Nan:2025-06-12-mf-comp.newprod
From Usenet Big-8 Management Board
From: Big-8 Management Board <board@big-8.org> Newsgroups: news.announce.newgroups,news.groups.proposals,comp.newprod Subject: MODERATOR FOUND: comp.newprod Followup-To: news.groups.proposals Date: Thu, 12 Jun 2025 16:59:36 EDT Message-ID: <MPG.42b54ff3bf9863519896f7@news.eternal-september.org> Archive-Name: comp.newprod REPLACEMENT MODERATOR FOUND comp.newprod The Big-8 Management Board is pleased to announce that Ivan Shmakov has volunteered to take on moderation duties for comp.newprod. The group will be open for submissions shortly, and this will be announced in a post to the group. MODERATOR INFO: comp.newprod Moderator: Ivan Shmakov Article submission address: <comp-newprod-submit@newsmod.am-1.org> Moderation contact: <comp-newprod-contact@newsmod.am-1.org> POSTING GUIDELINES FOR COMP.NEWPROD: [No charter is on file with the ISC for comp.newprod; the following guidelines are taken from the periodic posting "Comp.Newprod submission guidelines", posted monthly until 2018-07-15] 1. The submission must be an announcement of a new product or service. The product must be computer-related, and it must be of potential interest to a large number of Usenet readers. The message must be of lasting value, thus we do not accept trade show announcements, special pricing offers, etc. Commercial messages other than new product announcements are not appropriate for this newsgroup. 2. Announcements should *briefly* describe the product, requirements (e.g. supported platforms), availability, and pricing. It should only take a couple of screenfuls to convey this information. If your description is longer than that, then you've either got too much detail or too much fluff. All you should do here is summarize. Anybody who is interested will contact you for the additional information. Similarly, do not include lengthy product matrices or order forms; ask interested people to write to you for a copy. The ideal length is on the order of 60 lines (excluding headers). If your message is much longer, it needs tighter editing. (Please note, excessive length is the most common reason for rejecting submissions.) 3. The announcement must be informative. It must contain a brief technical description of the product or service, subject to the length constraints just mentioned. This newsgroup is NOT a place for advertisements! It is a place for factual product info. 4. The product must be available to all Usenet users throughout North America, if not the world. Products with regional availability should be announced in regional newsgroups, not comp.newprod. 5. All announcements must contain the manufacturer's name and a contact for additional information. This should include a name, telephone number, postal address, and email address. Americans, please remember that your 1-800 telephone number might not work for people outside the U.S. 6. The announcement must be from a representative either employed by or designated by the product's manufacturer. We do not accept announcements from distributors or resellers for products in mass distribution. 7. Leave out the quotations from your company executives and ecstatic customers. If there is useful info in that quote, it may be provided more concisely and compellingly as a statement of fact. Moreover, we don't need to know about your corporate history, customer list, or distribution methods. Please avoid the superlatives and superfluous hype. Just the (technical) facts, please. These violations are the second most common reason (after message length) for returning submissions. 8. Note that a typical press release does NOT meet the above guidelines. They tend to be either too long or too heavy on the hype. We aren't the press. We don't want to edit (or spindle or fold or mutilate) your announcements as the press might. We simply want to publish them. You need to do the editing. 9. Your article must have a suitable Subject, not something like `submission for comp.newprod'. Do not use all UPPER CASE or superfluous !!!punctuation marks!!! in your subject (or messages). Putting phrases like `new product announcement' in your subject is dumb. If it wasn't it wouldn't be in this newsgroup! Select your subject with care; a person is going to decide whether or not to read your announcement based upon those six short words. 10. We almost never accept articles that are cross-posted to multiple newsgroups or have been posted to other newsgroups. By definition, if a message is appropriate for comp.newprod then it is NOT appropriate for most other Usenet groups. One exception: some `announce' groups accept product announcements, and we will cross-post there if its moderator says OK. 11. We do not accept articles with a limited `Distribution'. If you have availability restrictions then do mention them in the announcement, but the announcement must be submitted for distribution throughout all of Usenet. 12. If the contact person for additional information is not the person who submitted the message, then put a `Reply-To' header in the message. Do NOT try to redirect email to somebody else by saying `send email to ...' in your announcement. People won't. They will just hit the `r' key and the message will go back to you. If you do not know how to set a `Reply-To', ask for help. 13. We use a standard keywording system for all comp.newprod messages. We require a `Keywords' header on your message. The format is `Keywords: company name; product name; keyword, keyword, keyword ...'. We welcome (plead for!) your suggestions on keywords. If the product is esoteric or outside our areas of expertise, we might end up picking crummy keywords. 14. Your message must be properly formatted, avoiding long lines that wrap around a typical terminal screen and strange line breaks. We suggest that you break your lines at 78 columns or less. Whitespace is your friend (within reason). Carefully spell check and proofread your submissions; nothing screams `unprofessional' louder than poorly crafted prose. Please go easy on the Cap-Shift key. Do NOT right-justify your text; leave `ragged right margins.' We are not impressed that you can construct your company logo out of Xs and /s. `ASCII art' and gratuitous typesetting effects are discouraged. A double pox on people who use overly long signatures. 15. If you fear the headers of your message might get mangled in transit, feel free to note correct header information at the very top of your message. Clarifying comments addressed to the moderator also may be placed at the top of your message. If, while you are at it, you'd like to suggest some keywords for your message, that would be great. We will cleanup the headers and remove these comments prior to posting. DISTRIBUTION news.announce.newgroups news.groups.proposals comp.newprod CHANGE HISTORY 2025-06-12 Announcement -- Usenet Big-8 Management Board https://www.big-8.org/ board@big-8.org
