Usenet - at Usenet.com.au

The following is a list of some of the more common rules associated with netiquette on Usenet. Where the similarities are significant, the rules of Usenet etiquette also apply to email mailing lists.

The most important rule of netiquette is, "Think before posting". If an intended post will not make a positive contribution to the newsgroup and be of interest to several readers, it should not be posted.
Personal messages to one or two individuals should be sent via private e-mail, not posted to newsgroups. This rule is sometimes stated in other forms, such as "Remember the human".
Quoting should be interspersed, with a response that follows the relevant quoted material. The result should read like a conversation, with quotes indented to aid in skimming. A common mistake is to put all new text above the quoted material, without trimming any irrelevant text. This results in a message that is harder to follow and is less clear in context. Contributors are asked to remember that the reader may use kill files, that sites drop messages, mailbox quotas go over their limit, users might be dealing with thousands of pieces of correspondence a day and messages get delivered out of order. The assumption should be made that nobody has read or remembers other messages. Therefore, when responding, it is important that the author make the context clear in their response.
Posts should be trimmed of extraneous quoted material, particularly at the end of a post. For example, it is particularly undesirable to have a three line response followed by 800 lines of quoted text. The post should instead be trimmed by deleting the unused quoted text. It is not usually necessary to quote the entire message to which one is responding.
When responding to an article that was cross-posted to several groups, the poster should edit the distribution ("Newsgroups:") header to contain only those groups which are appropriate to the reply. This is especially true if the original message was posted to one or more inappropriate groups.
Posters are asked to re-read and edit their posting carefully before posting. The spelling, grammar, and capitalization should be checked. One should not be afraid about re-writing entire paragraphs. Typing in all capital letters usually denotes screaming or yelling, and this should be avoided. To convey emphasis in a less drastic manner, one may use these effects: *bold*, /italics/, and _underline_. When posting humorous or sarcastic comments, it is conventional to append an emoticon, but it is suggested that emoticons should not be overused.
Test messages should only be posted in appropriate groups. One suggestion for posters wishing to test something without access to a test group, is to wait until they have something worthwhile to say.
Posting should be done in plain text, not HTML. Most readers use a text-only utility so any HTML will be lost anyway. Lines should be kept to fewer than 70 characters, counted in a fixed-pitch font, as that allows for a reasonable number of levels of quoting on a 80 column screen without automated wrap.
Before asking a question, one should read the messages already in the group and read the group's FAQ if it has one.
There are groups that expect that when a question is posted, the poster follows it with, "Please reply by mail and I will post a summary if requested" or equivalent. In this case it is important that a summary is indeed posted, if requested; or, if only a few people were interested, that a summary be sent by email. This avoids the undesirable situation where several people post the same answer to the group and several others post "me too" responses.
However, many newsgroups follow the rule "Post here, read here" (that is, they explicitly discourage posters from requesting offline answers to topical questions). This is because there may be lurkers who would benefit from seeing the discussion unfold online, and because questioners often do neglect to post summaries of their findings.
One should consider the language of the target group. It is important to remember that while English is the lingua franca of the internet, many newsgroup hierarchies use a different language. Where, say, posting in German to English language groups is not appropriate, the same goes for posting in English in the German hierarchy (de.*).
Posters should be proud of their postings, but should avoid posting just to see their name in pixels. To provide perspective, posters are asked to remember that their future or potential employers may be reading.
A signature at the end of a posting should be no more than 80 columns wide and four lines long. It is signified by two dashes and a space on a line of their own, which causes everything afterward, including stray quoted material, to be counted as part of the signature. In the signature, one may choose to place their name and contact information, or perhaps a quote or a witty saying. One is advised to exercise in moderation in picking their signature. Signatures are not expected to be quoted in followups, and many newsreaders will strip them automatically.
Religious beliefs, political stances, or other strong opinions are inappropriate for inclusion when posting in groups where that is not a topic, even as signature.

There is also a netiquette rule for how to deal with someone who has violated one of the rules of netiquette:

If one believes that someone has violated netiquette, they are advised to send them a message by private e-mail; one should not post a follow-up to the offending post. It is important to be polite. The offending author may not have realized their mistake, may be a beginner, or may not even have been responsible for the offence — their account may have been used by someone else, or the address may have been forged. Furthermore, a person who breaks netiquette over and over, may be doing it intentionally to disrupt the group (see Internet troll), in which case public flaming over the violation would amount to what is termed feeding the troll.