UFO FAQ (1994)/00 Introductory Material

About alt.alien.visitors

Alt.alien.visitors is a Usenet discussion group available through internet. It was the original UFO related discussion group available on Usenet. It caters to a wide rage of UFO related discussion from New Age UFOlogy to Scientific UFOlogy. It currently receives around 80 messages daily. More recently a.a.v has been joined on Usenet by alt.paranet.* groups which also cover UFO related material.

Although the Newsgroup is called alt.alien.visitors, both the group and the FAQ cover the whole field of UFOs, which depending on your viewpoint may or may not be the same as alien visitations. In addition to UFOs and alien visitation the group also includes discussion about life elsewhere in the universe and if they are coming here how they might get here.

This FAQ is designed to answer questions of people who are new to this Usenet discussion group, and designed to be a useful reference source to those interested in all aspects of UFOlogy.

Examples of UFO related material carried by other networks :

• Wildnet UFO Conference
• FIDO UFO Conference
• MUFONET (primarily in the USA)
• UFONET (primarily in the UK, also at least one USA node)
• PARANET (primarily USA, some parts relayed to Usenet)

Some UFO material also appears in alt.paranormal on Usenet, but this tends to be cross posts of material which also appears in a.a.v.

Posting to alt.alien.visitors

The following idea was suggested by matthews_k@cubldr.colorado.edu and is taken from mwauford@UTKUX1.UTK.EDU (Melissa Wauford)'s "*** REC.ARTS.TV POSTING GUIDELINES ***". I have adapted it to fit alt.alien.visitors, and I feel that this is an excellent idea. I would recommend that you use this system when posting to alt.alien.visitors.

alt.alien.visitors can be a controversial newsgroup with a wide variety of discussed topics. A few topics may generate more traffic than others and may contain subject matter related to UFOlogy that others wish to filter out or concentrate upon. In order to allow those who use rn or some other method of pre-selecting articles to filter out (or save away) postings about these heavy traffic subjects, an abbreviation scheme has been created. Please help out by starting your subject line with one of the following abbreviations when posting about these topics. For example:

Subject: HOT - Dancing Aliens

or

Subject: OP: Grey finger snacks,(the trick is in how you fold them)

New abbreviations will be added as needed. Send suggestions directly to me, and I'll add them to the list. Objections to any abbreviations should probably be posted so that a consensus may be reached. Old abbreviations will be deleted when no longer necessary.

Suggested Abbreviations by matthews_k@cubldr.colorado.edu: [revised by Fsdlk@acad3.alaska.edu]

Abbreviation	Description
ABD	Abduction information
CE	Pertaining to UFO sightings and phenomena, Close Encounters,alien contact
HA	Jokes & silliness
HOT	Someone flaming someone else
INV	Postings about alien invasions and conspiracies
MISC	Other categories like Atlantis/Mu/Spacemen, etc...
NA	New Age stuff NEWS = UFO related news, upcoming conventions.
OP	Opinions
REP	Repostings of older post like Lear, Cooper, etc..
SCI	Scientific (preferably not pseudo) findings on UFO related issues

Hints on Posting

Alt.alien.visitors is not a moderated group, which means that just about anybody can post just about anything. This arrangement will only work if people who post to a.a.v. behave in a reasonable manner. The following guidelines are suggested :

(1) Give every post a subject heading which describes as clearly as possible the content of the message

(2) Try to stay on topic. Do not post on subjects that are clearly unrelated to the newsgroup. Take them to the appropriate news group for discussion. If your comments are a message to a specific person then use email rather than post to the whole world.

(3) Messages are received by people in many different countries. Different countries use different formats for dates. In the USA, for example, people would read 3/7/94 as the 7th day of March 1994. In the UK the same string would mean the 3rd day of July 1994. Confusion will be reduced if people always quote the month either in full or by the first three letters e.g. 3 Aug 94.

(4) Be selective in the material you quote from earlier messages. Do not completely repost other peoples postings and then write your opinion about it. Selectively edit the the post to get the information you need from it to make your point.

(5) The subjects of UFOs and possible alien visitation are controversial. Many people have many different ideas about the origins of UFOs and alien visitors. It is unlikely that everybody will agree with every post made. Constructive critisism of ideas is encouraged, but do not get into 'flame wars' or hurling abuse. There are so few hard facts in this area that the person you think is an idiot may end up being correct. Be tolerant of the other person's view.

(6) UFOs and aliens can also be a source of ridicule from some people. Occasionally these people will send a message like 'UFOs don't exist'; 'you are all nuts' or 'get a life'. Ignore them, it is unlikely that they will be hanging around to read any follow-ups posted and it just wastes bandwidth.

(7) If you are sending a message informing readers that a TV programme or something else is on at a specific time, remember to state the channel and where it can be seen. For example, in the UK we have several channels broadcast by Sky TV. But there are channels in other parts of the world also called Sky. Better than saying 'tonight' state the actual day/date, some systems may not get the message out on the same day you write it. If you include the time either use the 24 hour clock or state explicitly if it is am or pm, and include the time zone.

(8) Avoid posting the same message to several newsgroups. Many people read a number of related newsgroups. It is a waste of bandwidth and everybody's time to read the same message several times. With the spread of Usenet more people are obtaining their news by dialup connections. It is costing these people real money to download redundant messages.

(9) The idea of Usenet is communication. Do not waste everybody's time by giving previous posters spelling or grammar lessons. Although Usenet is distributed to many universities and colleges, not everybody has a PhD in english. There are many different spellings of words in the different forms of english spoken around the world.

Although designed for alt.alien.visitors, these suggestions could be applied to both other Usenet groups and to other networks.

Example Posting

Newsgroups: alt.alien.visitors From: jonnY@BA.DOE.edu (John Doe) Subject: OP: Roswell Incident Date: Fri, 31 Apr 1992 16:54:39 GMT

In article <1597O38cc.040316.26314>truth@less.Dis.Info.edu (Ima Lier) writes:

  .. it was in 1936 when the UFO crashed at Roswell ... 
  Plus there were no witnesses!! Not a single person could be found 
  to bring forth testimony.
  
  According to my sources it happened in 1947 and lots of people saw it.
  How can you say... [Etc.]
  -JD

People who post to alt.alien.visitors

Readers and writers of a.a.v. are made up of:

A) People that have had contact.(Rarely post... obvious reasons) B) Government paid disinformation people. (Poor to fair fiction) C) Questioning/Inquiring minds (post weak questions, but mean well) D) Wanderers (Just passing through, make snide remarks if any) E) A few who think aliens are out there but haven't/won't come here. F) A few who think aliens are with us know but have had no contact. G) Aliens (Grey, life sucking, invader of utopia) H) Guys like me that just can't unsubscribe from this group. (It's just to much fun. Life looks darker and things aren't very clear. (guess this belongs in alt.consp....) But when all else falls through pull up a.a.v. and smile. Someone is always a little worse off than you are and here is one sure fired place to find one. I) People who are not contactees, or new-agers, or sceptics, but are simply interested in high-strangeness phenomenon of all sorts (and generally try not to post snide comments or be simple minded!)

Main Source: rocko@ireland.NoSubdomain.NoDomain (Rick O'leary) Other Contributors: MATTHEWS_K@CUBLDR.Colorado.EDU (Kellie Matthews)

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