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      Alt.sex.stories - Alt.sex.stories.d FAQ - August 15, 1996
      Copyright 1996 by lsummers@onramp.net, all rights reserved.

      This Part One of Two Parts

      //// This edition contains much new information and corrections.

      Many people sent in suggestions for adds and changes.  If I
      overlooked something, I assure you it was not on purpose.  Tell me
      again, please.  If you have suggestions or corrections, please send
      them to me at the address given in the appropriate section.

      One major suggestion is to extract certain information into "PIPS."
      This means Periodical Information Posts, or specific information on
      specific subjects, such as how to post stories.  This would make it
      easier for people to focus on specific subjects, without having to
      weed through all the other material.  This would also make it easier
      for other people to send information to people who need to know, but
      by their posting, are obviously not acquainted with net protocol, or
      Acceptable Use of these two groups.

      ///Any comments on this technique would be appreciated, and yes, I
      have already contemplated the problem inherent to labeling a file
      "ass.pip."

      This is the accepted Alt.Sex.Stories and Alt.Sex.Stories.d FAQ.

      FAQ means Frequently Asked Questions. A FAQ is a convenient vehicle
      to answer  questions frequently asked. This is a FAQ.  It has no
      official function beyond detailing the generally accepted answers to
      questions frequently posed about the two groups.

      Currently, neither ASS nor ASSD has an official Charter.  Both groups
      were founded prior to the time when the process of consensus Charters
      became the standard methodology of the Usenet.  Plus, the generally
      accepted standard whereby groups in the alt hierarchy do not have
      Charters.

      A FAQ cannot be a Charter.

      Yet many times system administrators will look to a FAQ for
      information on the purposes and conduct of a given group, even an Alt
      group.  So, this FAQ will attempt to enumerate generally accepted
      standards for a.s.s, and a.s.s.d, to assist system administrators and
      the general user group in this regard.

      This FAQ is archived at ftp://rtfm.mit.edu.pub.usenet.*, along with
      mirror sites.  This FAQ is posted to both groups simultaneously on
      the first and third Fridays of each month.

      0) Disclaimers - Copyright
      1) Introduction
      2) Acceptable Use of a.s.s and a.s.s.d
      3) How to post stories?
      4) Posting Stories in Parts.
      5) Non-story postings to a.s.s
      6) What if my site doesn't get a.s.s.d?
      7) What if my site doesn't get a.s.s?
      8) Story Archives - FTP or e-mail?
      9) Reposts: Requesting Them and Posting Them
      10) Labeling Stories  - Dr. Bob's FAQ
      11) Anonymous Posting
      12) Let's Split a.s.s into Smaller Groups - NOT.
      13) Kill files
      14) How to contribute if you are not a writer.
      15) Celeste801
      16) Charter considerations
      17) Suggestions- Current mail address
      18) Credits
      19) Josh Laff's parting remarks.  Read this please!
      20) Current Editor's remarks.
      21) Addendums
          A.  How to order stories from ...
          B.  How to format a story in Word Perfect then post in ASCII.
          C.  How to format a story in Microsoft Word then post in ASCII.
          D.  Gravity kill files
          E.  Unix kill files

      0) Disclaimers - Copyright

      This FAQ is maintained by lsummers@onramp.net, with input from
      various persons credited or not credited by their choice.  This FAQ
      is the compilation of input from various people over a long period of
      time, and in whole, does not necessarily represent the personal
      opinion of any one individual or the editor.

      This FAQ is copyright 1996 by lsummers@onramp.net, all rights
      reserved, and includes material from the previous ASS-ASSD FAQ
      maintained by Joshua A. Laff, laff@prairienet.org, who has granted
      permission to reuse the contents to anyone who cares to accept the
      challenge.

      Permission is granted to archive and distribute without charge,
      provided no changes are made, and this copyright notice is left
      intact.  There are no other copyrights applicable to this FAQ, other
      than the editor's.

      1) Introduction

      Welcome to the alt.sex.stories and alt.sex.stories.d FAQ. This will
      hopefully answer whatever questions you may have about these two news
      groups.

      It is strongly recommended that new readers of the groups read this
      FAQ.

      Note, this FAQ is not the law.  However, it does contain material
      which most Usenet access providers will interpret and judge to be
      standards for the application of Acceptable Use policies under their
      Terms of Service, with regard to the posting of articles to this
      group.

      In other words, if you do not adhere to the standards contained
      herein, you may be subject to complaints filed against you with your
      access provider, and the recipient of unpleasant flames and
      confrontations, including admonitions from your provider.

      2) Acceptable Use of a.s.s and a.s.s.d

      Alt.sex.stories

      The posting of articles containing stories and poems that contain
      some form of erotica is Acceptable Use of a.s.s.  During the past two
      years, it has also become Acceptable Use to post organized reviews of
      stories, Dr. Bob's FAQ on the categorization of stories, and this
      FAQ.

      There are NO limitations on the type or degree of erotica the stories
      can or can not include.  A story with very little erotica is
      Acceptable Use.  A story that is ALL erotica, is Acceptable Use.  The
      stories may or may not be true.

      The degree of literary merit is not a determinant for Acceptable Use.

      The stories may or may not be complete.  The stories may or may not
      be copyrighted extracts used with or without the permission of the
      copyright holder.  The Editor of this FAQ, and the access providers
      who carry the groups, exercise no oversight with regard to the
      posting of any material, including material which is copyrighted.

      However, it is a really BAD idea to post copyrighted material without
      permission of the copyright holder.  Some providers will cancel
      accounts when it is brought to their attention that one of their
      users is posting copyrighted material.

      Some copyright holders will sue a person posting their material.

      Let the Poster BEWARE.

      Alt.sex.stories.d

      The '.d' at the end of a.s.s.d stands for 'discussion', i.e.,
      chatter. Any subject matter pertaining to stories/poems that is not
      itself a story/poem is considered Acceptable Use of a.s.s.d. This
      includes comments, requests, archive information, or any other
      subject of a similar nature.

      While the following will probably enrage many people, it is NOT
      considered inappropriate use for advertisements for the sale of
      stories and poems to be posted to a.s.s.d.  The rational for this is
      that such a post would be on-topic.  HOWEVER, the repetitious posting
      of such an ad WOULD be inappropriate.  Basically, the 45 day rule and
      the Briedbart Index applies.

      See the net abuse FAQ at:

              http://www.cybernothing.org/faqs/net-abuse-faq.html

      Both Groups.

      It is NOT Acceptable Use to post articles such as test messages,
      personals, 'Make Money Fast' (and its various derivatives), binaries,
      chain letters, discussions of sexual preferences (except as
      incidental to the discussion of a story), or repetitive posting of
      advertisements wherein the ad copy is greater than one percent (1%)
      of the content of the article/story, or part of a four line (4)
      signature, whichever is greater.

      The comment regarding a four (4) line signature applies only to
      commercial advertising and not to personal signatures, no matter how
      lacking in taste.  The 1% rule is simply an attempt to find a
      compromise position between those who would ban all commercial
      'motives' from Usenet, and the very practical notion that a total ban
      is simply impossible.

      It is NOT Acceptable Use to cancel articles not your own, unless you
      are the access provider for the originator of the article, or the
      cancel convention is followed, including a cross-post to
      news.admin.net-abuse.misc.

      It is NOT Acceptable Use to post comment condemning the purposes of
      either group.  If you do not like the purpose of the group, simply do
      not download or participate.

      When following up to a post, you should look at the "Newsgroups:"
      line in the header to be sure that the appropriate news groups
      (usually alt.sex.stories.d)  are listed. Inappropriate news groups,
      such as alt.sex.stories, should be removed.

      Authors should post their stories with the Follow-Up header line
      reading:

      Follow-Up to: alt.sex.stories.d.

      Finally, it might be considered Acceptable Use for one (1) person to
      post "whois" information detailing how and where complaints might be
      filed against a major spammer, to facilitate the kind of massive
      response that seems to be the only way to get through to certain
      access providers.  The best place for this post is a.s.s.d.  See more
      on this subject under part 5.

      Acceptable Use is determined by each access provider.  The Acceptable
      Use policy shown herein is provided for their guidance, and the
      guidance of those posting articles to the groups, should they elect
      to be so guided.

      It should be noted that access providers respond to complaints, and
      the more complaints that are registered against someone who does not
      follow these guidelines, the more likely they are to respond
      favorably by taking action that limits an abuser's ability to create
      problems.

      Keep firmly in mind that the alt hierarchy has no content rules
      beyond what each individual access provider imposes.  Abuse is always
      viewed as something that is an attack *on* Usenet, not an attack *in*
      the net.  Again, for a complete discussion on net abuse, see the net
      abuse FAQ at:

              http://www.cybernothing.org/faqs/net-abuse-faq.html

      3) How to post stories.

      Line length.

      The vast majority of terminal setups and text readers, are set to no
      more than 80 characters per line.  Therefore, it is a good idea to
      keep line length to less than 80 characters.  It is probably even
      better to keep line lengths to about 72 so that follow up responses
      do not have their lines wrap around, and so that certain other
      systems for reading text files do not have problems.

      When using courier, 12 characters to the inch, and 12 point standard
      font, the line length should be set to 72 characters.  This FAQ was
      posted by first writing and editing it in Word Perfect 7.0, then
      printing to a file.  After that, the DOS editor was used to clean up
      page breaks.  See the appendix that was written to cover formatting
      with Word Perfect.

      For those who have Win95, Notepad is a great editing and writing
      tool.  Set it to word wrap, and use a fixed length font such as
      courier.  Make sure that the number of characters at 12cpi do not
      exceed roughly 72 to a line, or so.

      AUTHORS - Just for fun, type a sample paragraph or two, then upload
      using whatever technique you normally intend to use.  Then use your
      news reader to go look at it.  Surprise!  There are places to test
      upload set aside for this specific purpose.  Alt.test comes to mind.
      But do read the FAQ in that group unless you want to get
      confirmations from all over the world.

      If someone wants to write a complete and detailed guide on the
      subject of posting stories, please do so and send it to me.

      Formatting.

      If you did not type your story on a UNIX or DOS system in straight
      ASCII format (i.e. you downloaded your story from a word processor or
      something similar), you should remove any special formatting codes.

      Most readers of a.s.s are using a UNIX, DOS Editor, or other program
      to read TEXT in ASCII format.  Word Processor formatting codes DO NOT
      translate into ASCII.  See the appendix for formatting with Word
      Perfect.

      Spacing.

      Double spaced stories are usually rather difficult to read on a
      computer terminal. Therefore, you should single space stories.

      Also, text that is justified to completely fill from the left to the
      right margin (resulting in extra spaces between words) is *very*
      difficult to read on the computer, and is a waste of bandwidth.

      Similarly, although it may look nicer on your terminal, there is no
      point indenting your whole story.  The author of this FAQ does not
      follow this convention. :-) I use two spaces on the left to make it
      easier to read, in my opinion.

      Finally, avoid the use of tabs. Many systems set tabs to a different
      numbers of spaces, potentially causing lines to run off the screen.
      Also, printers don't always treat them nicely either; some ignore
      them completely, some print a tab character of some kind. If you want
      to indent or center something, please use spaces rather than tabs.

      Encoding

      Text files posted to a.s.s should not be encoded using uuencode or
      base64 (MIME).  Not only is decoding a hassle but it also increases
      the download size.  If you're using a modern "mail agent", you should
      check that your attachments are really plain ASCII and do not contain
      any system specific formatting characters, quotes and such.

      Language.

      Stories should normally be in English. Readers of a.s.s are assumed
      to understand English, and there are newsgroups for stories in other
      languages.  However, this suggestion should not be construed to be an
      Acceptable Use prohibition.

      Content.

      Even though it is stated in the Acceptable Use section above there
      are no limitations on what content can be included in a story - so
      long as it contains some form of erotica, it is recommended that
      authors at least consider the content of their stories in terms of
      their own local legal jurisdiction.  For example, there is generally
      no legal ramification for the posting of any material in written form
      in the United States.  This is not the case in Singapore and certain
      other locations.

      This may or may not continue to be the case.  Certain types of
      erotica involving persons below the age of majority is actually
      prohibited by law in various places, including all or part of the
      USA.  A local jurisdiction may decide to selectively enforce the law.
      For this reason, there is much discussion on the Usenet about how to
      post anonymously.  This is not a recommendation for or against
      posting anonymously, just an observation of material readily
      available on the net in various places whereby a person might find
      information to protect themselves from capricious enforcement.

      Here is an interesting bit from a contributor:

      I asked a publisher of erotica about the current legal situation with
      certain types of genre.  He replied:

      "Yes, Lolita got passed 30 years ago, but my guess is that if the
      book were submitted to established publishers today it would be
      rejected to avoid the possibility of prosecution by the Justice
      Department. There is de facto government censorship of text at
      present since publishers are intimidated into not publishing. You
      don't need to go to Singapore to find successful thought control.

      "What we are doing is dotting out passages in our books where minors
      are involved with sex of any kind. Like so ...................

      "So many lines of dots for so many lines cut. We started this with
      [deleted by editor to protect the source].

      "Which brings up an anecdote:

      "In the Fifties, Madame de Gaulle ran around the bookstores in Paris
      like an avenging angel looking for pornography and then complaining
      to her husband, who got the gendarmes after the publishers. So the
      French publishers started "dotting" texts. Before long there were
      complaints from both the Church and Madame de G. that the dots were
      an abomination since readers were imagining the scenes and very often
      what they were imagining was actually worse than what had been dotted
      out by the publishers.

      "We're wondering how long it will take before someone here is
      convicted for publishing a book consisting mostly of dots and titled:
      Confessions of a Twelve Year Old Nymph.

      "Given all of the above, despite the fact the most of what's in
      a.s.s. is either unreadable or crazy, it needs to be there to help us
      all be free.

      "So keep the fire burning.

      As Editor of this FAQ, I will add one comment.  A great number of
      stories in a.s.s., are quite excellent.  But compared to the total
      number of postings the proportion of stories to garbage would
      absolutely lead one to conclude that most of what's in a.s.s. is either
      unreadable or crazy.

      That's why kill files are so important.

      Header

      The following is considered to be a standard posting header for a
      story.

      Title - Author -[1/4] Classification

      Example:

      Taming of the Shrew - Wm. Shakespeare [1/1] M/F Rom d/s

      In the examples above, the bracketed information indicates how many
      parts to the story. [1/4] means the first of four parts.  See the
      next section.

      There is no other Acceptable way to post a story.  The format for the
      subject line is cast in concrete.

      See Section 10, Labeling Stories for a more complete discussion on
      this subject.

      4) Posting Stories in Parts.

      Posting stories in parts seems straightforward enough, and it usually
      is, but there are a few things to keep in mind when posting stories
      in parts:

      Put the part number in the Subject line (such as 1/4, 2/4...). Note
      that the first number gives the part number of the article and the
      second one gives the total part count, so that the reader can
      identify when a story is complete. If the story is in more than 9
      parts, leading zeroes should be used (01/12, for example). This helps
      to facilitate automatic archiving.

      Send the posts to the posting software in order. You may even want to
      include a short 2 minute or so delay between each part posted. This
      will help get the stories distributed, and therefore listed, in their
      proper order, making it easier for people to read and save.

      Typically, segments should be limited to no more than 1000 lines
      (including headers, etc). Some BBS news readers can not process posts
      larger than this. Segments should also not be less than 300 lines
      except for the last one.

      Do not post segments as follow ups of a previous segment. Many people
      put follow ups in their kill files, and your segments will not be
      seen by them (see the section on kill files for more details).

      PLEASE do include a beginning and end reference for each segment.
      Truncated files are common for stories posted through anon.penet.fi,
      especially.  At the beginning of the segment, type in:

      Part One of Three Parts.

      At the end of the first part, type:

    > Transfer interrupted!