This e-mail message has been sent automatically to you by the Juggling Information Service, because you posted your first article in rec.juggling. This is the only copy you will get, unless you post with a different e-mail address. (If you think that you have received this post in error, it may be because you followed up to an article that was cross posted to rec.juggling. If you receive multiple copies, it may be because you have posted from several machines with different return addresses.) First of all, a big *Welcome* from the on-line community of Jugglers. If you have not already read it, the first thing you should become familiar with is the rec.juggling Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) file at http://www.juggling.org/FAQ.txt . This file answers the following questions: 1. What is the Juggling Information Service? 2. Is there a news to mail gateway for rec.juggling? 3. What is Mills Mess? How can I do Mills Mess? 4. What is contact juggling? 5. Are there any organizations for jugglers? 6. What do all those funny numbers mean? 7. Are there any books that deal with juggling? 8. How can I learn to juggle five balls? 9. Is there a juggling club that meets near me? 10. Where can I buy juggling props? 11. Where can I learn about the history of juggling? The second thing you should read is Luke Burrage's Complete Juggling FAQ at http://www.jugglingdb.com/faq/ which answers a longer list of questions in Luke's inimitable style. If the message you just posted was one of these questions, do not expect anyone to reply (except perhaps me poking gentle fun at you). Next you should know about the best collection of juggling information anywhere, the Juggling Information Service (JIS), which can be reached using the World Wide Web (WWW) at http://www.juggling.org/ . If you do not have WWW access you can reach the JIS by e-mail, FTP or telnet as described in the FAQ. It contains information on club meetings and festivals, pictures and animations of jugglers, reviews of books and movies, historical and scientific articles, help files for all the popular props and tricks, back issues of juggling magazines, and every post ever made to rec.juggling (including yours!). This is a tremendous resource which will answer most of your juggling questions. Another great resource is the Internet Juggling Database at http://www.jugglingdb.com/ . The club meeting information at the JIS has not been updated recently, and more up to date information can be found at on this web site at http://www.jugglingdb.com/clubs/ . If you are new to the net, read the articles in the newsgroup called news.announce.newusers. These contain a guide to some basic rules for behavior on-line -- called 'netiquette'. Half an hour spent here will save you a lot of embarrassment later. In particular read the article entitled "A Primer on How to Work With the Usenet Community." You can post questions in news.newusers.questions. Many hundreds of people post to rec.juggling, and tens of thousands read at least some of it. Like any community, we have some behaviors which are considered appropriate, and some which are not. Here are some hints as to which is which -- not that anyone is insisting that you behave in a certain way (you are, after all, a juggler) -- we're just trying to let you know that you will get far more positive results if you avoid the "don'ts" listed below. Appropriate things to post about on rec.juggling are: juggling shows you have seen, personal juggling milestones, questions that are not covered by the FAQ and JIS, conventions or workshops you are organizing or have attended, future shows (featuring yourself or other jugglers), exciting advances in site-swap theory, original humor, etc. The definition of 'juggling' used here is fairly broad. We have had discussions on knife throwing, unicycling, trick roping, bullwhip cracking, fire eating, tightrope walking, yo-yoing, plate spinning and many other forms of object manipulation. Read the sort of stuff that gets posted if you want more ideas. It's OK to post if you have a job for a juggler, provided you post once only and include full details of location, duration and pay. If you use a .sig file, keep it down to four lines or less. (A .sig file generally contains your e-mail address and other contact information and is automatically appended to your posts by some news readers.) Some .sigless posters to rec.juggling prefer to add a note saying what their .sig file is doing rather than appearing at the bottom of their post -- feel free to join in. Now here are some "don'ts": Don't post articles that are not relevant to juggling. Don't post questions that are answered by the FAQ or thoroughly explored in the JIS. This means you should get to know and love (and contribute to) your JIS archives. Don't quote an entire article, just to add a one line comment. Only quote enough of the article so that your comment will make sense. Don't post an answer to a question before reading all follow-ups, so you won't repeat what has already been said. Don't post articles with lines that are wider than 80 characters. Try to keep them under 72 if possible, so that there is room for them to be quoted. Don't post tests to rec.juggling. Use your local *.test newsgroup instead. Don't use ALL UPPER CASE - it's the equivalent of shouting. If you really can't manage a shift key, stay in lower case. Don't post pictures or other binary files. They take up too much bandwidth. Put them on a web page and post the URL instead. Don't post responses to commerical spam, virus warnings, etc. Many newsfeeds block spam postings, and the only way many people will know it ever happened is if you post a follow up. Don't waste everyone's time. Don't assume everyone else is from the same country that you are. Rec.juggling has many jugglers from North America and Europe, not to mention the Australasians, Asians, Africans and Latin Americans. Be tolerant of posters for whom English is a second language. Don't post advertisements for products that you sell. Don't do it. Don't even think about it. If anything, it will make people less likely to buy from you than if you don't post at all. It is acceptable to include one line in your .sig file indicating that you are a vendor. It's OK to respond to a request for information about your products, but if they are available from other sources you should list these as well. (You will not lose business doing this if your prices are the same - people on the net prefer to buy from other people on the net.) If you have a juggling prop that is genuinely new and unique, then it is OK to post a single announcement. Don't post the same message more than once. If you didn't get an answer the first time, you won't get one the next. Above all, don't take anything that I, Andrew Conway, post seriously. If your first post violated one of the "don'ts", don't worry, and don't bother posting just to apologize. We will all be looking forward to seeing a better post from you next time. Please feel free to send suggestions for changes or improvements to this document to: conway@juggling.org (Andrew Conway)