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FAQ and netiquette resources

    I would like to apologize for the length of this mailing.  My excuse is that someone
actually asked for it:

    They say (yeah you remember) give a man a fish and he will have a meal.  Teach
a man to fish and he will have a living.  There is plenty of material at rtfm to educate
anyone, from aquariums to faster-than-light drives.  I think the gardening material
might still be sparse.  With the development of the WWW and easier distribution of
information, rtfm may be losing some relevance.  It is well to remember that the
internet is much more than WWW and e-mail, however.

An FAQ ("Frequently Asked Questions") is not expected to be an exhaustive resource 
that will terminate all further discussion.  It is intended as a means for new people to 
come up to speed without asking a series of annoying questions that oldtimers have 
seen hundreds of times before.  I have found that reading a good FAQ will make me a 
minor expert on the subject, almost instantaneously.  I am not able, however, to 
answer a single one of the second assault of questions.  No depth.

FAQs are easy to construct since the questions can be filtered out of the everyday
traffic on a mailing list or news group.  The not so surprising result is that it answers
the questions you are most likely to ask first.

First some rtfm addresses:

ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/faq-maintainers/  location of unix compressed list of FAQ
maintainers.  It will quickly become clear that this service supports usenet news.
Not all FAQs are for usenet news, however.

ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet-by-hierarchy/ location of top level directories of FAQs
organized hierarchically.  All "comp" newsgroups are listed under the comp directory,
and so forth.  Our interest lies in the "rec" (for "recreation" directory where the
"gardens" directory is found:

ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet-by-hierarchy/rec/gardens/ contains:

Current directory is /pub/usenet-by-hierarchy/rec/gardens

Up to higher level directory
  Culinary_herbFAQ_(v.1.11)_Part_1_4    74 Kb    Fri Dec 27 00:24:00 1996 
  Culinary_herbFAQ_(v.1.11)_Part_2_4    64 Kb    Fri Dec 27 00:24:00 1996 
  Culinary_herbFAQ_(v.1.11)_Part_3_4    63 Kb    Fri Dec 27 00:25:00 1996 
  Culinary_herbFAQ_(v.1.11)_Part_4_4    77 Kb    Fri Dec 27 00:25:00 1996 
  Culinary_herbFAQ_(v.1.12)_Part_1_7    45 Kb    Sun Mar 02 11:01:00 1997 
  Culinary_herbFAQ_(v.1.12)_Part_2_7    43 Kb    Sun Mar 02 11:01:00 1997 
  Culinary_herbFAQ_(v.1.12)_Part_3_7    41 Kb    Sun Feb 23 00:32:00 1997 
  Culinary_herbFAQ_(v.1.12)_Part_4_7    41 Kb    Sun Feb 23 00:32:00 1997 
  Culinary_herbFAQ_(v.1.12)_Part_5_7    43 Kb    Sun Feb 23 00:33:00 1997 
  Culinary_herbFAQ_(v.1.12)_Part_6_7    43 Kb    Sun Feb 23 00:32:00 1997 
  Culinary_herbFAQ_(v.1.12)_Part_7_7    35 Kb    Sun Feb 23 00:32:00 1997 
  Plants_By_Mail_FAQ                    19 Kb    Sun Jan 12 03:48:00 1997 
  The_Small_Tractor_FAQ                  8 Kb    Fri Jan 17 01:04:00 1997 
  edible/                                        Sat Mar 22 00:27:00 1997 Directory
  roses/                                         Thu Sep 26 00:00:00 1996 Directory

Patience is required at RTFM since it is a popular resource.  There is decent
performance at the following mirror site: http://www.landfield.com/faqs/  There
are also mirror sites at UUNET and AOL (and probably elsewhere):

ftp://ftp.uu.net/usenet/                                     (not complete)
ftp://mirrors.aol.com/pub/rtfm/usenet/

ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet-by-hierarchy/rec/gardens/roses/ contains nothing
currently.  At one time there was an FAQ on english roses.  I might be able to
find a copy on an old backup somewhere.

As for Emily Postnews (corrected spelling), here is a netiquette link:
http://www.landfield.com/faqs/usenet/emily-postnews/  There are numerous
others, as everyone on the net thinks themselves an expert on this subject.
Myself, I would recommend Miss Manners.  I have always admired her since
she explained to a reader that there is only one thing expected of a man in the
course of a one night stand.
--
Bob Dunning

At 10:06 AM 3/28/97 -0500, Butch Ragland wrote:
>
>Having fed me some fish and toyed with me (I think) will you now teach me
>how to fish. Even though most wheels have already been invented if you
>don't have any on the car it doesn't ride very well.
>
>I went to ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/ but couldnn't find my way in. Help?
>
>Have you ever been to a semi formal function and noticed that there are
>seldom any fights or loud laughter. 
>
>  
>Wilddog  Zn 5 supposed to be 6  Depauw, IN
>
>
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