This article is based on material authored by members of the
news.newusers.questions
Moderation Board and nnq-workers mailing
list,
particularly by Jon Bell.
The original article was last updated in 2005.
Where to post test messages
Amazingly enough, this newsgroup was not originally intended to be used
as a test ground for people trying to learn how to post, or checking out a
new newsreader or news server.
I'm not flaming the people who are doing these things, because they're
just following the plentiful examples that they see here already. I
simply want to point out that there are better places for this sort of
thing than news.newusers.questions. There are two of them, in fact:
misc.test
and
alt.test.
Why are misc.test and alt.test better than news.newusers.questions for
"test" postings?
Nobody really reads these newsgroups, so you don't have to
worry about people all over the world chuckling at your blank messages
and scrambled header lines and typos.
Several sites run software which monitors misc.test and/or
alt.test and sends automatic email responses directly to your mailbox,
so you can easily verify that your postings really do reach the outside
world, and what they look like when they get there. If you don't get
any of these automated responses, then either your posts aren't getting
out, the email address in your From: line is invalid,
or no autoresponders are up at the moment.
When you've satisfied yourself that this Usenet stuff really does work,
then you can come back here and safely ask questions, or go over to
soc.penpals
and look for someone to exchange e-mail with.
If you are using Netscape, or possibly other Web browsers, you should be
able to click on the links
misc.test
and
alt.test,
and go
directly to misc.test and alt.test.
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