UK Business Agriculture FAQ

Now, while this may be true if you're looking at a de.* newsgroup (from Germany), it's normally not. All that's happening is that people are using abbreviations.

And you should, of course, read and digest this FAQ.

Charter for unmoderated group uk.business.agriculture

This newsgroup is for the discussion of and exchange of information within the agricultural industry in the U.K.

Advertising is forbidden with these exceptions

Personal advertisements for related items, services and jobs are welcome but should be brief.

Within the context of "exchanging information", commercial suppliers of relevant goods and services, agricultural organisations, advisory services, etc. may post brief messages which contain information they might reasonably feel was of interest to readers.

Commercial suppliers are required to restrict their "advertising" to web sites, the location of which may be posted in short messages to the newsgroup.

Commercial suppliers are requested to limit their postings to one message at a time or to include the word "Trade" in their headers.

All other advertising is banned.

Encoded binaries (e.g. pictures, compressed files, etc.), are forbidden, except for cryptographic signatures (e.g. PGP) which should be kept as short as possible. Posts must be in plain text, HTML is forbidden.

Proponent: Alistair Wilson -----

Why should I keep to this then?

As everyone knows, if society is to function, there must be certain rules that everybody abides to. uk.b.a is such a community - it's made of individuals, and unless you're taking part in a responsible and grown-up manner, those individuals won't want to know you. There would then be no point in reading or posting to uk.b.a.

More to the point, if people consistently post against the charter, their Internet service provider (ISP) receives a complaints email that their behaviour is antisocial (since that's what it is), and you might have your newsfeed removed. So be warned.

The purposes of the newsgroup can be neatly compressed to:

i) Somewhere to talk about agriculture in the uk

ii) Somewhere to talk

iii) Somewhere.

Don't worry if it seems confusing, you'll get the hang of it.

There is no best way to start off. I personally started by replying to a message already there. A lot of others start by posting a new thread to introduce themselves;

The best way of all, however, is to just read, and not post to, the group for a couple of weeks (known as 'lurking').

This way you can find out what goes on and the appropriate posting manners ...

b) Can I just join in *anywhere* ?

Yes. If anything was meant to be completely private, it would be sent over email. Feel free to add to any thread, or start a new one if necessary.

Alaistair's answer was

"Right here to begin with. "Adverts" such as that are welcome here. We are all interested in who has what for sale and how much are they asking for it. :-)

I recall Jim drawing attention to a dispersal sale in his area some months back. That sort of thing is welcome as well. Any markets wants to put something drawing attention to special sales, etc. go ahead. Anything which is likely to be of interest to the group is OK. Its the unsolicited irrelevant stuff which usually has "$" signs in it somewhere anyway which annoys us all.

To recap, "this newsgroup is for the use of all who have an interest in the uk agricultural industry". If you fall into that category, you are free to put on any message you like so please do so."

There are a few things which should be explained in more detail ...

Before posting a message, look at the newsgroups box on your message.

If it contains more than one newsgroup name you are crossposting (also referred to as xposting).

Apply common sense when crossposting! Crossposting to other agriculture groups can widen the discussion, but crossposting to groups like alt.fan.oj-simpson.hang-him-by-his-b*lls serves no purpose!

Also, it helps if you write your replies directly under the part of the posting you're replying to, not simply at the top.

As a result, you may find many addresses of the form xxx@nospam.xxx or xxx@xxx.error.xxx or xxx@xxx.my-bra.xxx which are designed to ensure the user's real address won't be harvested. Normally instructions for decoding these are at the bottom of posts - for example:

'replace nospam with jumper to reply'

or 'before you reply remove .my-bra.'

It's safer to not give out huge amounts of information about yourself over the internet. Phone numbers are risky; addresses (as in real addresses) a definite no-no. Be wary about what you reveal.

Oz replied :-

It allows you to avoid downloading posts from people you find obnoxious

or to reduce the volume of traffic. Some where on your newsreader you

should find this facility (help is a good place to start).

Generally you can 'kill' on a variety of criteria such as 'author' (eg

'Oz' would reduce traffic), 'length' (eg over 2k), 'in header' (eg AOL

might remove some odd people) etc.

Once you have done this you will never see these posts again. "

David Aldred wrote :-

"Microsoft, in its usual attempt to re-invent and create new terminology

for everything veteran net.users invented years ago and take for

granted, doesn't call them killfiles.

The functionality is called 'message rules' in Outlook Express 5 : if you

look at that section in MSOE Help it tells you how to set them up".

and Jim Webster wrote :-

"For OE4 go to the Tools menu, when it drops down look for Newsgroup filters

(between address book and accounts) and click on that, it is pretty self

explanatory. "

Indeed, it's not unusual. Any subject line with a 'Re:' at the beginning is a reply to something else - and quite often this is 95% of the group.

But it doesn't matter, really, since you can join in at any point as long as you've been watching the thread for a couple of days first.

Hence the recommendation to lurk.

Or, as recommended above, just start a new thread - ask a question, or whatever - and you'll soon be involved in discussion.

It might not be of course - there might not be anyone who knows about sheep there, for example. Don't assume everyone's ignoring you - just ask the question a bit differently ('wormer' instead of 'sheep wormer') and after people have replied try and narrow down the responses a bit.

Do remember, however, that this is a public forum, and anyone has the right to reply to and oppose your reasoning. So don't be worried if everyone seems to disagree with you - just think of it as a whole group to convince through reasoned argument.

Just don't say that everyone else smells.

So what other advice would you give?

And don't post anti-socially. Be friendly and people will be friendly back. Accept that others have different opinions.

As is found in any walk of life, some people participate more in conversation than others. Some speak in more elaborate ways, some feel the need to contribute to everything, a lot prefer to simply read what's going on and post very occasionally.

Everyone who posts to the group on-charter has an equally valid voice, and nobody should feel intimidated because they're opposed by one of those who posts more - the self-appointed 'regulars'.

Who else contributed?

Special thanks must be given to:

( the regulars of ukba who commented)

for all their comments and constructive advice.