Posting is the term used for composing articles and sending them to a newsgroup. InterNews provides a Compose window for you to enter the text of your article, and it provides commands to post the article. An article can be an original contribution to the newsgroup or can be a “follow-up”, or response, to an existing article.
InterNews articles are part of a large information network called the InterNet that connects many educational, research, and commercial institutions around the world. Your contributions may find their way to all of those places, with your name on them.
Posting is an important action and should not be taken lightly. Every poster should be aware of a number of issues before posting an article. A few are mentioned here. You should also read the articles in newsgroups news.announce.newusers and news.newusers.questions.
Netiquette
There are many conventions and general rules of conduct regarding article posting that have evolved over many years of Usenet activity. You will be more successful in getting your message across if you follow these conventions and rules. To find out what they are, read the articles in newsgroup news.announce.newusers. As a general guideline, do not post an article until you know what a “flame” is and what the symbols :-) mean.
Where does an article go?
If an article is posted to a newsgroup that starts with the prefix that is the name of your college (eg. dartmouth.), then the article will be visible to all InterNews and Usenet users at your site. If the newsgroup name does not start with the name of your college, it will be visible to all Usenet users around the world. Each participating institution pays for the Usenet service, so your message will represent a cost to each of them. Your name and electronic mail address will be on every article that you post. If it offends someone, or it contains personal information, you may receive some unexpected mail in return. Think twice before posting frivolous articles.
Take a Test Drive First
If you want to try posting your article just to see how it works, you can post it first to the test group at your site. {This group is called dartmouth.test}[Ask your system administrator for the name of your test group. It is likely to be the name of your site followed by ".test" (e.g. dartmouth.test).] No one will care what your article says if it goes there.
Moderated Newsgroups
Some newsgroups are “moderated”. All articles submitted to the newsgroup are screened by one person who is designated to be the moderator. This means that you cannot post directly to the newsgroup. InterNews does not tell you which groups are moderated, but articles in such groups are usually marked at the top or bottom of the text as being moderated.InterNews allows you to post to any newsgroup. If you do post to a moderated newsgroup, your article will actually be mailed to the moderator. If your article is frivolous, you may incur the wrath of the moderator directly. More likely, your article will be ignored.
Canceling Articles
You can cancel an article that you posted previously. When you do this, the message is removed from all systems to which it had been distributed. This can cause some confusion because some readers may see the article before you cancel it. The sooner you cancel an article, the less confusion there will be.
Timing of Articles
When you post an article to a newsgroup that you are currently reading, your article will not appear immediately in the Reading window. Similarly, when you cancel an article, it will still be visible in the Reading window. To see your article, choose the Refresh All Newsgroups command from the Reading menu. You can also set a preference that will refresh newsgroups automatically every time that you post an article. Refreshing only works if your newshost computer has made new article available since you posted. Some host machines make new articles available as soon as they are posted. Others hold new articles for a specified time, such as 30 minutes or 1 hour, before showing them.
What if My Article Never Appears?
If you post an article and it never shows up in the newsgroup(s) you posted it to, consider these facts about the Usenet News system: If you post to a moderated group, the article gets mailed to a person who moderates the group. If the moderator chooses not to post your article, it will never show up. If you post an article to a number of groups and any of them is moderated, the article will get mailed to the moderator of the first moderated group in the list. It will not get posted to the other groups unless that moderator decides to post it for you. This may seem strange, but it is the way thatthe Usenet News works. Since this version of InterNews does not tell you which groups are moderated, you can get this sort of surprise when posting to multiple groups.
To get around this problem, post two copies: one to the moderated group and one to the other groups. There is a good chance that the moderator will not post an article that has already been posted. If you are not sure if the group you are posting to is moderated, save your composition while you compose it so that you have a copy in case you want to post it to another group.
