Collection of Internet/Collection of Internet.iso/faq/rec/comics/faq/part4

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From: [e-mail] (Tom Galloway)
Subject: Welcome to rec.arts.comics: Netiquette
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Posted-By: auto-faq 2.4
Archive-name: comics/faq/part4

WELCOME TO REC.ARTS.COMICS (part 4 of 7: netiquette)
written by lots of different people
edited by Paul A. Estin 1990-1993
          Tom Galloway  1993-present

[last update: 4/10/93]

4. guidelines for posting articles

First, if you haven't already done so, read the articles in
news.announce.newusers, especially "A Primer on How to Work with the USENET
Community".  In fact, go read it even if you've read it before; the article
contains many helpful suggestions.

After you've done that, read these r.a.c-specific comments:

The most common r.a.c. netiquette mistakes made by newbies are:

1) Posting X-Men related articles in r.a.c.misc.
2) Quoting an entire article being responded to.
   a) And only adding what amounts to "I dis/agree" at the end
   b) Quoting less than the entire article, but not by much.
   c) Quoting a .sig and without commenting on it.

Or, as Dave van Domelen put it in an LNH story modelled after Billy Batson's
first encounter with Shazam...
"As he followed the tunnel, the walls became more cavernlike and less
public-workslike.  Bas relief scupltures lined the walls..."The Seven Deadly
Breaches of Netiquette." Flaming.  Cascades.  Gratuitous Crossposting.  Not
Trimming Included Articles.  Me Too.  Trolling.  And the most hideous of all the
sculptures...MAKE.MONEY.FAST."

* Think about your audience.

Make sure you post to the proper newsgroup, as explained in Part 1, on the
r.a.c hierarchy and related newsgroups.

* Have something to say, and support your arguments

Post because you want to say something about comics, or ask a question
about comics.  Don't post to satisfy your ego.  Respect other posters'
opinions, though you may disagree with them.  When arguing a point,
rational argument with examples is preferable to sheer volume, or, worse,
to personal attack.  Say something substantive, that others would like to
read and perhaps reply to.

A special case of the above: If people aren't posting about a comic or
character you're interested in, your best bet to start conversation about
it is to post something relatively substantial about the topic.  If you
just post "I like Suicide Squid. Does anyone else?" it's doubtful you'll
get much response.  Posting "I like Suicide Squid because (reasons)" or
"Does anyone know why this happened in Suicide Squid #37?" or even "Top Ten
Reasons Suicide Squid Should Be Chopped Up Into Calimari (reasons)" will be
much more likely to get discussion going.  If you just post a complaint
that Suicide Squid isn't being posted about, you'll basically get back that
if you want Squiddy discussed, you should start a discussion.

* Never forget that the person on the other side is human.

This is a generally a friendly, tolerant newsgroup, and we like to keep it
that way.  One of the things which can destroy the pleasant atmosphere
around here are "flames": inflammatory, insulting posts.  People send
articles saying things that they would never say to one another in person,
perhaps because of the anonymity that electronic newsgroups provide.
Please refrain from doing this.  There *are* people on the other end of
your message, and they're likely to take offense at your taking offense.
The result is called a "flame war", and it wastes the time of everybody on
the newsgroup.  When you respond to an article, even one with which you
vehemently disagree, try to respond to the *article*, not the poster; give
reasoned rebuttal, not personal invective.  Also, try not to dash off a
reply in anger; you may regret it later.  Instead, wait until after you've
had some sleep and calmed down, before you reply.  Finally, note that the
best way to avoid a flame war with someone who is *obviously* looking for
"attention" is to *ignore* that person.

* Special note on "taste wars"...

Of late [writing in late 1992], there's been an increasing amount of people
bashing one another's tastes, using such invectives as "DC fans suck", "I
hate you Marvel Zombies", "Marvel haters are a bunch of pretentious jerks",
and so forth.  The newsgroup r.a.c.xbooks was incorporated, for example, in
hopes of splitting off those who read and rave about Marvel's X-titles from
those who don't want to hear any more about them.  Similarly, there seems
to be an eternal war between the Image likers and haters.

Consider this a special case of the above two categories.  Have something
to say, support your arguments, and argue against another post's substance
or lack thereof, not to your assumed perception of its author.  It *is*
perfectly acceptable to post something like "People who read nothing but
Marvel comics should try to look at some other comics; if you enjoyed <X>
you might like <Y> from company <Z>.  Here's why..." or "I'm tired of
people bashing those of us who read Marvel; I happen to *like* reading
books <X> and <A>.  Here's why..."  Either of these sorts of posts is a
*lot* more likely to convince people of the Rightness of Your Opinions than
is loud spleen-venting.

Furthermore, as a general rule, either liking or disliking an *entire
company's output* is a position of questionable merit.  Many have gotten to
the point where they tend to follow favorite writers and artists, instead of
characters or companies.  While there can be noticible trends in companies'
output, if a company does more than a handful of titles there's a good
chance there's some title(s) you'll think are "better" or "worse" than what
you might expect from that company on average.

At the same time, though, people here *can* get awfully pretentious.  The
best thing to do, again, no matter which side you're on, is to back up your
posts with *substance*, and to reply to specifics, because much of the
arguing is due to misunderstanding another's position.

* Be careful with humor and sarcasm.

Subtle humor tends to be missed in text-only form.  There is a standard net
method for indicating sarcasm: the "smiley", a group of symbols which look
like a smiley-face on its side, like this :-)

(A post with a non-generic reference to Suicide Squid is also fairly likely
to be less than serious...)

* Use mail, don't post a follow-up

Many types of replies are best given by private electronic mail, not posted
to the entire newsgroup audience.  This seems obvious, but many people
ignore this.  For example, if someone posts a poll or a trivia contest, you
should reply to them by electronic mail.  Don't post!

As a special case of this, posts which ask for people to post their top N
titles/storylines/characters/etc. should be discouraged. Unless these lists
have reasonably detailed explanations of why the poster has these
particular entries, they get old fast. Posting that you're running an email
poll on the top N whatevers and will post results is much better.

* Don't overdo signatures

You can include a signature on the end of your posts.  (In "rn", if you
create a ".signature" file, it will be added automatically.)  But keep it
short.  Nothing is more boring than wading through the same long signature
repeated on multiple articles.  A maximum of four lines is suggested (and,
on some systems, four is the maximum possible). You may see some frequent
posters use longer .sigs. In general, these are people who include
particularly interesting quotes (or original writing) in their .sigs and
change it on a weekly or even per message frequency. Ascii art and
lettering, borders, etc. is old hat to most people, and multiple quotes in
a single .sig are definitely frowned on.

* Read all follow-ups and don't repeat what has already been said

This is especially important for answering questions that lots of people
know the answers to, such as "What's the name of that bald guy who founded
the X-Men?" or "When did Elrod last appear in Cerebus?"  If you want to
respond to an article or query, mark it (use the "M" key in "rn"), make
sure no one has already said what you want to, and *then* go back and
reply.  Or, just be safe and answer by e-mail instead of posting.

* Don't repost just because there were no follow-ups

Don't assume that, simply because there weren't any follow-ups to your
post, that it didn't go out. *Most* messages do not generate any
follow-ups.  If you go and post the message again, simply because it didn't
cause discussion the first time, you will simply annoy others and make
yourself look foolish. If you're really concerned about whether your posts
are making it out, you might email a poster at a site other than yours and
ask if they'd check if they've received your posts.

* When following up an article, quote only the appropriate amount of text.

Many posting programs make it easy to include text from the article you're
responding to. Take care to edit this text down to the minimum needed to
understand your new contribution to the discussion.  Many readers skip past
articles with a lot of included text, particularly at the beginning of an
article. A rule of thumb is that if you include more than 10 lines of quoted
text at a time, you're almost certainly doing something wrong. More than 5
and you probably are. Including more than 20 quoted lines at the start of
your post will insure that a fair number of people will *not* read it.
Habitually including too many quoted lines gets you put in kill files.

In particular, unless you are actually commenting on it in your post, there
is no reason why you should ever include the .sig from an article you're
responding to. The person's id is given at the start of the included text,
and that's sufficient.

* Double-check follow-up newsgroups and distributions

"Cross-posting" is the practice of posting the same article to multiple
newsgroups.  If you're posting a review about the Akira movie, for example,
then it would be relevant to the newsgroups rec.arts.anime and
rec.arts.movies.reviews.  Depending what you have to say (perhaps you are
comparing the film to the manga version), it might also be relevant to
rec.arts.comics.misc or rec.arts.manga.  But try to limit crossposts as
much as possible, and when you feel you *must* cross-post, include a
"Follow-up:" line to only one of the newsgroups (in the sample case,
probably "Follow-up: rec.arts.anime").

"Distribution" refers to how far a post will propagate.  While the majority
of r.a.c. readers and posters seem to be from the United States, there have
been posts from Canada, Mexico, Europe, Africa, Asia, South America, and
Australia/New Zealand, obviously meaning there are readers there as well.
For general comics matters, the correct distribution will be "world" so as
not to leave anyone out who isn't from your state/province, country, or
continent. On the flip side, if you're posting about a local event, post to
"local" distribution or whatever is appropriate (e.g., "nj" for New
Jersey).  Sometimes it's hard to tell what's appropriate; thus, if you're
telling people about a convention in the Boston area, and some people from
outside Massachusetts might be interested (likely true), then you may wish
to post to a wider area, like "usa" or "na".  But try to apologize in
advance when you do. Also, distributions don't always work, so if you in
Australia see a post for a small 1-day convention in Boston, don't flame
or otherwise admonish the poster without first checking that the
distribution line isn't in fact "ne" and the post has escaped its attempted
limitation.

* Cite appropriate references; don't use unnamed sources

In r.a.c, this means that it's preferable to include your source when
stating "news" or "rumors".  For example, you might write, "I read in CBG
that Alonzo Mori won't be writing Suicide Squid after issue #100."  That's
preferable to stating "I heard that..."

Please note that claiming unnamed "inside sources" is an almost sure way of
casting doubt on your credibility. People are only able to get away with
this to any degree once they've built up a reputation of being reliable,
have shown they do indeed know people in the industry, and when it's clear
there's a good reason for the anonymity. Keep in mind that there are
several people here who really do either know people in the industry or are
actually professionals and have established a reputation for reliability.
All doing this sort of thing will do is hurt your net.reputation for a long
time, because you will get called on it.

* Mark Answers or Spoilers

Ever had someone tell you events in a movie that you wanted to see,
spoiling the surprise?  It's the same with comics.  If something you say
might "give away" information about a new comic, state "WARNING: SPOILERS"
at the beginning and/or header of your article.  Also, insert a "<ctrl>L"
so that the article doesn't scroll.  In the "emacs" editor, this is done by
typing <ctrl>Q followed by <ctrl>L.  In the "vi" editor, type <ctrl>V and
then <ctrl>L. Note that the <ctrl>L must be the first character on a line
for this to work. If you include quoted text which includes a <ctrl>L,
you'll have to remove the quote indicator character(s) or space in front of
it for it to work.

* suggestions for reviews

There are several people who post reviews of comics (usually on r.a.c.info)
periodically.  Feel free to post your own reviews.  Jim Drew has helpfully
provided the following suggested guidelines:

Jim's Rules of Review (like Robert's Rules of Order, and followed as often
B-)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1. Don't review it if there is nothing to say about it.
2. Don't review *everything.*
3. Have a broad spectrum of reviews -- include something no one else will.
    3.a. Don't be *too* esoteric -- include something from Marvel or DC, too.
4. Develop a style for your reviews that is uniquely your own.
5. Discuss the plot/themes/art/etc.  "I liked it" is insufficient.

People can e-mail Jim Drew directly for the expanded discussion.
    [e-mail]

[end of Part 4]
"There are no net.gods, just some people with bigger mouths than others."
  --Dan'l DanehyOakes, net.roach
tyg   [e-mail]