Netiquette

For the most part, attempt to use correct spelling, grammar and punctuation; it really makes it much easier for the rest of the world to understand your point that way.

Emoticons are smiley faces, sad faces, etc, like this :) or :> or :-) and countless other variants. They are useful to emphasize your tone, whether it's serious or not. Sarcasm and fine shades of meaning are often lost without some emoticons, and many a misunderstanding has arisen from people missing someone's tone of voice.

Although you may know exactly what you're talking about, if you fail to include the post you're answering, others will gawk at your post in confusion. It makes your post much easier to understand if you take the trouble to include the sections of the message you're responding to.

Sexuality is typically a touchy subject for many people, and it's easy to get entangled in a wholly personal disagreement with someone. Try to keep your head about you and keep a respectful tone in your arguments. It's a slippery slope from one semi-joking personal jab at your opponent into a monstrous flame war complete with  personal insults.

We realize that many discussions meander off the topic of sexuality, which is normal and to be expected, since sexuality touches on so many other fields and areas of interest. Some meandering, therefore, is acceptable. If you find that your topic has wandered from, let's say, the topic of sexual assault to constitutional rights and  especially if it's degenerating into a flame war, please exercise self-monitoring and take it to another medium and ask your opponent to do the same. The newsgroup will thank you for it.

Do not post something that's shorter than your signature.

Another way to look at this is to trim your signature ;) There will be instances when your post will just be short and  sweet and to the point, and that's fine. In general, though, attempt to give more meat to your post than to your signature.

Do not post one-liners.

We know this is inevitable, and sometimes even warranted. For the most part, though, try to frame your question or your comment with some dialogue or personal statement. If you're asking a question, or posting a reply, one-liners are always suspect of being trolls, as opposed to longer messages which reveal something of the poster's reasoning.

Do not post HTML.

While many people now use their browsers to read newsgroups, there are still many out there who use text-based  newsreaders. To these folk, your message will come through as a jumble of HTML tags. Many news servers refuse to propagate HTML messages for this reason, so if you post using HTML, some people may not see your message at all. See instructions on disabling HTML for Usenet posting for several newsreaders.

Do not insult people.

Even if you vehemently disagree with someone's post, argue against their statement, not their person.

Do not post anything forbidden by our guidelines.

Read the Guidelines section of this site for a list of inappropriate topics.