Archive-name: sattx-ann
Posting-Frequency: monthly (first of month)
Version: 4.1
Last-modified: 1998/04/26 21:27:22
URL: http://www.endicor.com/~satgroup/sattx-ann (Who's computer is this?)
Copyright: (c) 1996-1998 Ty Sarna
Maintainer: Ty Sarna <tsarna@endicor.com>

Welcome to "sat.announce"! This newsgroup is for announcements of
general interest to the Usenet community in and around San Antonio,
Texas.

------------------------------

Subject: Contents

- Introduction
- Mailing List Distribution
- Getting a Copy of These Guidelines
- Submitting Your Announcement
- The sat.announce Guidelines
- FAQ: Why should I use sat.announce? Nobody reads it!
- FAQ: Why are you so anal about no cross-posting?

------------------------------

Subject: Introduction

Welcome to "sat.announce". This newsgroup is for announcements of
general interest to the Usenet community in and around San Antonio,
Texas.

This message discusses the charter and submission guidelines for
sat.announce. Please review these guidelines before submitting
your announcement. This message also answers some questions that
we've been asked from time to time.

We solicit any announcements that would interest local Usenet readers.
They may be computer-related, but they do not have to be. They simply
must be something that would interest a lot of folks. They don't have
to be of earth-shattering importance either. Just something that
San Antonians might want to know about.

Appropriate submissions include advance notice of events, meetings,
lectures, symposia, etc. If you have an important bulletin that should
receive rapid and wide distribution throughout S.A., we encourage
you to submit it. On the other hand, we want to publish fun stuff
too. Let us all know, for example, when you bring up your World-Wide
Web server or some other nifty information service. Let us publish
the monthly meeting notice for your club or organization.

This newsgroup is moderated to ensure postings are appropriate, timely,
and meet the guidelines discussed here. This is a low-volume (and
very low-noise) newsgroup. All Usenet users in S.A. should consider
subscribing to this group.

This newsgroup is moderated by Ty Sarna. This periodic informational
message is maintained by the moderator. You comments and suggestions,
both about the newsgroup and this message, are welcome. The moderator's
address for dicsussion of sat.announce is <satgroup@endicor.com>. This
document is cribbed heavily from that for austin.announce.

------------------------------

Subject: Mailing List Distribution

The contents of this newsgroup are available via email. The mailing
list is provided as a courtesy to those people who cannot receive
Usenet. If you would like to be added to the list, write to
listserv@endicor.com. In the message body, put "help". A message will be
returned to you explaining how to use the automated mailing list
manager. Useful commands (put them in the message body) include
"subscribe sat-announce" to join the list and "unsubscribe sat-announce"
to leave it.

------------------------------

Subject: Getting a Copy of These Guidelines

The most up-to-date version of these guidelines may be obtained by
any of the following methods:

- The World Wide Web -- http://www.endicor.com/~satgroup/sattx-ann (Who's computer is this?)

- Anonymous FTP -- ftp://ftp.endicor.com/pub/satgroup/sattx-ann (Who's computer is this?)

- Email Archive Server
Mail to: satgroup+sattx-ann@endicor.com
"Subject:" header and message body do not matter.

- See Also:
The FAQ for sat newsgroups in general is also
posted around the first of every month.

------------------------------

Subject: Submitting Your Announcement

The guidelines are simple -- but strictly enforced. There are two
basic rules. Your announcement should be something that would be of
interest to lots of people. And no cross-posting. Full details are
given in the next section.

Please send submissions to "sat-announce@endicor.com".

We are in the official list of net-wide moderators, so most backbone
sites know how to reach us. For example, "sat-announce@uunet.uu.net"
will work too.

If your submission meets the guidelines, it will be posted by the
moderator. Hopfully fairly quickly. In most cases within a day.

Messages that do not meet the guidelines will be returned, unposted.
We will indicate why the submission was not accepted. Sometimes,
the message would be accepted with a simple revision. In this case,
we strongly encourage you to revise and resubmit your announcement.
Although accepted submissions are processed very quickly, returned
submissions take longer. That's because announcements that meet the
guidelines can be posted with the push of a button. When we return
submissions, we need to take the time to compose an explanation.

Note that while the submission address is sat-anounce@endicor.com, the
moderator's address is satgroup@endicor.com, and moderatted postings
will carry an "Approved: satgroup@endicor.com" header.

------------------------------

Subject: The sat.announce Guidelines

This section lists the full guidelines for sat.announce submissions.
Please review them carefully before submitting your announcement.
What all of this boils down to is two basic things: wide-spread
interest and no crossposting.

- Your submission should be an announcement of general interest
to a large number of Usenet readers throughout S.A.

- The posting must somehow pertain to San Antonio. This includes
announcements of events held in town, something being done
by an S.A.-based organization, and such. By "San Antonio", we
really mean "San Antonio and surrounding areas". You don't have to
live within city limits to post, nor even within Bexar County,
as long as you're somewhere reasonably close to SA.

- Commercial announcements (seminars, sales meetings, dog
and pony shows, etc.) will be considered only if they might
appeal to a large number of readers. Special consideration
given to events with free food. :-)

- DO NOT CROSS-POST YOUR MESSAGE. This is the number one reason
why submissions are rejected. This newsgroup is carried throughout
San Antonio, and is one of the most visible groups for S.A.-area
readers. Cross-posting to other groups just adds clutter and
is unnecessary. We almost never accept cross-posted announcements,
especially to other moderated groups.

- Posting a single announcement multiple times to seperate newsgroups
is even worse than cross-posting! Forget these guidelines,
that's just plain rude!

- The moderator simply tries to review submissions with respect
to the guidelines, and get them approved and posted as quickly
as possible. We generally do not edit or modify submissions.
We reserve the right to do so, although we normally exercise it
only to butcher annoyingly long signatures. :-)

- If you haven't already done so, please read the periodic postings
in news.announce.newusers entitled "A Primer on How Work With
the Usenet Community", "Answers to Frequently Asked Questions
about Usenet", and "Hints on Writing Style for Usenet". New
users should spend a few weeks reading "sat.announce" prior
to their first posting to get a feeling for what is appropriate
for this group.

- Please allow several days for your submission to be reviewed.
The turnaround is normally just a day or so. If, however, the
moderator gets called out of town or tied up in a project, it
might be a couple of days.

------------------------------

Subject: FAQ: Why should I use sat.announce? Nobody reads it!

The level of traffic on sat.announce is very light. Some people
look at that and think since the group is so small, nobody reads it.
They think it might be better to use a bigger group, such as sat.general,
for their announcements.

In fact, the opposite is true. sat.announce is easy to read -- so
people read it! Your announcement doesn't have to fight for attention
among masses of other messages. When you use sat.announce, you do
not have to run a gauntlet of killfiles to get your announcement seen.

------------------------------

Subject: FAQ: Why are you so anal about no cross-posting?

The guidelines say ``no cross-posting'', and we mean it. We often
are asked why.

The most frequently selected cross-posting target is sat.general.
That's one where the rule holds hard and fast. Cross-posting to
sat.general doesn't bring you any benefits (c.f. the "Why should
I use" question). It just adds clutter to an already congested
newsgroup. The whole purpose of this group is to move announcements
out of sat.general. If you go cross-posting back there, you've
defeated the entire purpose of this group.

There are additional reasons why we do not accept cross-postings.
For instance, there are technical difficulties with handling cross-posted
messages to moderated groups. Many moderators (including yours truly)
discourage them, because they create added hassle and work for
moderators.

We will, on occasion, bend this rule when the cross-posting is to a
clearly appropriate non-S.A. group. We will not accept cross-postings
that appear to be a scattershot attempt to reach every news system on
the face of the planet.

Please note that re-posting is something different than cross-posting.
Cross-posting is when you specify a comma-delimited list of groups in
your Newsgroups: line. When you do that, only a single message is
transmitted, and that one message gets placed into all the cross-posted
groups. Re-posting is sending your message multiple times to multiple
groups. Re-posting is an outright violation of Usenet netiquette.
The best you can expect from a re-posting to sat.announce is a
stern lecture from the moderator. :-)

------------------------------

[$Id: sattx-ann,v 4.1 1998/04/26 21:27:22 satgroup Rel $]

--
Ty Sarnasat.* newsgroups caretaker
tsarna@endicor.comsatgroup@endicor.com