Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!ginosko!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!csd4.csd.uwm.edu!mailrus!cornell!uw-beaver!sumax!spector
From: spector@sumax.UUCP (Mitchell Spector)
Newsgroups: news.newusers.questions
Subject: Re: commercial posting on USENET
Summary: You're asking the wrong question.
Keywords: commercial ads
Message-ID: <848@sumax.UUCP>
Date: 24 Aug 89 20:09:00 GMT
References: <1980@leah.Albany.Edu>
Reply-To: spector%sumax.UUCP@beaver.cs.washington.edu (Mitchell Spector)
Organization: Seattle University, Seattle, WA
Lines: 54

In article <1980@leah.Albany.Edu> ppd491@leah.Albany.Edu (Peter P. Donohue @ nowhere) writes:

>  Comments constantly appear about the ethicality/legality of posting
>commercial messages on Usenet, so I think it is time to clear up whether
>it is allowed or not....

> [Quote from news.announce.newusers article omitted.]

>  I was unable to find any other mention of the right or wrong of
>commercial messages, so this is all we have to go by. IMHO, it appears
>that most commercial posting would be "frowned upon" but not denied.
>  I would be interested in hearing about the rules of posting, if they
>are defined better anywheres else.

   If you want rules, you're in the wrong place.  Usenet has no rules,
just socially-based guidelines which are continually evolving as the
net grows.  There is no overall administrative structure, and there's
nobody authorized to impose or enforce rules.  (Of course, most sites
have a local system administrator with authority, but there is no
net-wide authority.)

   There are guidelines for posting.  All stem from just plain common-sense,
combined with experience on the net.  Some of these have been written down
after the fact, to make it easier for new people to fit into net society.

   There are no penalties for violations of guidelines except social ones,
including ostracism.  (In an extreme case, this ostracism could take the
form of your news feed deciding it doesn't want to have anything to do
with you any more, and you'd be cut off from the net.  Of course, there
may be local policies at your site, with locally determined penalties.)
People who are sufficiently obnoxious find themselves the recipients of
e-mail and the subjects of follow-ups; the tone of these may range from
friendly pointers to merciless flames.  After a while, people may start
to ignore you or to put you in their kill files.

   None of this should seem strange.  It's just like the rule that you
don't start making funny faces in the middle of a class or a business
meeting.  It isn't illegal to do that, but if you do it often enough,
it will cause people not to take you seriously, to ignore you, and
possibly to ostracize you completely.

   So don't ask what the rules are.  Ask what people find acceptable, what
they find unacceptable, and why.


>Peter P. Donohue 
>ppd491@albny1vx.bitnet
>ppd491@leah.albany.edu

--
Mitchell Spector
Dept. of Computer Science and Software Engineering
Seattle University
E-mail: spector%sumax.uucp@beaver.cs.washington.edu