Archive-name: europa/faq-en-intro-europa (v.1.0.) Posting-frequency: monthly Version: 1.0 (01/26/2001)
This FAQ is maintained by the europa.* steering group. Please send your comments and suggestions to: contact@europa.usenet.eu.org
Table of contents
1. What is europa.* ?
Europa.* is an international hierarchy for topics covering the continent
of Europe. It enables discussion between people from different european
countries. More information can be found on the europa.* website:
http://www.europa.usenet.eu.org/
For an actual list of europa.* newsgroups, please refer to the current
europa-checkgroups, which can be found here:
http://www.europa.usenet.eu.org/checkgrps.html
1.1. What do you call "Europe" ?
Europe is defined as a geographical entity that includes Russia (whose
most inhabitants live in Europe) and Turkey. It is not restricted to
any political and/or economical entity like the European Union.
Of course, messages are welcome from any contributor, european or
non-european, provided that their subjects concern european topics.
1.2. Which language should I use on europa.* ?
Europa.* is a multilingual hierarchy, i.e. messages are allowed in any
language in use in Europe. There is no 'reference language' on europa.*
and multilingual threads are encouraged.
Every document, like this FAQ, is published in as many languages as
possible. If you consider that some document is missing a translation
in a special language, you can send a message to the steering group at:
contact@europa.usenet.eu.org and, much better, propose a
translation of your own. :-)
1.3. How do we manage such multilingual threads without confusion ?
First of all, you should inform other people about the languages you
understand (even when you are not fluent in writing them). You are
therefore advised to state it clearly in your posts. For example, these
languages can be put in your signature, using the (iso-639) two-letters
international codes, ftp://dkuug.dk/i18n/ISO_639 like in the example
below :
John Doe [ia,en,fr,de,nl,es,it,ru,pl,dk].
Depending on your newsreader specifications, you can also create the
header [X-Accept-Language: ] with the same iso-639 language codes.
When starting a new subject, you may wish to indicate the preferred
language codes in the subject header. However, this will not prevent
anyone from replying in other languages, and may well become
inaccurate as the thread progresses. On the other hand, it may be
useful for people attempting to filter out messages they are unable
to read. Conventions may vary from group to group so look at the
existing threads before starting a new one.
1.4. What's this strange language used for groups names ?
It is Interlingua. When creating europa.*, it appeared not to be a good
idea to mix european languages in the names of newsgroups, nor putting
them in one language (English or another one), since that would have
compromised the principles of multilinguism and language neutrality.
Instead, newsgroups names are borrowed from Interlingua, a paneuropean
language that was designed by a team of linguists to be comprehensible
for a maximum amount of people (see http://www.interlingua.com/ ).
These are clean, non-arbitrary international forms that almost
everybody understands at first sight, no matter which european language
they speak.
During the third RFD (Request for Discussion) for the creation of
europa.*, Martijn Dekker wrote a "rationale for the use of Interlingua
for the names of the europa.* groups" that is to be found on:
http://www.europa.usenet.eu.org/interlingua.html
1.5. But newsgroups descriptions lines are not in Interlingua ?
No, they are not indeed. By the way, it appeared that a few newsgroups
names in Interlingua were difficult to understand to some people.
Therefore, rather than in Interlingua, descriptions lines of newsgroups
are multilingual, with a restriction to the languages most
representative for each of the linguistic (sub)families, due to lack of
space on a 80-characters line.
For more about the newsgroups descriptions line see:
http://www.europa.usenet.eu.org/gn-desc.htm#gnds-eng
2. Who steers europa.* ?
Here are the members of europa.* hierarchy's steering group:
(see also http://www.europa.usenet.eu.org/steering.html )
Coordinator and Website management:
Andy Roberts [en,fr,ia]
andy.roberts@zetnet.co.uk
PGP Key holder and cmsg issuing:
Mario Benvenuti [it,en]
mario@computerville.it
Editors:
Martijn Dekker [nl,ia,en,sv,no,da,de,fr,es,it,pt,af]
martijn@inlv.demon.nl
Philippe Vigeral [fr,en,es,ia,ca,it,pt]
phv@pottok.org
Marcin Dębowski [pl,en,de,ru,nl]
agatek@notrix.net
Modesto Garrido [es,en]
modegar@idecnet.com
Simon Paquet [de,en]
sipaq@gmx.de
Peter Alfredsen [dk,en,ge,sv,no,nl]
peteralf@fabel.dk
3. What are the good practice rules on europa.* ?
Usual Usenet rules for posting of course applies to europa.* and some
more are requested by its specific multilingual nature:
3.1. Language
As stated above (see 1.3.), you are advised to state clearly in your
posts what languages you can understand, even if you are not fluent
in writing them. On the other hand, when answering, please do your
best to use a language you are aware the previous sender understands.
3.2. Cultural differences and xenophobia
Discussion about the cultural diversity of the different european
nationalities is a natural topic for many europa.* groups but please be
sensitive to the people who may be reading and avoid making any remarks
which could be received as racist or xenophobic.
When confronted with overtly xenophobic or racist posts, you are
advised *not* to answer but, if their sender can be identified, to
lodge a complaint against him with his internet provider's abuse
service (abuse@ISP.name) with a copy of complete headers of offending
posts. And, of course, put this lovely guy in your kill-file.
3.3. Crossposts and followup-to:
Should an article be on topic in several newsgroups, a crosspost on
these groups can be done, provided that a followup-to is put on one
newsgroup only, with an indication of it in the body of the message.
This is true inside europa.* hierarchy and also for crossposts with
newsgroups belonging to other, national or linguistic, hierarchies,
so that they are not imposed articles written in another tongue than
their own.
3.4. Top posting
Replies should be posted below the previous message, quoting enough
to provide context, or interspersed amongst the relevant points. Top
posters can be gently reminded of this, but please don't abuse them
or perpetuate long arguments about it.
Philippe Vigeral
