Copyright © 1990-2005 by Prof. Timo Salmi
Last modified Sat 5-Nov-2005 08:07:48
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Copyright © 1990-2005 by Prof. Timo Salmi Last modified Sat 5-Nov-2005 08:07:48 |
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Let me try to give hopefully helpful information about how best
go about making test postings. Please don't take offense by this
item. It is solely meant as friendly guidance so that you can better
find your way on the net.Novice users, and sometimes even others, occasionally place these "A test, please ignore" messages in discussion newsgroups. Please don't do this. It is wasteful of the resources. These news reach tens of thousands of readers, so a very wide distribution is involved. Furthermore, many users find the test messages very annoying in the discussion newsgroups, and you have a good chance of getting some testy email.
There is a much better solution for the testing. There are special test newsgroups just for this purpose, such as alt.test and misc.test. The misc.test is a good option, since there are several test echoes along the feed. They will automatically send you email acknowledgements when your test posting reaches these sites. There also are some special test-newsgroups like comp.security.pgp.test for testing signing, encryption and decryption using PGP.
If you just wish to test posting without the automatic acknowledgments to clutter your mailbox, check if your site has a newsgroup simply called test. Thus don't necessarily start with a newsgroup with a "world" distribution right away. First consider experimenting with a more "local" newsgroup. For example, in Finland there is a newcomers' test newsgroup sfnet.aloittelijat.testit and sfnet.test for news maintainers. The latter of the said Finnish newsgroups has the test echo feature. Furthermore, many organizations indeed have the even more limited, internal test newsgroups of their own. E.g. our university does. Think of expanding your testing only after the local testing, if this still is then necessary.
If you want to suppress the autoresponders along the feed, include the word "ignore" in the "Subject:" header of our articles posted to *.test. If fact, many autoresponders include that piece of advice in their autonotifications, such as If you wish to not receive auto replies to your test posts, then put the word "IGNORE" anywhere in your post.
If you do not wish to employ the autoresponders, but wish to check that your test posting propagates on the net, one option is to visit the Google repository. Usually the postings appear there in a day. For example you might visit http://groups.google.com/groups%3Fas_ugroup=misc.test
A note on the propagation of test and other postings. If you look at the header of a Usenet posting, you'll notice that it includes the a line for distribution. Don't trust it. The distribution limitation is not guaranteed to work. In global newsgroups a local distribution can easily "leak" since not all configurations along the feed observe this feature. Thus the distribution field in the header is best left unchanged.
Additional information to neophyte news users from Jim Wamsley. "When testing your ability to post to newsgroups, test first to your local.test newsgroup. This posting should appear only on your news server. When you are satisfied that you are comfortable with postings, you can try some of the many test news groups on the network, such as alt.test and misc.test. However, do not include local.test in these postings. When you include local.test and another newsgroup, not only is your article posted on *.test and your local.test, but in every other local.test on every news server in the world. This tends to upset news administrators and on occasion has them chasing a problem that really doesn't exist."
If you are a news or a system manager who has had to do the test this way for practical reasons, my apologies if this advisory note was not appropriate in the case of your test. This was only meant as benevolent advice in case you were not aware of these alternatives. On the other hand, a responsible and knowledgeable system manager could, of course, indicate why the global test posting was necessary in the first place and cancel the test posting as soon as it is no longer necessary to circulate it to the tens of thousands of Usenet readers subscribing to the discussion newsgroups.
News administrators might also be interested in the newsgroup misc.test.moderated. An extract from its charter: "The group misc.test.moderated complements misc.test, by providing a way for news administrators to test the mechanism for posting to moderated groups."
If you are a new Usenet news user, you may wish to see the information at
For further beginner's information on test postings see Jon Bell's fine "TIP" WHERE TO POST TEST MESSAGES which is regularly posted to the newsgroup Questions & Answers for users new to the Usenet news.newusers.questions.
Here is a very important little tip when you have made your test
posting in the proper newsgroup. Take a careful look at the "From:"
header of your test posting. Your full email address should appear
in there, like mine would show up (without the quotes) as "From:
ts(a)UWasa.Fi (Timo Salmi)". If not, you have a serious problem, since
other users will not be able to reply to your postings by email. In
that case contact your own site's newsmaster a.s.a.p. alerting
him/her to the problem.If you are worried about disclosing your email address on the Usenet news because of spam (unsolicited commercial email), please see my "Foiling Spam with an Email Password System" and "Timo's procmail tips and recipes".
When I post this (or similar information) as a followup to a
misplaced test posting on the Usenet news, it often elicits from
third parties what I call "the bandwidth myth". It usually goes,
somewhat aggressively, like this. "Isn't your long followup posting
much more of a waste of bandwidth as the original, brief test
posting?". This is a fallacy. The comparison is mismatched. The
comparison should be not only with the original, misplaced posting
but also with all the potential others it helps to redirect to the
proper channels. Besides, such a flamer misreads my intentions. My
purpose is to help users to find their way, not to complain.
