Archive-Name: aids-faq1 Last-Modified: 10 Nov 1993 ================================================================ Section 1. Introduction and General Information Q1.1 What is sci.med.aids? Q1.2 Discussion topics. Q1.3 Sci.med.aids distribution. Q1.4 Subscribing and unsubscribe to sci.med.aids. Q1.5 What is a moderated newsgroup? Q1.6 Editorial guidelines. Q1.7 How do I submit a posting? Q1.8 The moderators. Q1.9 Cooperative moderation. Q1.10 Discussing sci.med.aids moderation policies. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Question 1.1. What is sci.med.aids? "sci.med.aids" is a USENET newsgroup which discusses AIDS and HIV. A gateway forwards articles posted to sci.med.aids to a BITNET listserv mailing list called AIDS. Thousands read sci.med.aids, including people with HIV infections, published authors, researchers, public health officials, and interested individuals. It is carried in several countries, particularly in the Americas and Europe. Sci.med.aids is moderated by a team. When you submit an article to sci.med.aids, it must be approved by a member of the moderation team. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Question 1.2. Discussion topics. Sci.med.aids covers topics of interest to people with AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome), their friends, relatives, and loved ones, AIDS service providers, educators and researchers, and the general public. Some common topics are Causes of AIDS and opportunistic infections. Vaccines for AIDS. Treatments or cures for AIDS and opportunistic infections. AIDS prevention and education. Sci.med.aids carries some regular magazines. Here's a current list: CDC AIDS Daily Summary AIDS Treatment News The Veterans Administration AIDS Info Newsletter If you have the time to add to this list, we invite you to contribute (if you obtain copyright permission, of course). ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Question 1.3. Sci.med.aids distribution. Sci.med.aids is distributed as a USENET newsgroup, where it has approximately 40,000 readers. At one time USENET was carried primarily at research and educational institutions, but that is changing; a number of commercial services now carry USENET. Here is a breakdown of comparable newsgroups, for the month of September 1993. You can obtain a full list of network traffic by anonymous ftp from ftp.uu.net:/usenet/news.lists/USENET_Readership_report_for_Sep_93.Z +-- Estimated total number of people who read the group, worldwide. | +-- Actual number of readers in sampled population | | +-- Propagation: how many sites receive this group at all | | | +-- Recent traffic (messages per month) | | | | +-- Recent traffic (kilobytes per month) | | | | | +-- Crossposting percentage | | | | | | +-- Cost ratio: $US/month/rdr | | | | | | | +-- Share: % of newsrders | | | | | | | | who read this group. V V V V V V V V 39 110000 1700 76% 3845 6418.0 6% 0.07 3.6% soc.motss 77 96000 1420 67% 1885 3541.1 11% 0.04 3.0% alt.drugs 131 81000 1203 80% 1571 4064.6 13% 0.06 2.6% sci.med 231 65000 961 61% 1269 2863.5 6% 0.04 2.0% alt.politics.homosexuality 558 44000 647 66% 282 760.5 38% 0.02 1.4% talk.politics.drugs --------------------------------------------------------- 605 41000 615 78% 383 1556.0 2% 0.05 1.3% sci.med.aids --------------------------------------------------------- 724 37000 545 68% 512 1053.6 12% 0.03 1.2% sci.med.nutrition 729 37000 542 77% 53 96.0 12% 0.00 1.2% sci.med.physics 880 32000 481 43% 436 1033.5 8% 0.02 1.0% alt.homosexual 1202 25000 370 41% 326 529.6 9% 0.01 0.8% alt.drugs.caffeine 1320 22000 332 21% 27 62.4 4% 0.00 0.7% alt.sex.homosexual 1343 22000 326 66% 48 89.1 7% 0.00 0.7% sci.med.occupational 1398 21000 314 35% 182 2557.2 0% 0.07 0.7% bit.listserv.gaynet 1412 21000 310 56% 145 510.1 0% 0.02 0.7% sci.med.telemedicine 1425 21000 307 59% 97 353.2 0% 0.02 0.7% sci.med.dentistry 1559 19000 276 48% 99 138.4 8% 0.01 0.6% sci.med.pharmacy 1685 17000 254 42% 235 378.1 0% 0.02 0.5% alt.med.cfs 1888 14000 213 13% 12 29.3 100% 0.00 0.5% clari.news.law.drugs 1916 14000 207 38% 5 19.7 20% 0.00 0.4% bionet.molbio.hiv 2449 3500 52 11% 55 97.5 6% 0.01 0.1% de.sci.medizin Sci.med.aids is also distributed as electronic mail by the AIDS listserv. Mail is not as convenient a way to read sci.med.aids as is a newgroup, but mail is available at more sites (including Compuserve, America Online, MCImail, ATTmail and many institutions which have Internet gateways). In additional to these primary distributions, sci.med.aids is redistributed by various bulletin boards and mail gateways. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Question 1.4. Subscribing and unsubscribe to sci.med.aids. The answer to this question depends on your system. You may have to ask your local system administrator. Here are some guidelines valid on many systems: * You may have USENET on your system, especially if you run UNIX or VMS. Here are some commands to try: "rn", "trn", "xrn", "nn", "tin". If they work, try joining the newsgroup "sci.med.aids". That might not work, since some sites limit the newsgroups they receive. All is not lost: you can get sci.med.aids by e-mail. * If USENET is not available you can get sci.med.aids by e-mail. Send a mail message to listserv@rutvm1.rutgers.edu. The message body should contain just the following command: subscribe aids <yourname> Type in your real name (not your e-mail address) instead of <yourname>. A complete message might look like this: To: listserv@rutvm1.rutgers.edu Subject: subscribe aids Joe Smith To unsubscribe, send a message to listserv@rutvm1.rutgers.edu containing the text unsubscribe aids Please unsubscribe before your account expires. The moderators get all sorts of junk mail if you don't. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Question 1.5. What is a moderated newsgroup? A moderated newsgroup is one in which all postings must be approved by a moderator before being distributed. The purpose of moderation is to restrict what can appear. Postings which do not adhere to the guidelines for the group will be rejected. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Question 1.6. Editorial guidelines. As with any newsgroup, read sci.med.aids for a few days before posting, to see if your question has been answered already, and to get a feel for the tone of the group. Postings to sci.med.aids should: * Write on topics directly relevant to AIDS, HIV, or related topics. * Unconventional medical/research claims must be accompanied by references to the popular press (i.e., major newspaper, magazine, etc.) or scientific press (i.e., Science, Nature, Lancet, Scientific American, Cell, Brain Research, etc.). We require references for unconventional medical/research claims, because some therapies carry with them potential danger. Some unconventional medical/research claims are fallacious. Without this policy, sci.med.aids would have printed several dangerous and undocumented therapies by now. * Political, sociological opinion/analysis articles are acceptable. The interpretation, and even the existence, of this particular policy continues to be the subject of internal debate among the moderators. However, in the past we have printed articles holding both popular and unpopular opinions on topics like "Quarantining HIV Positives" or "who did Clinton appoint to the AIDS Task Force." * Refrain from personally attacking other participants. For example, do not call someone an 'idiot' or say they are 'biased'. Instead, point out the flaws in their argument. If you find yourself getting angry at a poster, and construct a reply, please try to remember this rule. It is often useful to wait a day to see what other reactions have been posted before sending something off in anger. * Send one line "quips" as personal mail to the original submitter, rather than posting. * When posing a question to a previous poster, reconsider whether the question needs to be posted. Perhaps you could ask the question by e-mail and request a posted response. * Do not invoke religion. * Do not break copyright laws. Reprints of articles from other sources must include a statement of permission to reprint. An exception is made for abstracts of articles from scientific journals, which are not usually restricted. If you can't get reprint permission, excerpt or summarize the article. * Do not construct an article with more than 20% text from a previous article, unless it is very old (i.e., months old). The best approach when constructing a response is to tersely summarize the article to which you respond, in square brackets. For example, In article <11233@sci.med.aids>, Dan Greening wrote: > [reasons to not include too much of a prior article] Also, don't forget that many people get this stuff by mail, so huge inclusions clog hundreds of mailboxes, including mine. Thanks. * Do not duplicate something which has recently appeared. The moderators don't always agree on what's acceptable and what's not. If an article is rejected, you should receive a note from the moderator saying why. These notes, and other discussions about the running of sci.med.aids will be distributed on the aids-d mailing list (see Q1.10 `Discussing sci.med.aids moderation policies.'). ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Question 1.7. How do I submit a posting? This depends on the software you are using. On many USENET systems, you can use the command postnews You can also post by sending your article as e-mail to aids@cs.ucla.edu. Because sci.med.aids is moderated, your submission will not appear immediately. Sometimes the delay is very short; often it may be 24 hours. It depends on network delays and how busy the moderators are. A tickler program reminds us of postings older than 48 hours. IMPORTANT: Whether you use postnews or e-mail, please format your article exactly the way you want it to appear in the newsgroup. Because our moderation software is somewhat unpolished, editing out notes to the moderators in a posting is quite tedious. If you must communicate directly with the moderators, send a note to aids-request@cs.ucla.edu. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Question 1.8. The moderators. Three people currently moderate sci.med.aids. They are Phil Miller Professor, Biostatistics, Washington University Jack Hamilton Interested layperson Dan Greening Founder sci.med.aids, Director AppWare C++, Novell Michelle Murrain Health issues researcher, Professor, Hampshire College Phil and Jack do most of the moderation. Dan repairs the moderation software. Phil is probably the most liberal moderator, Dan the most restrictive, Jack in-between. Michelle is new, so it's too early to tell. Various individuals have been moderators in the past, including David Dodell Founder, Grand Rounds fidonet echo, Dentist Steve Dyer Writer, Gay Community News, Software Consultant Alan Wexelblat Freelance writer, ethicist Tom Lincoln Informatics Director, USC Medical Center Craig Werner MD/PhD Student, Albert Einstein School of Medicine Will Doherty Gay Activist, technical writer Sun Microsystems ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Question 1.9. Cooperative moderation. Cooperative moderation seeks to limit the burn-out associated with newsgroup moderation, by sharing the workload among several moderators. In addition, it provides a more balanced treatment of contentious issues. An early paper on the sci.med.aids cooperative moderation scheme is D.R. Greening and A.D. Wexelblat, Experiences with Cooperative Moderation of a USENET Newsgroup, Proceedings of the 1989 ACM/IEEE Workshop on Applied Computing. available by FTP from cs.ucla.edu:pub/aids.paper.ps.Z This paper is also available from the UCLA Computer Science Department as a technical report. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Question 1.10. Discussing sci.med.aids moderation policies. A separate mailing list, aids-d, has been set up for the moderators and for people who interested in how sci.med.aids is run. Most readers will not be interested in aids-d; its purpose is internal discussion rather than information dissemination, and most articles on aids-d are examples of what moderation has filtered out. If you want to subscribe, send email to aids-d-request@sti.com. ================================================================