Newsgroup Guidelines

Here are some guidelines that you should keep in mind when posting items to a course newsgroup.

1. Postings should either be signed with your full name or posted from your UW userid. At their discretion, course personnel may choose to ignore anonymous or pseudonymous posts.
2. Please remember that anything you post to the newsgroup is public. At the very least, everyone enrolled in the course will be reading it, Some newsgroups are not available on Google Groups, but many other newsgroups are, and those are consequently archived forever and accessible through a simple Google query. Future employers may well investigate your posting history, so you may wish to maintain a civil tone and pay attention to spelling and grammar.
3. In any posts you make, do not give away any details on how to do any of the assignments. This could be construed as cheating, and you as the poster will be responsible (as well as anyone who uses those details in their submissions). If you have questions about an assignment that require you to give specific details of your solution, ask the ISA, the IA or the instructor by e-mail. If the ISA feels that posting it to the newsgroup is appropriate, he or she will do so.
4. Keep posts to the newsgroup related to the course, concise, and topical. As students are all expected to read the group on a regular basis, try not to waste the time of readers. If you need to test your posting capability but have nothing relevant to say, use the newsgroup uw.test, which exists for that purpose.
5. Please read all questions and responses that are in the group before asking a question. If you ask a question that has already been answered, you are wasting everyone's time. We realize that there may be a time lag between the time something is posted and when it actually appears in the group, so duplication is sometimes unavoidable. However, please try to avoid it as much as possible.
6. Please don't post things to the group that provide no useful information to readers. Posts like "I have the same question as this one just posted", or "I agree with this comment" serve no useful purpose, and waste people's time.
7. Please keep complaints about the course out of the newsgroup. If you have a concern about anything to do with the course, the best way to deal with it, and to get results, is to take it to the ISA or the professor. "Flaming" is like scratching a mosquito bite; it may make you feel better, but only temporarily, and it is likely to make the situation worse.