Before you post an article to a newsgroup you should read the
newsgroup to get a sense of the type of discussion that is
appropriate for that group.  And, most importantly, you should read
the periodic postings and frequently asked questions (FAQs) of the
group.  There are lots of different ways to find these, including:

*  While in the newsgroup use nn's Gs command to search subjects for
   one of these words: faq, frequent, period, regular, weekly, part
   <the newsgroup name>, <topic of the newsgroup>

*  If that doesn't work, and if you are using nn 6.5 or higher, use
   the GB command to search the full text of articles in the
   newsgroup for:

     Archive-name:

   This should find any FAQ that is archived on the rtfm.mit.edu FAQ
   server, because the first line of an "official" FAQ must contain 
   a line that starts with this.


Since news articles expire, the FAQ may not currently be on your
host.  If neither of the above turn up the FAQ you can look at these
places:

Web:
  http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/hypertext/faq/usenet/top.html

Anonymous FTP:
  ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet-by-group
  ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers

Email:
  Send mail to mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu containing the following:
      send usenet/newsgroup.name/index

  Where "newsgroup.name" is replaced with the newsgroup you're
  interested in.  You will get an automated reply that includes a
  list of the FAQs for that newsgroup.  Once you know the name of the
  FAQ, send another message and replace "index" with the name of the
  relevant file.

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