This FAQ has been prepared by, and is copyright of, Bill Hayles, groups@billnot.com, to whom all errors and omissions should be reported. Permission for reproduction of this file on other non-commercial websites will be freely given, but please ask first! THE COSTA BLANCA EXPATS DISCUSSION GROUP ======================================== This document explains how to get the most out of the group. It is divided into three parts. The first part explains joining and the second membership, and the various options and tools available to you by means of the web site. The third part explains posting etiquette, and how to comply with it. Please read this document before posting to the group. It may save you from embarrassment later! This document has been arranged so that viewing it with most text viewers will enable the links to be navigated simply by double clicking on them. PART ONE: JOINING ----------------- Membership is by invitation. You click on "Register" at http://costablancaexpats.net/groups/index.php, or send an e-mail to groups@billnot.com. An invitation will normally be sent within 24 hours. PART TWO: MEMBERSHIP -------------------- Membership matters are handled by Bill Hayles . There are three levels of membership. Which you choose is entirely up to you. (1) Individual e-mails. Every message sent to the groups to which you subscribe will be sent to you as an individual e-mail. There can be anything from 0 to 30 or more such e-mails every day. Messages are sent out as soon as they are received. You can reply, or send a new message, by e-mail. (2) Daily Digest With this option, each day's e-mails are combined into a single "digest" message, sent out roughly once a day. You can reply, or send a new message by e-mail, but pay great heed to our posting etiquette if replying to something you have received as part of the daily digest. (4) Web only With this option, you will receive no e-mails from the group, ever. You will use the web forum option. Whatever your type of membership, there are options and actions open to you. (1) Messages. Anybody, irrespective of their membership option, can read and reply to messages by means of their browser. A complete archive of all posts made to the groups is being built up kept on the web forum, and can be searched using the inbuilt search option. (2) FAQs. These are kept at http://costablancaexpats.net/kbase/index.php where useful data can be found, with a download and print option. As well as this file, you will have been sent nittygritty.txt, which answers the most common questions, or at least points you to where you can find an answer. BEFORE ASKING A QUESTION, PLEASE CHECK IT HASN'T BEEN ANSWERED ALREADY IN A FAQ! (3) Links. At http://costablancaexpats.net/phphoo/phpHoo3.php there is an interactive database of links to other useful web sites about the Costa Blanca. Anybody is welcome to add links. If a link is to a commercial business it should be added to the Commercial Links subfolder. If I think a link is in the wrong area, I reserve the right to move it. (4) Rogues' Gallery At http://costablancaexpats.net/gallery/index.php there is a facility for group members to publish their personal details and invite others to contact them. participation is entirely optional, but if you wish to add your details, the gallery is run by John Reynolds (5) Picture Gallery At http://costablancaexpats.net/pgal/index.php there is a gallery where group members can publish pictures, which don't necessarily have to have a Costa Blanca theme. Anybody can view, but to post your pictures you will need a user name and password which you get my e-mailimg me (groups@billnot.com) (6) The groups costablancaexpats@costablancaexpats.net is at the head of a whole series of groups dealing with more specialist topics. These include a general chat group, a computer group, a group on the Spanish language, a financial group, a TV group, a telephones group and a gardening group. Full details of these groups are given in the groups.txt FAQ, also sent to you when you join the group and available on request. If, at any time, you wish to change your membership option, you can do so by means of Arrow control messages - check out the arrow.txt file sent with this file (or when you joined). You are free to unsubscribe (and subsequently resubscribe if you wish) at any time. PART THREE. POSTING ------------------- All members may post to the group either by e-mail or on the web forum; there is no pre-moderation. The moderator's decision is always final. Please do not post any basic questions which are answered in the FAQs. Together with this file, you should have received another called nittygritty.faq, which gives answers to the most basic questions. PLEASE READ IT! Rules about posting fall into two categories - netiquette and technical.. The netiquette rules. (1) Personal attacks are not allowed. You may say "I strongly disagree with your opinion". You may not say "I think you are a nasty person" (2) NO ADVERTISING IS ALLOWED. Anyone doing so, even for something with which they have no connection, will be immediately banned. (3) Personal chit-chat should be conducted by private e-mail, and not in the group. (4) Try to keep on topic, if only vaguely. At times when the group is busy, the moderator, will be stricter about this than when we are in one of our periodic calms. In other words, he does not promise to be consistent. Off-topic chat is permitted in the chat group, chat@costablancaexpats.net (5) If you have any complaints about somebody's post, or object to anything said about you, don't bring them up in the group. Either e-mail the (alleged) offender, or the moderator. In others words LEAVE THE MODERATING TO THE MODERATOR (6) Posts must be reasonably formatted, with all unnecessary material snipped, and not top posted (see (5) below) And the technical rules. In technical matters, the group is run according to normal Usenet standards for public forums. In particular, RFC1855 is used as our yardstick. If these are adhered to, long threads become much easier to follow, and bandwidth is saved. Anybody interested in the topic of etiquette and all the many accepted standards is invited to browse http://www.faqs.org and its links. Of these rules (5) is the one most strictly observed in this group, (1) Posts MUST be in plain text, preferably US 7-bit ASCII. Posts from the web forum are automatically sent in plain text. (2) No attachments are allowed. Make sure your e-mail client is set to "plain text" not "HTML". If you are using Outlook Express, you set your choice in Tools - Options - Send. Make sure both the News and Mail sending format is Plain Text - OE uses HTML by default. It is also helpful, in the plain text settings, to set the word wrap at 72 characters rather then the 76 default, to avoid what are called "widows and orphans" when several depths of quotes occur in long threads. If you leave OE in its default settings, it will send e-mails in what is known as MIME. This will include both a plain text and HTML portion. The plain text portion will be posted with a note "non text portions of this message have been removed". Although this is permissible, it wastes bandwidth and is not encouraged. (3) When posting, put your name and e-mail address at the end of the post. It makes it easier for somebody to reply to you off the group. (4) When posting, limit your line length to 72 characters, or at most 76. This means your post can be read by any e-mail client without reformatting. (5) When replying, ONLY include as much of the original as is necessary to make your context clear. Put your reply AFTER the *portion* of the original message to which you are replying, and ONLY include as much of the original as is necessary to make your context clear. When replying to a long message, it is best to interlace quote and reply. Make it clear who is saying what. Putting a few lines of reply and quoting the whole of the (long) original, is known as top posting "upside down posting" or posting "OE style" and makes it very difficult to work out who said what and when in long threads, and is bad netiquette. Also, quoting fifty lines of an original and adding two lines of your own at the bottom is equally unacceptable. In other words, keep your signal (new material) to noise (original material) as high as possible - over 75%. (6) There is no need to make a post just to say "thank you" (do that by private e-mail) or "I agree" (try to add something to the thread rather than just agreeing). Version History. 10th July 2001. First version issued by Bill Hayles groups@billnot.com to whom all comments and suggestions should be addressed. 17th November 2001. Posting etiquette section clarified 23rd April 2002. New member posting restrictions added. 4th August 2002. Mention of FAQs as a reason for rejecting a post. 11th August 2002. Mention of nitty-gritty FAQ and change of e-mail address 29th October 2002. Change of references to reflect increasing use of costablancaexpats.net 8th May 2002. Clarification of top and bottom posting. 18th June 2003. Complete re-write to reflect changes in group structure 16th August 2003. Further re-write to reflect new group rules. 1st December 2003. Minor clarifications. 30th April 2004. Moderator changes incorporated. 24th July 2004. More about the Arrow groups. 9th August 2004. Change of moderator 15th August 2006. Major revision to reflect the move away from Yahoo. 23rd August 2006. Joining instructions updated