or <http://www.hitl.washington.edu/scivw/scivw-ftp/readfirst-faq>
This admin faq is meant to assist the new user is posting to sci.virtual-worlds. Basic questions such as how to post, rejecting policy, and how to subscribe and unsubscribe from virtu-l, the mailing list mirror is covered.
This FAQ is written as an introduction to the newsgroup sci.virtual-worlds. It is meant to be posted monthly on the 13th. It is therefore written to be short and informative regarding subscribing and posting to this particular newsgroup. If you are a newbie to Usenet, please take time to look at all the wonderful FAQs posted on news.announce.newusers. There are FAQs posted frequently there that should answer any basic USENET question you should have. For a list of all USENET FAQs see the Usenet Info Center Launch Pad:
http://sunsite.unc.edu/usenet-i/
Questions, comments, or suggestions should be sent to:
<scivw-faq@hitl.washington.edu>
Snail-mail may be sent to:
Sci.virtual-worlds
c/o Toni Emerson, HITLab
University of Washington
Human Interface Technology Laboratory
PO Box 352412
Seattle, WA, 98195-2412
USA
[MODERATOR'S NOTE: Commercial postings are offered on this newsgroup as a public service. Their appearance here does not indicate endorsement by the moderators or by the USENET or its administrators.]
Postings used as advertising, but phrased as "Re:" to discussion and/or announcements _will be rejected_.
sci.virtual-worlds encourages _informative_ discussion regarding products (PROD:), new product announcements (NEW-PROD:), press releases (ANNOUNCE:), and information and software available online (ONLINE:)
Submissions will be rejected on the following criteria:
Please do not cross-post copyrighted material (such as articles from the ClariNet News Services) or excerpts submitted to other newsgroups or mailing lists without proper permission. You may, however, submit a summary of, review of, or pointer to such material.
Announcements
ADMIN: Related to newsgroup administration.
ANNOUNCE: Miscellaneous.
CONF: Conference descriptions, dates, deadlines, etc.
CFP: Call for papers (for conferences/journals).
EDUC: Description of educational opportunity.
EPUB: Electronic publications, reports, papers, etc.
EVENT: Descriptions of various, non-conference events.
JOB-OFFERED: Employment opportunities.
JOB-WANTED: Shameless self-promotion.
NEW-PROD: New product announcements (commercial ads).
ONLINE: Online services, WWW and ftp sites, Electronic publications, reports, papers, etc.
PUB: Books, journals, etc.
Discussions
APPS: Applications of virtual worlds in various domains.
DESIGN: Human factors, standards, and other design issues.
ENTERTAIN: Entertainment/game applications.
HOME-BREW: Discussion of cheap VR, PC VR, Low-Cost VR.
HUMAN-FACTORS: Discussion of human factors issues.
INDUSTRY: Where the industry is, or is heading.
MISC: Items that don't fit into any other category.
PHIL: Philosophical musings about reality, etc.
PROD: Discussion of products.
REV-PROD: Non-commercial reviews and evaluations of products.
REV-APPS: Review of experience with an application.
REV-CONF: General review or report on a conference.
REV-ENTERTAIN: Review of experience with an entertainment app.
REV-EVENT: General review or report on an event.
REV-ONLINE: Reviews of online services, publications, etc.
REV-PUB: Review of books, journals, etc.
RESEARCH: Discussion of current research projects and labs, methods, problems
and areas of interest
SCI: Scientific issues such as health, physics, etc.
SOC: Social phenomena and culture.
TECH: Hard technology, data, software, hardware, etc.
"Virtual Interface Marketplace" and "Virtual-worlds Info Booth," are weekly posts containing a collection of related messages (posted Monday and Wednesday respectively). A skipped issue means that there were no relevant postings for that particular week.
The first part of each digest will include a list of the subject lines from the posts contained in the digest, allowing for a quick check to see if the digest contains anything of specific interest to you.
These digests may be plodded through on your newsreader or you may use your mailreader to read each message in the digest separately (assuming your mailreader can read folders in 'mailbox format').
Digest Subject Tags are as follows:
DIGEST: Weekly digests containing related messages.
DIGEST: Virtual Interface Marketplace.
FOR-SALE: Products/items for sale/re-sale.
MARKETING: General marketing announcement.
WANTED: Entities wanting to obtain hardware/software.
DIGEST: Virtual-worlds Info Booth.
INFO: General information requests/answers.
TERMS: Questions and answers about terminology.
WHO: Searching for people involved in the field.
The digests are archived at our ftp site at <ftp://ftp.hitl.washington.edu/pub/scivw/Digests/>
VIRTU-L is the mailing list mirror of sci.virtual-worlds. Greg Newby <gbnewby@ils.unc.edu> is the administrator. He can be contacted if you experience problems with the automated system.
To subscribe to the list, send an e-mail message to the automated list server <listserv@postoffice.cso.uiuc.edu>, with the following text in the body of the message:
subscribe listname Your Full Name
(of course you need to replace "listname" with "virtu-l" and you need to replace "Your Full Name" with your actual name, do not use quotes and do not use your userid).
If you can't get the USENET newsgroup, sci.virtual-worlds, you can subscribe to the mailing list VIRTU-L. VIRTU-L is the mailing list mirror of sci.virtual-worlds. Greg Newby <gbnewby@ils.unc.edu> is the administrator. He can be contacted if you experience problems with the automated system.
For anyone out there who receives sci-vw by the e-mail listserver, and who prefers individual postings rather than the "digest" format, just send a note to listserv@postoffice.cso.uiuc.edu with a blank subject line, and the following in the body:
set virtu-l nodigests
For more information consult the lists' FAQ in the sci.virtual-worlds ftp site:
<ftp://ftp.hitl.washgton.edu/pub/scivw/faq/other/FAQ_virtu-l>
Note: VIRTU-L is NOT a moderated group, submissions mailed to <virtu-l@postoffice.cso.uiuc.edu> are posted directly to that list. Sci.virtual-worlds _is_ moderated and does_not_ post automatically. Hence, posting to virtu-l is automatic and posting to sci.virtual-worlds might take longer (moderator must read and post). Also, sci.virtual-worlds' posting contain subject tags in the subject heading and might contain comments by the moderator. Submissions that are posted (in other words, accepted) to sci.virtual-worlds are also mailed to the VIRTU-L mailing list. However, VIRTU-L postings are not always accepted to sci.virtual-worlds.
<ftp://ftp.hitl.washington.edu/pub/scivw/postings/>
A great way to find current postings is to use WWW search services for USENET like:
Deja News Research Service
<http://www.dejanews.com/>
Reference.com (will allow you to choose database to search Forums, newsgroups, mailing lists)
http://www.reference.com/
The directories are:
/pub/scivw/cheap-vr/
* cheap-vr directory contatins information on homebrew VR
/pub/scivw/citations/
* citations directory contains bibliographies and citation lists on
various topics
/pub/scivw/conferences/
* conferences directory contains call for participations and conference
programs and reviews
/pub/scivw/papers/
* papers directory contains VR-related papers.
/pub/scivw/postings/
* postings directory contains the sci.virtual-worlds postings archives
/pub/scivw/pubs/
* pubs directory contatins reviews and information about VR-related books
and periodicals.
Because, the Knowledge Base Project at the Human Interface Technology Lab maintains the sci.virtual-worlds archive, the sci.virtual-worlds WWW site is at:
http://www.hitl.washington.edu/scivw/ This site is growing. We welcome submissions to the site, primary criteria is current information regarding virtual interface technology.
The following people assisted in the creation of this article:
Aaron Pulkka for his work in writing the _MetaFAQ_.
Mark DeLoura for his work on the original sci.virtual-worlds' FAQ, _TheRealFAQ_.
This article was written by:
Toni Emerson, <temerson@hitl.washington.edu>