Archive-name: bionet-faq
Answers to Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
This will be (once it is finished) a monthly posting to the Usenet
newsgroup bionet.announce
(and news.answers). Its purpose is to provide basic information
for individuals who are new to the bionet domain of newsgroups or
are just beginning to read this group via an e-mail subscription.
It attempts to answer questions that beginners frequently ask.
If you are new to bionet, please read this article. If you are
an old hand, please take the time occasionally to look at the list
of questions addressed: you might learn something new.
The questions below are presented as an index of sorts; answers
(such as there are) are grouped together in the next section. Please
contribute others (and PLEASE, if you contribute a question, include
an answer with it!).
This FAQ sheet was last modified on 31 July 1992.
============================== Questions ==============================
1) How can I get a copy of this article?
2) What are the bionet newsgroups for? How may they be used?
3) Are there any special "netiquette" rules I should know about?
4) Special instructions for Usenet readers?
5) Special instructions for e-mail subscribers?
6) How can e-mail subscribers get Usenet at their site?
7) Where can I get other helpful documents?
8) Does anyone have an e-mail address for Dr. X?
9) How to find a good graduate program?
10) Any advice on employment trends?
11) Where can I find biology-related job announcements?
12) Where can I journal contents online?
13) Suggestions for freeware or commercial software packages?
14) Is there a database for X?
15) Are there other biology newsgroups or e-mail subscription lists?
16) What is anonymous ftp, and how does it work?
17) How can I access ftp archives from BITNET?
18) What is gopher, and how does it work?
============================== Answers ==============================
1) How can I get a copy of this article?
Save this now, while you're reading it! This article is posted
monthly to bionet.announce and cross-posted to news.answers. It
is therefore archived at any site that archives news.answers,
including pit-manager.mit.edu (18.172.1.27). To retrieve this
article from pit-manager.mit.edu via anonymous ftp, look for the
file bionet-faq in the directory ./pub/usenet/news.answers. If
you do not have anonymous ftp, send an e-mail message to
mail-server at pit-manager.mit.edu, containing the lines "help" and
"index"; you will be sent information on how to search the
archive and receive files by e-mail.
2) What are the bionet newsgroups for? How may they be used?
The bionet newsgroups are intended as a forum for biologists of
all flavors who want to exchange technical or other information,
and to debate or discuss current issues. These newsgroups are
especially good for inter-disciplinary exchange, since the readers
tend to work in many different areas of biology.
These types of articles are acceptable (and frequently seen):
* Requests for book or article references. If what you really
want is for someone to do a bibliographic data base search
for you, you are probably better off sending private e-mail
to someone who is likely to be able and willing to help you.
Otherwise, feel free to ask; nearly all requests are answered
with full bibliographic references, often in BibTeX format.
* Questions on specific topics, techniques, or organisms. These
often lead to interesting discussions, and are generally welcome,
however esoteric they may be. If your question is an extremely
easy or boring one, and you get the bionet groups via Usenet,
you may want to consider restricting the distribution of your
article to an appropriate region: your university, perhaps, or
your state or country.
* Announcements of upcoming conferences or other events, or grant
deadlines. If you get the bionet groups via Usenet, you should
use an expiration data on such announcments, so that they go
away once they are no longer relevant.
* Reports or comments on new books, articles, methods or software.
There is a certain element of psychotherapy in any discussion
group, and the bionet groups are no exception. Try to keep your
comments rational, calm, clear, and concise. People often report
on interesting scientific news in the media, or statements issued
by various governments, or relate data gathered and posted else-
where.
* Discussions on topics of general interest. Above all else, many
bionet participants cite the occasional lengthly discussions on
various issues as the single most rewarding and useful aspect of
the bionet newsgroups.
Unacceptable articles are advertisements of any sort, political
lobbying messages, and anything not pertaining directly to bio-
logical research.
3) Are there any special "netiquette" rules I should know about?
Funny you should ask! Quite a few documents have been written
about Usenet etiquette; several are available in news.answers.
Rather than repeat their advice here, I'll just touch on the
points most relevant to the bionet groups.
A) Include your full name and e-mail address in the text
Put these at the end of your message, with your usual signature.
You might want to use a .signature file (standard on most Unix
systems, also implemented under VM/CMS) to make this automatic.
This is necessary because strange things can happen to headers
in e-mail or Usenet articles sent from one network to another,
and some people use software that strips the header information.
B) How to write useful summaries
Whenever a question or request for information results in many
replies, it is expected that the person who posted the original
article will compile and post a summary of the responses. That
person is expected to exercise discretion and tact when compiling
and editing the replies, to ensure a fair and accurate summary.
Answers to very esoteric questions are often best sent directly
to the person who asked for help, rather than to the newsgroup;
the choice of whether to post a (public) reply or send (private)
e-mail is a personal decision. If you send a reply by e-mail,
and would prefer that it be kept private, you should say so in
your note, because otherwise the other person may share your
comments with others. If the original poster promises to post
a summary at the outset, then all replies should be sent by
e-mail, unless the reply constitutes an important re-direction
of the original question.
Care should be invested in writing summaries:
* A simple concatenation of all the answers is not adequate;
instead redundancies, irrelevancies, verbosities and errors
of fact or spelling should be edited out. It is appropriate
to use square brackets and dots to indicate editing [...].
* The answers should be separated clearly, and nicely formatted.
* The contributors of each answer (or of a group of answers all
along the same lines) should be identified, unless they asked
that their names not be used.
* The "best" answers should come first.
C) How to avoid starting "flame wars", a.k.a nasty arguments
Biology is very much a compilation of theories and dogmas, and
thus virtually every discussion eventually uncovers some point of
basic disagreement among the participants. It can be difficult
to keep discussion on any topic from drifting into argument, and
bitter arguments do no one any good. So, to keep things cool,
when an article angers you, save it for a few hours while you go
off to a meal, or to do something else. Then come back to the
message when you are calm and relaxed (and have had a chance to
think out a good rebuttal ;-). You may find that, on a second
reading, the article no longer offends you so much.
Although English is the language in which the vast majority of
bionet articles are written, English is not the first language of
quite a few participants, nor are all native English-speakers
equally skilled at expressing themselves. Try to remember this
when interpreting the arguments made by others. More importantly,
try to appreciate that the bionet readers represent an enormously
wide spectrum of specialties, each with its own founding principles,
theories, literature, philosophy, classic examples, and techniques.
You can learn a lot here, and you can also teach others a lot, but
only if great care is taken to avoid excessive jargon. Although
almost all of us are biologists, it is nonetheless necessary for
each of us to write as though addressing a general audience of
scientists. And, anyway, the exercise will be good for you.
If you simply must say something highly critical, consider sending
it via personal e-mail, rather than posting or mailing to the group.
4) Special instructions for Usenet readers?
Please keep in mind that, unlike many other newsgroups in Usenet,
the bionet groups all have parallel mailing lists. Thus, you should
avoid cross-posting, since at this time those unfortunate people who
must use e-mail subscriptions will get multiple copies of cross-posted
articles.
The Usenet newsgroup news.newusers.questions has several useful FAQs,
including:
Answers to Frequently Asked Questions
How to Get Information about Networks
Rules for Posting to Usenet
How to Create a New Newsgroup
Bionet has slighly different rules for forming new groups; to request
an outline of these rules, send e-mail to biosci at genbank.bio.net.
5) Special instructions for e-mail subscribers?
You are encouraged to get yourself a Usenet distribution feed.
6) How can e-mail subscribers get Usenet at their site?
Way back in the dawn of the information age, people started to
create discussion groups and subscription lists. Some of these
became so active that it was a burden to wade through all the
electronic mail that came each day. So an alternative was created:
Usenet. Usenet software is free, and behaves somewhat like a familiar
e-mail reader, but with some significant improvements, such as the
collection of messages pertaining to a given discussion group being
grouped together.
Many people who get bionet by e-mail may already have news on their
machines and just don't know about it. Some of them probably just
need a newsreader on their PC or Macintosh to access a campus news
server that already exists (and possibly need to have the responsible
person prodded to get the bionet groups). Some of them just need to
be made aware of it.
If you are an e-mail subscriber, and you're tired of getting so much
mail, all jumbled together, try typing "news", "rn", "rrn", "vnews",
or "readnews" at the command prompt. If your computer does something
other than complaining about an unknown command, chances are you've
got news on your system and I would urge you to ask somebody how it
works at your site, and if your site gets, or can get, the bionet
groups. If your site has some sort of on-line help facility, try
looking for information about any of the above, and/or "usenet" and
see if you find anything. If it turns out you don't have news, but
you or your site administrator are interested in running it, feel
free to contact the people at biosci at genbank.bio.net; they will be
happy to do whatever they can to help you get it and learn to use it.
Or ask for help in bionet.general. But the best thing to do is get
copies of several documents which are posted in news.newusers.questions.
True, you can't read them there because you don't have Usenet, but
you CAN ftp the documents from the archive on pit-manager.mit.edu
(details in item 1 above). Some titles and archive file names are:
What is Usenet? what-is-usenet/part1
How to become a USENET site site-setup
USENET Software: History and Sources usenet-software/part1
8) Does anyone have an e-mail address for Dr. X?
The quickest, most efficient way to answer this is to call or write
to Dr. X directly. If anyone can help you with this, it's Dr. X.
To date, most biologists don't have e-mail addresses, or if they do,
they don't read their e-mail, so you really are better off contacting
the person directly. If you must try to find this information via
the computer networks, please start by reading the introductory FAQ
"How to find people's E-mail addresses", posted in news.answers.
Also, you can investigate the BIO-NAUT list administered on IRLEARN
by Robert Harper.
9) How to find a good graduate program?
Go talk to the undergraduate or graduate advisor in your department,
if you're a college student. Start browsing through the scientific
journals, and the new book stack in the library. Ask your favorite
professors for advice.
15) Are there other biology newsgroups or e-mail subscription lists?
There are lots; too many to list here, in fact. Send e-mail to
Una Smith <una at phy.duke.edu> asking for the file "bio-lists".
16) What is anonymous ftp?
"FTP" stands for File Transfer Protocol; on many systems, it's
also the name of a user-level program that implements that
protocol. This program allows a user to transfer files to and
from a remote network site, provided that network site is
reachable via the Internet or a similar facility. (Ftp is also
usable on many local-area networks.)
"Anonymous FTP" indicates that a user may log into the remote
system as user "anonymous" with an arbitrary password. A common
convention is that some sort of identification is supplied as the
password, e.g. "mumble at foo". This is sometimes useful to those
sites that track ftp usage. Also note that most sites restrict
when transfers can be made, or at least suggest that large transfers
be made only during non-peak hours.
17) How can I access ftp archives from BITNET?
BITNET is not capable of supporting telnet or ftp sessions, but
many BITNET nodes are also Internet nodes, so your site may have
telnet and ftp after all. If not, if your site is a strictly
BITNET node, you can use a service provided by Princeton University;
BITFTP at PUCC. By sending your ftp request to BITFTP via e-mail, you
can search anonymous ftp archives elsewhere, and the results will
be sent to you by e-mail.
18) What is gopher, and how does it work?
============================ Contributors ============================
Good ideas for format, etc. were stolen from the comp.text.tex
FAQ, by Bobby Bodenheimer. Other contributors include (in no
particular order):
David Kristofferson <kristoff at genbank.bio.net>
Harvey Chinn <harvey at ecst.csuchico.edu>
Andy F. Johnston <bm477 at cleveland.Freenet.Edu>
Josh Hayes <josh at cqs.washington.edu>
Jim McIntosh <jim at american.edu>
Jonathan I. Kamens <jik at athena.mit.edu>
Steve Clark <clark at salk-sc2.sdsc.edu>
Christophe Wolfhugel <wolf at grasp1.univ-lyon1.fr>
Ross Smith <smith at mcclb0.med.nyu.edu>
Roy Smith <roy at alanine.phri.nyu.edu>
Anyone who wishes to contribute a question or other information,
please e-mail me; if it is relevant, I will incorporate it.
Please format your contribution appropriately.
Una Smith una at phy.duke.edu
--
Una Smith una at phy.duke.edu School of the Environment
Duke University
Durham, NC 27706
