Its a peice of history. Back when Usenet was not much more than a few
computers connected to each other via phone lines, and run by computer
people, you had to type in the path your message would follow to get to the
computers you wanted it to go, rather than just uploading it to your server
and letting your server do all the hard work. It was tedious and one small
mistake anywhere in often quite a long path and your message would
dissappear into the great bit-bucket in the sky, It also took *ages* to
download mesages. It made sense to have test groups where new users could
fiddle around with their settings without bothering the rest of the
community. But now, with automatic newsreader programs, hundreds of
thousands of newsgroups, and the majority of Usenet users being regular folk
rather than computer experts, the test groups have become somewhat obsolete.

For a start, regular users rarely have any idea of the existance of test
groups, and in this day and age, us non-technical users just assume our
software works (as its often pre-set by our vendor/ISP) and start posting to
whatever group has attracted our attention. The other reason test groups are
becoming obsolete is that whilst they test the software and servers, they
*don't* tell you whether your messages are getting picked up by the specific
group your are interested in. This is particularly relevant to moderated
groups that work differently to unmoderated groups - and by defintion, any
test group has to be unmoderated.

HTH,

Yowie

I'll paraphrase "Miss Manners" here.  Etiquette (and "netiquette") was
invented to help people interact with other people in a polite and civilized
manner.  You don't follow etiquette, or "netiquette" simply for the sake of
obeying the "rules" as if you were playing a game, you use it as a guideline
to try to keep from hurting other peoples' feelings.  If you use either
etiquette or "netiquette" nazi-ism to lash out and hurt someone then your
are betraying the reason for which it was invented and are committing the
foulest breach of etiquette that there is.

Hugs,

CatNipped

I had a cunning friend who, just before their ex-MIL came to visit, would
purposely tilt all their framed pictures. She'd tsk tsk, and have to
straighten them all. Since she had suitably chastised my friend for not
being good enough for her precious son (HA!) and had shown off how *great*
she was at housekeeping, she didn't need to go around finding all the other
faults with my friend's housekeeping and other womanly duties she thought an
approprite partner for her prince, er, son ought to carry out. I never told,
and we were all much relieved when she finally had the sense to dump the
idiot and his bitchqueen mother. That poor boy will never be able to have a
relationship with a real woman - all he knows is about women is that they
need to worship the group he walks on and answer his every beck and call -
just like his mother does. *sigh*

Indeed it is. In the "Toon" many years ago, was a firm of solicitors with the
name of "Hadaway" No prizes for guessing what they were fondly known as ;-)

Cheers, helen s

--This is an invalid email address to avoid spam--
to get correct one remove fame & fortune
h*$el*$$e*nd**$o$ts**i*$*$m*m$o*n*s@$*a$o*l.c**$om$

--Due to financial crisis the light at the end of the tunnel is switched off--