Newsgroup: alt.music.piano-technician

[Robert Scott]

Regarding the new USENET newsgroup, alt.music.piano-technician,
I occasionally participate in several other USENET newsgroups, 
and there are some pros and cons that I would like to pass along.

First the pros.  You normally get a look at the headers for
newsgroups before you decide which ones you want to read.
If the subject does not interest you, then you don't waste any
time downloading the article.  When you go away on vacation,
your e-mail IN box does not fill up.  The newsreader programs
generally organize articles into "threads" so that it is easy
to read all the responses in a single thread instead of having
to sift through all the postings in a listserv.

Now the cons.  People are generally much meaner in USENET 
newsgroups than they are on pianotech.  Don't venture there
if your feelings are easily hurt.  Also, junk e-mailers gather
up e-mail addresses from the USENET newsgroups to form their
junk e-mail lists.  If you post something in a USENET newsgroup
using your real e-mail address as the "reply to" address, you
can count on getting a lot more junk e-mail.  Fortunately, there
is something you can do about this.  Most newsreader programs
(like Forte's Agent) allow you to set a preference to use an
incorrect "reply to" address.  I like to use "noone@noplace.com".
This gives the spammers nothing to work with.  But then what if
you would really like legitimate e-mail replies to your postings?
Many people use a "reply to" address that is their real address
with some obvious bogus stuff thrown in.  Then you can include
in your automatic signature some instructions for legitimate
respondants to use in getting your real e-mail address, such
as "for my real e-mail address, delete the "NOSPAM"".

If you are already experienced with USENET newsgroups, note that
alt.music.piano-technician has no "s" on the end.  Bill Simon
posted that he could not find the group, but he used "technicians".
Also, it is a new group, and unless you have updated your list
of groups online recently, it won't automatically appear in your
list of groups.  If any of you have looked at the old newsgroup
called rec.music.makers.piano you know that it is mostly for
piano players.  Only rarely does anything of a technical nature
ever get posted, so this new group could really serve a different
need.  But when I looked at alt.music.piano-technician all
I saw was one posting.

Bob Scott
Ann Arbor, Michigan