Archive-name: boat-market/faq
Posting-frequency: monthly
Last-modified: 1996/10/06
Version: 1.2


  FAQ for rec.boats.marketplace
  William R. Ward, boat-market-request@bayview.com

  This posting contains information needed to submit advertisements to
  the rec.boats.marketplace moderated newsgroup.
  ______________________________________________________________________

  Table of Contents:

  1.      Introduction

  1.1.    Why isn't my message showing up right away?

  1.2.    Are there archives of the newsgroup?

  1.3.    Where can I get an up-to-date copy of this FAQ?

  1.4.    What other documents do you recommend?

  2.      Submission Guidelines

  2.1.    What types of advertisements are allowed?

  2.2.    Who should submit advertisements?

  2.3.    Can I post commercial advertisements?

  2.4.    Can I attach a JPEG or GIF picture of my boat?

  2.5.    Can I send an HTML document as my ad?

  2.6.    Can I send any other kind of MIME attachment?

  2.7.    What format should my advertisement be in?

  2.7.1.  Subject Line

  2.7.2.  Message Body

  2.8.    How do I submit an advertisement?

  2.9.    Can I cross-post to other newsgroups?

  2.10.   How often may I post my ad?

  3.      Disclaimer
  ______________________________________________________________________

  1.  Introduction

  Welcome to rec.boats.marketplace!  This is the advertising group of
  the rec.boats USENET newsgroup hierarchy.  This group is intended for
  posting ads offering to buy or sell boats and boating-related goods
  and services.

  This document attempts to answer most questions which you might have
  about posting a boating-related advertisement in USENET.  Please read
  it before attempting to submit an ad, or before asking the moderator
  for help.

  1.1.  Why isn't my message showing up right away?

  This is a moderated newsgroup.  This means that all messages must be
  approved by the moderator before they will appear in the newsgroup.
  E-mail all submissions to boat-market@bayview.com.  If you try to post
  it using your news software, it will probably be automatically
  forwarded to that address; however this is not recommended, as there
  are sometimes problems when this is done.

  If you wish to communicate with the moderator you should send your
  message to boat-market-request@bayview.com.  Send any questions,
  suggestions, or criticisms to that address.  If you have any
  disagreements that cannot be resolved in private e-mail with the
  moderator, you may wish to post about it on the newsgroups
  news.admin.net-abuse.misc and/or rec.boats.

  1.2.  Are there archives of the newsgroup?

  All messages posted to the newsgroup are archived by the moderator.
  Currently this archive is not available online, but if you send a
  request to the moderator in private e-mail, it should be possible to
  get a copy of an old message.

  1.3.  Where can I get an up-to-date copy of this FAQ?

  This document is posted approximately every 30 days to the newsgroups
  rec.boats.marketplace, news.answers, and rec.answers.  It is also
  available online via FTP and the World-Wide Web at the following
  addresses:

  o  FTP:  <ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/boat-market/faq>

  o  WWW:  <http://www.bayview.com/boat-market/faq.html>

  If you find other locations where these files are available, please
  tell me about them so that I can include them here.  Thanks.

  1.4.  What other documents do you recommend?

  Additional information about buying and selling stuff on USENET can be
  found in Dan King's The USENET Marketplace FAQ I suggest that you read
  it before making a deal on the net.  It contains a lot of useful
  information which can help protect both buyer and seller while dealing
  over the net.  It is posted to news.answers and misc.answers
  regularly.  You can also find it at:

  o  FTP:  <ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/misc.forsale.non-computer>

  o  WWW:  <http://www.phoenix.net/~lildan/FAQ>

  2.  Submission Guidelines

  2.1.  What types of advertisements are allowed?

  This newsgroup is for the posting of advertisements for buying and
  selling boats and boating-related goods and services.  All other
  submissions will be rejected.

  2.2.  Who should submit advertisements?

  To make an advertisement, you should be directly associated with the
  item or service in the advertisement.  It is best if you are the
  person selling or looking for the item or service.  If you offer to
  post for a friend, be aware that even if you say to respond only by
  telephone to your friend's number, you will probably still get several
  e-mail responses.  If your friend has e-mail, it would be better to
  have him or her submit the ad that way.

  2.3.  Can I post commercial advertisements?

  For many years, USENET newsgroups were strictly non-commercial.  In
  this modern age that has mostly fallen by the wayside, but there still
  exists a strong anti-commercial sentiment.  Please refrain from
  posting highly commercial messages to the newsgroup. The motto here is
  "Information, not promotion."  Product announcements may not contain
  hype or denigrating comparisons with competing products.
  Announcements of products should contain only a straightforward
  description of features, pricing, and so forth.  You may wish to
  include the URL of a web page which covers your product in greater
  detail.

  2.4.  Can I attach a JPEG or GIF picture of my boat?

  All messages which include binary attachments (such as a GIF or JPEG
  image of your boat) will be rejected.  Binaries take up too much
  bandwidth and disk space -- remember a lot of people have to download
  all the messages before viewing them, and it is not fair to make them
  sit through a download of your GIF if your boat is not what they are
  interested in.

  If you wish to show a picture of your boat, post it to one of the
  alt.binaries.pictures.* newsgroups, and mention that in your ad to
  rec.boats.marketplace, or post it on a web page and mention the URL in
  your ad.

  2.5.  Can I send an HTML document as my ad?

  USENET is not the Web, and the majority of the people reading USENET
  still use text-only software.  For this reason most moderated
  newsgroups, including this one, reject ads that are posted in HTML
  format.  You may include the URL of a web page in your ad, of course,
  but the ad itself should be in plain text format.

  2.6.  Can I send any other kind of MIME attachment?

  No, most newsreading software still can't handle MIME attachments very
  well.  And since HTML and binaries are disallowed (see above), what
  else might you want to attach?  Again, I suggest putting the
  additional information in plain text format, or post the URL of a web
  page (or both).

  2.7.  What format should my advertisement be in?

  2.7.1.  Subject Line

  All messages approved for rec.boats.marketplace will have a Subject:
  line in a special format that is designed to make it easy for readers
  to find what they are looking for quickly.  Before being approved, the
  Subject: line will be modified if necessary to match that format.  I
  ask that you please try to follow this format when posting your ads,
  however, to simplify this process for the moderator. The structure of
  the subject line is as follows:

           Subject: TYPE: [CATEGORY] DESCRIPTION, PRICE; LOCATION

  The various terms are explained below:

     TYPE
        An abbreviated, all-caps code which denotes the type of ad.
        This comes first, so that newsreaders which sort by subject line
        will group them together by type and category.  Following are
        some examples; if none of these fit your ad, you may wish to
        make up a different type code along these lines, provided that
        it is clear what you are abbreviating.

     o  ADMIN Administrative announcements by moderator

     o  CA Crew Available

     o  CW Crew Wanted

     o  FC For Charter

     o  FH For Hire (looking for boating-related jobs)

     o  FS For Sale

     o  FYI For Your Information (announccements)

     o  HW Help Wanted (offering boating-related jobs)

     o  WTB Wanted To Buy

     o  WTC Wanted To Charter

     CATEGORY
        The most common categories are Power and Sail, but others
        include WWW (for web page announcements, with type FYI), Misc,
        Parts, Outboard, Engine, and Electronics.  If you see any other
        ads similar to the item you are posting about, use the same
        category; if you see nothing similar you may consider using some
        other category that you think is more appropriate.  This should
        be a single word, have the first letter capitalized, and be
        enclosed in square brackets.

     DESCRIPTION
        This should be a description of what you have to offer, not
        something like "Great Deal!" or "*** Fabulous Price***" --
        descriptions like that will be edited based on what is in the
        body of your posting, if they are approved at all.  A good
        description might be "1970 Cal 27" or "30-50 Foot Trawler
        Wanted".  Please do not use all caps in your description, just
        capitalize the first letter or the first letter of each word.
        Also do not use "***" or similar characters to try to make your
        ad come first in the listing; they will be edited out.
     PRICE
        If you are selling an item PLEASE specify the asking price.  If
        you want to buy something, it would be helpful to specify a
        price range.  Be sure to include the currency units, since this
        is an international newsgroup; for US dollars, add "US$" to the
        front of the price; for Canadian dollars, add "CDN$"; for
        British pounds sterling, use "UKP"; or whatever currency you
        want, abbreviated similarly.  All-caps is preferred here.
        PLEASE put a comma (,) between the description and price.

     LOCATION
        If you are in the United States, specify the 2-letter state code
        and "USA" (e.g., "CA USA" for California); in Canada, do the
        same with the province and "CAN" (e.g., "BC CAN" for British
        Columbia).  For other countries, use whatever standards you feel
        appropriate.  Capitalize the abbreviations, but spelled-out
        words should be in mixed case.  (More specific information such
        as city, lake, river, bay, county, etc. can be included in the
        text of your message.)  PLEASE put a semicolon (;) between the
        price and location.

  2.7.2.  Message Body

  The format of the body of your post is not important, so long as it is
  clear, well-organized, and provides all the necessary information.
  Please be sure to include at a minimum the following information: the
  description of what you are selling, the name of your company if any,
  the location (this is important, as the newsgroup is world-wide),
  price or price range, and whom to contact and how to do so.

  Do not right-justify your post; leave a ragged right margin. Do not
  double-space your lines.  Keep your line length under 70 characters
  wide or less.  Avoid fancy ASCII graphics, as they do not show up well
  on everybody's screens.  Remember that some people use fixed-width
  fonts and others use variable-width fonts to read news.

  Try to keep your advertisement short. If it is too long, people will
  not read the whole thing.  If you need to provide further information,
  make it available through e-mail or on a web site.

  2.8.  How do I submit an advertisement?

  Once you have your advertisement written, you should submit it to the
  moderator via e-mail to boat-market@bayview.com.  Submissions are
  typically reviewed approximately once a day, especially on weekdays.
  You can simply post your ad to rec.boats.marketplace, and your news
  server will probably forward the message to the moderator
  automatically in e-mail.  However, the return address may be incorrect
  if you do this, which may make it difficult for people to reply to
  you.  Therefore, direct e-mail is recommended instead.

  If your ad is rejected, you should receive a message indicatying why
  it was rejected, unless the moderator could not contact you or had
  already notified you for a similar previous message.  Messages which
  are massively crossposted, chain letters, or spam, will be deleted
  without acknowledgement, and (if illegal) may be forwarded to the
  authorities for prosecution.

  If your advertisement is approved, it will be posted within 48 hours.
  You will not receive notification if your message is approved; if you
  don't see it and think it should have been appproved, wait a couple of
  days, and if it is still not there then notify the moderator.

  2.9.  Can I cross-post to other newsgroups?

  Cross-posting isn't permitted.  It is not necessary to cross-post or
  re-post your advertisement to other rec.boats newsgroups, since
  rec.boats.marketplace has low traffic and high readership.  The reason
  this newsgroup was created was to cut down on the traffic in rec.boats
  and the other rec.boats.*  newsgroups.  Please help in this effort.

  If you wish to post a question and want the advice of rec.boats
  readers, post there instead of to rec.boats.marketplace.  Messages
  that ask for help without offering anything for sale, or looking for
  something to buy will be rejected.

  2.10.  How often may I post my ad?

  According to the charter under which this newgroup was created,
  advertisements that are the same and submitted within 30 days of each
  other are supposed to be rejected.  It is time consuming to check this
  on every submission, however.  The previous moderator allowed people
  to submit ads as often as they want, but I will often reject duplicate
  ads posted within a week or so if I notice it.  If it gets to be a
  problem in the future, this rule may be enforced.  Please try to
  follow this rule and wait 30 days before re-submitting an ad.  If
  there are complaints about particular advertisers, I will enforce the
  30-day rule: if you feel that certain ads are being posted too often,
  please notify the moderator and/or the poster of the ads.

  3.  Disclaimer

       Note: Due to the litigous nature of modern (especially Amer-
       ican) society, and to the high prices of many boats and
       boating-related items, I feel it is necessary to disclaim
       any liability for the items sold through this newsgroup.

  Approval of advertisements for the rec.boats.marketplace newsgroup
  implies no warranty as to the serviceability or merchantability of
  goods or services offered for sale therein.  Please direct all
  inquiries about items advertised here via e-mail or telephone to the
  person advertising them, not by posting on the newsgroup or mailing to
  the moderator.

  By submitting advertisements to the moderator either directly or
  indirectly, the submitter implicitly agrees that the material may be
  posted on the USENET newsgroup rec.boats.marketplace.  Submitting an
  advertisement automatically releases the information contained within
  the advertisement into the public domain, so that it may be archived,
  posted on the World Wide Web, re-published, put in a collection, sent
  to readers via electronic mail, or otherwise used in any manner
  whatsoever, for any purposes, by any person.

  Typing, transmission, or other errors and inaccuracies of commission
  or omission may occur, and the moderator assumes no liability for
  these errors.

  Advertisements submitted are the responsibility of the submitter.  The
  moderator will not be held liable for the legality or accuracy of the
  content of such material.  In addition, the moderator will not be held
  liable by either submitters or users of such material for any errors
  of commission or omission the moderator may make.  If there is a
  dispute between the submitter and any other party, the submitter
  agrees to indemnify and hold the moderator harmless, and to assume all
  liability for the content of the advertisement and any disputses
  arising from it.

  If you disagree with these conditions, do not submit advertisements to
  the moderator for posting to rec.boats.marketplace and do not use the
  information the moderator posts to rec.boats.marketplace.

