BIONET NEWS GROUP ESTABLISHED
by Dick Vogt
7/20/94
To the Zebrafish community...
Our Usenet Internet Newsgroup has passed and is working; its name is bionet.organisms.zebrafish. I received the following message today; it includes information on how to access the newsgroup directly as well as how to access it via e-mail, if that is preferable. I will prepare instructions regarding use etc., and get these out soon. However, it is best that you contact someone locally, if possible to help set you up, as there are several different "news readers" and it is difficult for me to know what you have; some news readers are easier to use than others. If you have specific questions/problems, please contact me directly and I will try and assist you. I hope you find the interactive format useful. Please use it anyway you like; we will see how it evolves. I am officially designated "discussion leader" along with Una Smith, but the "unmoderated" format means that I will be doing very little other than trying to help out where I can. Feel free to use the newsgroup as a forum for asking questions, asking for assistance, posting info regarding job openings or seekings, posting information regarding events, or in any other manner that seems appropriate.
Dick Vogt
vogt@biol.scarolina.edu
The following info was just posted. Please go ahead and post a welcoming message at your convenience.
Sincerely,
Dave Kristofferson
BIOSCI/bionet Manager
biosci-help@net.bio.net
Newsgroups: bionet.organisms.zebrafish
Subject: ZBRAFISH/bionet.organisms.zebrafish is ready!
Distribution: world
Organization: BIOSCI International Newsgroups for Biology
The ZBRAFISH/bionet.organisms.zebrafish newsgroup is ready for operation. PLEASE NOTE that many USENET sites do not allow automatic creation of new USENET groups!!! If you do not see bionet.organisms.zebrafish in your newsreader within another day or two, ask your news system administrator to act on our "newgroup" message to enable the group at your site. We have already done several tests and are certain that the group is currently propagating around the network.
Subscribing to this group:
IF YOU USE USENET NEWS: you need do nothing other than participate in bionet.organisms.zebrafish when it appears in your newsreader. Depending upon your news software, this may entail you having to answer a prompt indicating that you want to subscribe. You might also try the command
"g bionet.organisms.zebrafish"
in rn-like newsreaders.
IF YOU ARE LOCATED IN EUROPE, AFRICA, OR CENTRAL ASIA:
please send the word
help
in the body of your message to MXT@dl.ac.uk to retrieve general server usage instructions. To subscribe to the ZBRAFISH list, first be sure that you are sending mail from the address at which you wish to receive news postings, and then sendthe command
SUB bionet-news.bionet.organisms.zebrafish
to MXT@dl.ac.uk. This message will be automatically read by the computer and your e-mail address will be extracted from the mail header and added to the list.
IF YOU ARE LOCATED IN THE AMERICAS OR THE PACIFIC RIM:
log in to the computer account in which you would like to receive mail (not anaccount that you use infrequently) and send a mail message to the Internet address
biosci-server@net.bio.net
Leave the Subject: line of the message blank and enter the following line into the body of the mail message:
subscribe zbrafish
This message will be automatically read by our computer and your e-mail address will be extracted from the mail header and added to the list.
Canceling your subscription:
IF YOU ARE LOCATED IN EUROPE, AFRICA, OR CENTRAL ASIA:
first be sure that you are sending mail from the address at which you signed up to receive news postings, and then send the command (in the body of yourmail message)
UNSUB bionet-news.bionet.organisms.zebrafish
to MXT@dl.ac.uk. This message will be automatically read by thecomputer and your e-mail address will be extracted from the mailheader and removed from the list.
IF YOU ARE LOCATED IN THE AMERICAS OR THE PACIFIC RIM:
send a message to biosci-server@net.bio.net exactly as described above for subscribing except include the text
unsubscribe zbrafish
in the body of the message. Please be sure to send the message fromthe account whose address matches the one on the list. If your address differs, we will be notified automatically and will remove you manually from the list if we can determine what was your old address. Please contact biosci-help@net.bio.net if you have problems.
If You Have a Problem:
Please send a message to one of the following addresses depending upon your location
Address - Location
biosci@daresbury.ac.uk - Europe, Africa, and Central Asia
biosci-help@net.bio.net - Americas and the Pacific Rim
and someone on the staff will help you. PLEASE DO NOT send mail to our personal e-mail addresses as this will delay a response to your request for help.
How to post a message to the group:
If you use news, simply post a message intobionet.organisms.zebrafish. Be sure to set your "distribution" toworld or else the message might not leave your site!!
To post by e-mail, mail your message to one of the following addresses depending upon your location:
Posting Address - Location
zbrafish@daresbury.ac.uk - Europe, Africa, and Central
Asiazbrafish@net.bio.net - Americas and the Pacific Rim
and your message will be distributed automatically to everyone on the list and the USENET newsgroup. There is no editorial intervention.
PLEASE DO NOT SEND SUBSCRIPTION REQUESTS TO THE POSTING ADDRESSES asyou will bother everyone on the newsgroup!!!
How to reply to a message on the group:
If you are using a newsreader, simply use the reply or follow-up command on your newsreader (these vary from program to program) to send either private or public replies.
If you are using e-mail, replies to messages that you receive will *NOT* be automatically returned to the group. This is the standard for Internet mailing lists as opposed to BITNET LISTSERVs which often send all replies back to everyone. You must be certain that your reply contains either of the two newsgroup posting addresses above in your message header if you want to share it with everyone on the group. Otherwise in most cases your reply may go back to only the original poster of the message to which you are replying.
ALWAYS be certain that you examine the address on your messages before you send them!!! Once a message is sent there is no way to cancel it or bring it back!!! Some non-Internet compliant mail systems may attempt to send replies to our error-trapping address called BIOSCI-REQUEST. If yours does this, please be sure to readdress your message to zbrafish@net.bio.net or zbrafish@daresbury.ac.uk if you want to send it to the newsgroup.
How to look at archives of the list:
Archives for ZBRAFISH/bionet.organisms.zebrafish are kept in the anonymous FTP account at net.bio.net [134.172.2.69]. Look in the directory pub/BIOSCI/ZBRAFISH for posting archives. Each file is assigned a date such as 9312 for December 1993. Please note that ours is a UNIX system and all file and directory names are case-sensitive, i.e., upper case file names are different from lowercase names.
You can also access these same files via Gopher if you start a gopher session using net.bio.net as your gopher server. Gopher also allows you to view the individual messages within each monthly archive file. The files are in the ZBRAFISH directory. Postings to bionet.organisms.zebrafish are also WAIS indexed and can be searched via either gopher or WAIS at our site. In gopher the option at net.bio.net is "Search Bionet USENET Articles" and in WAIS one should use the WAIS source biosci.src. This is a WAIS index of allBIOSCI/bionet messages including this newsgroup. Please see the BIOSCI FAQ for details. The FAQ can be requested from biosci-help@net.bio.net.
Once again, if you have any administrative questions that require personal assistance, please address them to biosci-help@net.bio.net in the U.S. or biosci@daresbury.ac.uk in the UK.
Best wishes for a successful newsgroup!
Sincerely,
Dave Kristofferson, BIOSCI/bionet Manager, biosci-help@net.bio.net
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