convey with these directives.

Q:  Just what does "single" mean anyway?

A:  In the context of soc.singles, it means "unmarried"; there's a
    tendency for "singles' issues" being discussed on soc.singles to be
    directed towards people who don't currently have a long-term
    committed partner, but anything interesting and/or important to
    people who aren't married is appropriate.

Q:  How do you pronounce "soc"?

A:  There's no currently accepted standard.  The currently most popular
    pronunciations are "soak," "sosh" (like in 'social'), "sock," and
    "soas" (as in "sociological").  The least popular pronunciations
    include "sach," "sick," and "throat-warbler mangrove."  The IEEE and
    CCITT are jointly working on developing an international standard
    for the pronunciation of "soc" and expect that the first draft of
    the standard will be available some time in 1997.

Q:  What's a ".GIF"?

A:  GIF stands for "Graphics Interchange Format" and is a common format
    in which pictures are stored for display on a computer screen; when
    someone on soc.singles mentions something that someone else would
    really like to have seen, the latter person may jokingly ask for a
    "GIF"--but even if you're asked for one, don't even think of posting
    it to soc.singles, since they tend to be huge.

Q:  How do you pronounce "Trygve"

A:  It's sorta like "TREEG-vah" except that the 'EE' is between a long e
    and a short i.

Q:  How come nice guys don't get laid?

A:  Nice guys do get laid; it's guys who whine a lot who generally don't.

Q:  I met someone last week at a party; what do you think this person's
    deepest and innermost feelings for me are?

A:  That's one of the most common questions new people ask on
    soc.singles and, unfortunately, one of the most difficult ones to
    answer in any meaningful way.  Trouble is, all people are different
    and what would mean something for one person is likely to mean
    something completely different for someone else--and if you have
    trouble figuring out someone you know and have first-hand experience
    with, imagine how difficult it can be for people who have never met
    this person and are dealing only with second-hand information to
    figure out what's on that person's mind.  That doesn't mean you
    can't ask the other readers of soc.singles what they think, but it
    does mean that you shouldn't take any advice you get too seriously
    or think of it as a substitute for actually talking to the person
    you're curious about.

Q:  What about personal ads?

A:  Don't post them on soc.singles.

Q:  Will this message ever end?

A:  Well, it always has before.

Q:  How about posting articles asking for readers to send postcards to
    a kid in England who is dying of cancer and wants to set the world
    record for most cards received before he dies?

A:  No, don't do it.  He's been cured, has asked many times for people
    to stop sending him cards, and thoroughly regrets ever having had
    the idea in the first place.

Q:  OK, we're getting near the end of the file now--what's this about
    "killfiles" that you promised to tell us about?

A:  Most newsreaders have a provision for "killing" messages; that is,
    marking them as read before you get to them, so your newsreader then
    skips over them automatically instead of showing them to you.  I'm
    going to discuss how to do this in rn and its derivatives (trn, etc.)
    but most other newsreaders should have similar capabilities (though
    the command syntax won't necessarily be identical).  Topics are the
    easiest things to kill, as you need only type the 'k' key and all
    subsequent messages with that topic will be marked as read; you can
    also kill things in more complex ways by typing in a "regular
    expression" followed by ":j", telling the newsreader to "junk"
    (mark as read) all the articles that match that regular expression.
    Remember, you still can read the messages that have been marked as
    read if you want to, either by typing in the message number or by
    using the 'N' and 'P' commands to move to the next and previous
    messages rather than the 'n' and 'p' commands.

    A regular expression normally consists of a pair of '/'s with a
    pattern you'd like to match in the middle.  For example, if you
    wanted to kill all messages whose topics included the word "banana"
    you could type in "/banana/:j" and hit a return (and it would list
    the numbers of the articles that were being junked--the topics
    "BananaSizeWar" and "vegemite and banana delight; mmmm-mmm" would
    be junked.  The default is to check just the topic line and not
    differentiate between upper- and lower-case letters; that is, it
    wouldn't matter whether the topic had the word "banana" or "bAnAnA"
    in it.  If you want it to be case sensitive and select "bAnAnA" but
    not "Banana", a 'c' should be placed after the trailing slash:
    "/bAnAnA/c:j".  You can also have your newsreader check more than
    just the topic line--adding an 'h' after the trailing slash makes
    the newsreader check the entire header (allowing you to kill
    messages by a given author and/or from a particular site) and adding
    an 'a' will check the whole article; thus, "/grunting/a:j" would
    mark every article containing the word "grunting" as read.  (And, of
    course, this may be combined with the 'c' option so that
    "/Grunting/ca:j" would kill off only those articles in which
    "Grunting" is capitalized.

    You can also type in an expression like this without the ":j" at the
    end, in which case it will simply locate and display the article
    that matches the pattern.  Using question marks ("?") instead of
    slashes will make it search backwards instead of forwards and the
    "r" option makes it scan articles that you've already read.  Thus,
    if you were trying to find the article in which somebody mentioned
    something about the use of badger dung as an aphrodesiac, you could
    type in "?badger dung?ar" for it to search all preceding articles
    for a mention of badger dung; if you want it to mark all the
    articles that mention badger dung as unread, you can type in
    "?badger dung?ar:m"

    Kill commands like those above may be placed in a file where they
    will be performed automatically when you read a group.  This file
    goes in a directory off your News directory corresponding to the
    group name and the default name for this file is KILL (note
    capitals).  Thus, the killfile for soc.singles would be
        <home directory>/News/soc/singles/KILL
    Hitting a 'K' will not only kill the topic you're reading, but also
    add a command to kill that topic in future sessions to your killfile
    for that group, creating it if it doesn't exist, even creating the
    directories to put it in if necessary.  While this is the easiest
    way to add to a killfile, it is also generally the least useful,
    since most topics do die or change after a while, but unless you
    edit that line out of your killfile, it will continue to live in
    there, eating up processor time and generally slowing everything
    down whenever you read that group.  In general, keeping your
    killfiles to a minimum is a good approach, especially if you are
    sharing a computer with other users who don't like the system
    bogging down any more than you do.

      A few examples:

        killing messages from [e-mail]:

          /^From: *beavis@butthead\.edu/h:j

        killing messages cross-posted from alt.boring.prattle:

          /^Newsgroups:.*alt\.boring\.prattle/h:j

        killing all messages that even mention hairballs:

          /hairballs/a:j

    You'll notice that I used a few strange characters up there:  these
    are characters that have special meaning when used in an expression
    like one of these:  '^' indicates the beginning of a line so that
    the first example will only consider lines that begin with "from:";
    '.' is a single-character wildcard that will match any character
    (that's why when we really want a '.', we have to precede it with a
    '\' as we've done in the above examples); and '*' means that the
    pattern should match an arbitrary number of characters matching the
    character immediately before it in the expression (in the first
    example, you can see that we use it to allow there to be an
    arbitrary number of spaces between "From:" and "beavis" and in the
    second example, we've used it after the '.' wildcard so that there
    can be an arbitrary number of characters of any kind between
    "Newsgroups:" and "alt").  More about regular expressions and
    killfiles can be found by typing "man rn" and "man ed" at your
    Unix prompt.


Q:  Are you sure I can't post personals on soc.singles?

A:  Yes, completely sure.  Don't even think about it.
--
   Trygve Lode | 3270 Cherryridge Road, Englewood, CO  80110 | [phone]
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