Forums
and Discussion Groups

Forums in CompuServe enable you to hear what other ordinary computer users have to say, contribute your four-pennyworth to the discussion, raise questions which others may be able to answer.

Forums are different from the CompuServe information sources, in which you can look to find pre-packaged answers to general questions. Click the WEATHER button or the QUOTES button, or GO UKSOAPS.

Newsgroups are the forums and discussions run on the Internet. There are said to be 14,000 of these. Some are exceedingly specialised. Others are extremely popular with several hundred messages each day. Compuserve Forums are moderated, and the Sysop takes an active part on the proceedings, deleting scurrilous messages, and keeping a lid on blatant advertising and spamming. As a contrast there are some extraordinary groups on the Internet, most off them in the ALT. series, even with explicit pictures in the BINARIES series. Many ISPs have decided not to carry the worst of these. But there is also some very good content and interesting discussion.

1. Forums

CompuServe has forums for every known subject. CompuServe send you a booklet with some of these listed. Or Click the GO traffic-lights in the toolbar and enter INDEX to search or download a full list.

New forums start all the time. Browse around until you find some that interest you. No need to join every forum you visit; you can lurk as much as you wish until you get the flavour of what goes on there.

To check out a forum, click the traffic-light symbol, or press Ctrl/G and type the name you wish.

I have used:

• NEWUSER
• WELCOME
• PRACTICE
• HELPFORUM
• FEEDBACK
• UKPROF
• UKREC
• TRAINER
• UKIT
• INETPUB
• GRAPHICS
• CONSULT

Not all the features may be available to you unless you join.

To join a forum, sometimes they ask you to click the JOIN box. In most cases there is no fee and no overhead. Joining merely shows that some people are interested in the topic otherwise they will purge it.

Forums that charge a fee are clearly signalled at the gateway and you can decide whether you are sufficiently interested to join, and decide also when to resign.

Forums used to be known as bulletin board systems (BBS). In WinCIM,when you select CREATE A FORUM MESSAGE (offline) the forums you have joined are listed, with the Section Heads.

When you first join a forum you will sometimes be sent a welcome message which specifies the rules for using that forum. Or look in the Library menu heading for something that says Rules, or Welcome, or such.

You will be well advised to just browse for a couple of days in a new forum to get the flavour of what goes on, and the style of the messages. Then you can dive in with confidence and make your contribution to the dialogue.

2. What is in a Forum

Forums tend to have four sections:

Notice Board

when the Sysop has something general to say, seen by everyone each time you enter the forum.

Browse

with a max of 23 sections per forum and a long list of hopefully meaningful subjects. Click subjects of interest and the associated messages will be presented one at a time; use <PgUp> <PgDown>within a message, <Rtn> to go to the next message. Some messages are boring; use <Esc> or click <Cancel> to come out to the list of subjects again.

Library

a dogs-dinner of miscellaneous files that people thought could be useful to you. Position the cursor and click Description to see what is in the file. Click View to read a text file on line, or click the Retrieve box to download to C:\CSERVE\DOWNLOAD You can contribute files to your favourite forum using CONTRIBUTE. The <F1> Help function is useful here. There is normally a FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) file for all key subjects. This may be the fastest way to find an answer. Or use the Search option to find the topic of interest to you.

Conference Rooms

where at pre-arranged times, usually convenient for evening users in California, you can see messages coming up from all over the world discussing the chosen subject.

As a trial, to place a message on a forum, why not create a message to yourself, with a forum name of PRACTICE. Messages on this forum are not answered.

3. Conventions

There are rules for each Forum. Download these from the Library and readthem. Ignore the rules too blatantly and the Sysop may write you a little note. Common rules include: Give your first and surname in the From: area; No blatant advertising, which normally means no prices. No bad language. No personal abuse.

There are also a few conventions that people should follow so that everyone shall continue to feel warm and comfortable about using CompuServe and the Internet

Private messages should go by E/Mail. On some forums you can do this within the forum using the M Mail option on the address header of a forum message. Or use the P Private option which has the same effect but keeps the message in the same thread, but only for you and the recipient.

Forum messages are normally written as a reply to an existing forum message. Contributing in this way preserves the thread, which is a valuable part of forum operation. In a reply, the forum name and the thread are inserted for you.

There are ways to copy and paste parts of the original message into your reply. By all means do this if you wish, but please select just a few words, not a great chunk; everyone read the original and do not now want to have to read it again. Not least of the problem with quotes is that the automatic re-format doesn't work in the quotes and the result looks a mess.

Exceptionally and if there is no relevant thread shown, then start a new thread with a name of your choice. In the To: field you can address to ALL or SYSOP. All means that anyone can answer. Messages to Sysop should be answered by the Sysop unless he or she invites others to answer. Using All or Sysop, the ID: field is left blank.

Do not send your message to more than one section. And be sparing in sending it to more than one forum. Multiple messaging is called Spamming and you may get Flamed.

4. Layout

Addressee is already shown on the upper banner. It is also pleasant to start off the body of the message with the addressee's first name, example: Andrew, or Hi Andrew

Subject must be meaningful. Words like Help, or Problem are not useful. What is needed is the subject of the question. Many people will skip unread, any messages that are not obviously interesting to them, or where the subjects are not meaningful. If there is more than one subject to discuss consider sending separate messages; they are free and quick. If there is more than one topic it may be difficult for any one person to give a proper reply.

If your comment does not seem to be a natural topic for the current thread, then start a new thread with a meaningful Subject.

Take a separate Paragraph for each point. And if there are many points then have sub-headings; like this document. If it is very long, then have a list of contents. There should be a blank line space between paragraphs; just press <Rtn> twice.

Messages to forums will normally be reformatted to suit the margin width of the recipient computer. If there is no double space between paragraphs then the words will be consolidated into a single paragraph. If you want to use single spacing but to start a new line, start that line with a space character

 thus
 and thus

Text should be done quickly and without too much agony. There will be spelling mistakes and typos; who cares; they know that we are not typists and this is not a published masterpiece.

But you must read it all through before sending it. Mistakes may entirely chnage the meaning.

Text should be allowed to word-wrap at the end of the line; do not press <Rtn>; let the system take you to the next line. The text will then reformat to a different margin setting when displayed or printed the other end.

Do not indent or tab; the message is held in ASCII (DOS-Text) and if reformatted the format collapses.

Avoid special characters. UKP or USD are the usual currency conventions.

If you use a wordprocessor to compose a message, save it to DOS/ASCII to remove the control characters. When you upload the file into your forum message, check it for things that have gone wrong in the formatting and correct them at that stage.

5. Do not get Flamed

Be Polite. On Internet if you are rude/racist/sexist you will get Flamed; people are even ruder back. In the same way jokes and sarcasm are often not understood, particularly by overseas readers, and it is therefore a convention to follow each joke with a symbol:

• <g> grin
• <j> joke
• :-) smiley face (looked at sideways)
• :-( bad news

There are many others, look for Emoticons file in the NEWUSER Library general section.

There are also some common acronyms used by the lazy or seeking to confuse. This is NetSpeak, or CyberPatois. It is not compulsory.

• BTW By The Way
• BRB Be Right Back
• BFN Bye For Now
• FAQ Frequently Asked Questions
• IMHO In My Humble Opinion
• LOL Lot of Laughs
• OTOH On The Other Hand
• OTT Over The Top
• PITA or
• PITB Pain In The Acronym
• PMFJI Pardon Me For Jumping In
• RSN Real Soon Now (like next year ..)
• RTFM Read The Flipping Manual
• ROFL Rolling on the Floor Laughing
• TIA Thanks in Advance
• TINSTAAFL There is no such thing as a free lunch
• WYSIWYG What You See Is What You Get

A longer list of acronyms is in the NEWUSER library general section.

6. Ending a Message

Every message must be signed off, otherwise you cannot be sure that it all has been read or printed. Finish a report by putting: END

On a forum message, sign off politely and add your name, hometown and country. If you leave out the hometown, it leaves every reader in the dark. Do you come from Surrey, Santiago, or Samoa.

7. Browsing

Browse messages are only displayed for you once. At the end of each session a HIGH NUMBER is recorded for you for that forum. Messages before that number remain on the file until scrolled off after a couple of weeks, but are hidden. Before they are scrolled off, you can look at them again by changing the High-Number field for that Forum. or specifying the message number, or using one of the more esoteric search options.

8. Delete

If someone sends you a private message you should delete it when you have read it. This frees up space for other peoples messages.

Do not delete public messages. You should not deprive others who may find the content interesting and have something relevant to contribute.

9. Automation

If you use Forums regularly you can automate the search for interesting threads. In DOS, AutoSIG is my favourite (GO PCCOM, Autosig section) . In Windows NAVCIS SE is a good package and a version is available for downloading for free trial. Go DVORAK, and download it, then follow the instructions to install it. It is a big file so you may want to do this early on a weekend morning. If you like this Shareware product you must register your use and pay them some money. Other people swear by TAPCIS, and there are several others. A range of different OLR packages work with Internet Newsgroups. I use Ashmount Virtual Access, which costs a few quid, but handles all my Compuserve messages, forums and Internet forums in one consistent format.

OLRs tend to work in similar ways:

• Pass One goes to the selected forum, and to the selected sections and then brings down the subject heads which have a current message number. You then mark the subjects off-line to select those messages you want to see.
• Pass Two collects those messages so you can read them offline. If you want to reply then create your message text while the topic is on the screen (still offline) and then:
• Pass Three to send the messages you have created.

Each pass takes about one minute so the telephone bill and the CompuServe on-line charges are minimal.

Automation makes it difficult to access information sources on CompuServe, so you'll find that the regular CompuServe programs are still useful. Make sure that you get the version you need, W95, W3.1, or DOS and if you want to use the Internet Newsgroups. On Compuserve GO OLR for more information.

Try one of these:
Ashmount Virtual Access- http://www.ashmount.com - which I use.
or on Compuserve GO ASHMOUNT
AUTOSIG Compuserve GO OLR
TAPCIS Compuserve GO TAPCIS
NAVCIS from http://www.peaktopeak.com
OzWin II Compuserve GO OZWIN

10. Who are You?

I suggest that you should put your full name, hometown and country at the end of the messages you write.

There is also a list of forum members when on-line, under SPECIAL in Search-Membership. You should put your name, address and brief profile in here using Change-Entry. Not everyone does this which is a pity.

Trainer Forum has a LIBRARY section [21] Member Profiles. This contains a file EXAMPL.TXT which tells how to submit your profile. Some other forums do a similar thing.

CompuServe MAIL has a Search-Membership option which contains information you submitted when you joined CompuServe. You can update your entry. There are many CServe users who seem to have avoided putting details into this section.

Finally, you can create your own HomePage on the CompuServe Internet area. An easy to use but very limited authoring package called HPWiz (Homepage Wizard) can be used to create the page. But soon you will need some knowledge of HTML language. What ever you use to create the pages, you will need the HPPub program which is part of the HPWiz package to upload it. These programs can be downloaded free.

11. Enjoy!