Thanks Dale for your wise comments on courtesy.

The virtual-ink FAQ is very useful. I continue to feel that some light
information about roots and past history of this newsgroup might be a useful
addition. Thus as, for example, Google lists a "Timeline" of notable events
in Usenet (newsgroup) history on the Google Groups Information page at
groups.google.com (where that firm's very large archive resides), likewise a
few memorable events occurred in the circumstances leading to the present
AFW newsgroup and its current users. (I saw a few of those events,
certainly not all.) But a little context-setting can be useful, especially
for newcomers. As newsgroups progressed from being for many years the sole
public forums on the growing Internet (with its various earlier names and
adjuncts), to being the medium whereby Tim Berners-Lee disseminated his new
HTML/HTTP or "Web" concept in 1991, to being overshadowed lately by the
popularity and capability of those HTML tools, we now have a situation where
many Internet users are unaware of newsgroups, or confused about them.
Context is antidotal and has often been welcomed. Just a thought for the
day.

Incidentally one of the few disadvantages of reading newsgroups today
compared to the earlier days is that you no longer encounter the
automatically reposted "Netiquette Guidelines" reminders. They used to be
in the form of a re-posted article (from 1982) and in 1995 became formalized
as the well-known reference document RFC1855 (minus, alas, some earthy but
useful advice in its less-formal predecessor).


I wonder finally if anyone posting here from the US has already explained
that the "Thanksgiving" holiday is the US version of a harvest festival,
manifested in many countries since ancient times, through various holidays
and feasts. A widespread custom with local variations. Also of practical
importance to US wine merchants, French producers of Beaujolais Nouveau, and
to many turkeys personally.

-- Max