comp.dsp culture
As best anybody can tell, the comp.dsp newsgroup doesn't have a charter
which describes what it is supposed to be. But if you think of a newsgroup as a
"cocktail party", what really matters is not its
"charter" but its "personality", that is, its
"culture". In that vein, this document is intended to characterize
the prevailing culture of the comp.dsp newsgroup.
Purpose
The Usenet newsgroup "comp.dsp" is devoted to discussing all
aspects of Digital Signal Processing, as well as related areas of engineering,
science and mathematics. (This is similar to what the
comp.dsp FAQ
says, but a little more specific.) This sentence defines "on topic".
Threads
Good Threads:
- Interesting DSP-related questions of all kinds.
- Tasteful announcements of DSP-related products or services. (Please mark
with "announce:" or similar.)
- Off-topic things which might be of general interest to the people who are
involved in comp.dsp. (Please mark with "OT:" or similar.)
Acceptable Threads:
- Questions which have been asked a million times before. (As a courtesy,
please read the comp.dsp FAQ first and search the comp.dsp archives before you ask a question that
may have been asked a million times before.)
- DSP-related job ads. (Please mark with "job:" or similar, and
also include the geographic region in the subject.)
Bad Threads:
- "Inflamatory" topics involving religion, politics, nationality,
ethnicity, etc.
- Off-topic not of general interest (a.k.a. spam).
- Questions or statements designed to be controversial (even if DSP-related).
- Broad cross-postings (posting to a large number of news groups at once).
- Resumes.
Post Content
Good Post Content:
- Intelligent DSP questions.
- Intelligent DSP answers.
- Well-intended quotes or humor stemming from the discussion.
- Entertaining digressions of all kinds. (When digressing, please change the
subject line accordingly.)
Acceptable Post Content:
- Tasteful plugs of a product or service which are a valid answer to a
question. (If you are connected with the plug, please make your connection
clear.)
- Flames, when somebody deserves it. (When digressing into a flame, please
change the subject line accordingly.)
- Test posts, when you are a newbie and you don't already know about the
"misc.test" newsgroup, which is what you really should use for that,
which you would know if you weren't a newbie.
Unacceptable Post Content:
- Newbie bashing. (A large part of what comp.dsp does is help newbies.)
- Deliberate misleading, inaccurate, or false statements.
- Deliberate trolls.
- Racist or nationalist remarks which may offend any of comp.dsp's reader's
worldwide.
- Posts which slander someone, violate their privacy, or otherwise go beyond
ordinary flaming.
- Shunnings. (How can you post a shunning, silly? ;-)
A Few Post Content Guidelines:
- Please read and follow the general rules of
netiquette before you post anything.
- Please read comp.dsp for awhile to get the "flavor" of it before
you post anything.
- Try to accurately describe the post's content in the "subject"
field so people who don't want to read your post can easily skip it.
- When changing the subject line of a thread, include the previous subject,
e.g., "new subject: (was: old subject)".
- Please do not use any darn curse words.
- Please spell out all the words u use.
- capitalization is Optional.
- Speeling mistakes are acceptable
- Please do not nitpick the speeling or grammar of others (at least without a
clever literary purpose); if you understand what somebody is trying to say,
that's good enough.
- Please do not make fun of people who don't speak English very goodly; they
probably speak _your_ language much better than you speak theirs.
- When replying, quote just enough of the previous post to provide adequate
context, but no more. Put in "[snip]" or similar wherever you delete
significant segments of a previous post.
- When providing URL's, please include "http://" so the URL can be
clicked-on in the newsreader. Also, please leave spaces around URL's to help
newsreaders which are too stupid to figure out where the URL begins and ends.
Miscellaneous
Names: A cocktail party should be friendly. In the interest of
"friendliness", please provide a first and last name. (If using your
real name makes you uncomfortable, simply make one up and we'll never know the
difference.) If you wish instead to use a "handle", please at least
provide us with a first name (again, for friendliness).
Business use of comp.dsp: Use of comp.dsp for business purposes is
acceptable, and, in fact, many of the comp.dsp regulars have a DSP-related
business interest of some kind. However, please disclose your business
interest. Also, if you regularly use comp.dsp to promote your business, please
"pay" for that by answering unrelated DSP questions (which is only
fair.)
Discipline on comp.dsp: comp.dsp is an unmoderated newsgroup. No
person or group is in charge of it, and no one has any "official"
status. At all times, comp.dsp simply reflects the tastes and personalities of
the people who participate in it. As an unmoderated newsgroup, anyone can say
anything they like in comp.dsp. However, participants use
"discipline" to discourage violations of comp.dsp's culture. The only
forms of discipline that are acceptable are "flaming" (responding
with hot words or making them look stupid) and "shunning" (ignoring
somebody, a.k.a. "putting them into the killfile"). Of these,
shunning is more mature, but flaming is more fun. ;-)
If you *do* feel the need to impose discipline on someone, first resist the
feeling. Next, please limit discipline to one of these two forms. However, if
it turns out that you aren't mature enough to shun, and you aren't clever
enough to flame, you simply shouldn't be in the discipline business: having
failed at flaming and shunning, please DO NOT step "outside the box"
by using other forms of "discipline" such as reporting people to
their ISP's, creating slanderous web pages, "outing" their personal
information, etc. This sort of bad behavior will INSTANTLY make you a pariah,
and it will be a long time, if ever, before you become rehabilitated in the
eyes of the group.
Although no single person or group is in charge, if a general concensus
develops concerning your behavior on comp.dsp, please respect the concensus by
either improving your behavior or going elsewhere.