HOW TO GET FAQ LISTS (THREE AND A HALF METHODS)

Sorry, I'm not able to mail out copies of FAQ lists.  But at least I can
tell you how to get them for yourself.

When looking for an FAQ list, first do the obvious and check the relevant
newsgroup for articles with "FAQ" in the subject line.  If you don't know
how to check articles marked as read, your sysadmin can tell you.

Next, try the group news.answers.  FAQ lists for many groups are cross-
posted there.  Subject lines usually contain the names of the base
newsgroups.  For instance, all the misc.consumers FAQ lists will have
"misc.consumers" in their subject lines.  Again, your sysadmin can tell
you the commands to use in searching.

The articles in news.answers are posted in such a way that each version
should stay around at each site until the new version is posted.  But
some sites are configured so that this does not occur.  If FAQ lists
that you're looking for have expired in news.answers at your site, you
can get copies of them by FTP or email.

Jonathan Kamens of MIT's Project Athena has kindly set up an archive of
periodic postings.  By way of example, I give specific instructions
below for getting FAQs from comp.lang.c, comp.os.msdos.programmer, and
misc.consumers plus some general material on getting the most out of Usenet.

(For general instructions on the server, send email containing the
commands "help" and "send index" (no quotes, separate lines) to
mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu.  For a list of all periodic postings that are 
archives in news.answers, email the command 
        send usenet/news.answers/index 
to the server.)

via anonymous FTP
=================
Periodic postings including FAQs are archived at "rtfm.mit.edu" in the 
directory "/pub/usenet".  The structure of this directory is such that 
each subdirectory is a newsgroup name, and the files in the 
subdirectories are the periodic postings, which include:

    /pub/usenet/news.answers/C-faq/faq
    /pub/usenet/news.answers/msdos-programmer-faq/part1
    /pub/usenet/news.answers/msdos-programmer-faq/part2
    /pub/usenet/news.answers/msdos-programmer-faq/part3
    /pub/usenet/news.answers/msdos-programmer-faq/part4
    /pub/usenet/news.answers/consumer-credit-faq/part1
    /pub/usenet/news.answers/consumer-credit-faq/part2
    /pub/usenet/news.answers/consumer-credit-faq/part3
    /pub/usenet/news.answers/news-announce-intro/part1
    /pub/usenet/news.answers/news-newusers-intro
    /pub/usenet/news.answers/posting-rules/part1

Don't worry about the files that have a part1 and no part2; that's just
how the directory structure is set up.

via email server
================
The address of the server is mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu.  To retrieve files, 
send email to the server with a blank subject and one or more of these 
lines in the body:

    send usenet/news.answers/C-faq/faq
    send usenet/news.answers/msdos-programmer-faq/part1
    send usenet/news.answers/msdos-programmer-faq/part2
    send usenet/news.answers/msdos-programmer-faq/part3
    send usenet/news.answers/msdos-programmer-faq/part4
    send usenet/news.answers/consumer-credit-faq/part1
    send usenet/news.answers/consumer-credit-faq/part2
    send usenet/news.answers/consumer-credit-faq/part3
    send usenet/news.answers/news-announce-intro/part1
    send usenet/news.answers/news-newusers-intro
    send usenet/news.answers/posting-rules/part1

Don't worry about the files that have a part1 and no part2; that's just
how the directory structure is set up.
---------------------------------------------------(end how to get FAQs)
-- 
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems                    brown@Ncoast.ORG