I created several Usenet newsgroups for Ercoupe topics on my newserver
yesterday for anyone who is interested.  The advantage of newsgroups are:

1) The posts are easy to segregate by topic.
2) It is easy to add new groups for discussion of specific issues.  For
example we can add a group to discuss engine issues under maintenance if
there is a need for it.
3) You can read the groups whenever you want.  The messages are retained
for
a long time so you do not have to save them locally and they do not get
sent
to you as they occur.
4) There are very good tools (newsreaders) available for reading
newsgroups.
They let you search for items, catalog them and compose messages.  Windows
98 includes an ok newsreader (Outlook Express).  If you can click on this
link news://news.ercoupe.com then your email program is setup to launch
your
newsreader.

In general newsgroups are a better way to catalog and save discussions
than
a listserver but it is not as immediately interactive.  I would like to
see
if these groups are of some use.  I will be reposting some useful mail
list
items to the server.  Please let me know what you think.

Here is the first message I have posted to each news group:

The news.ercoupe.com newsserver and these Ercoupe news groups are a set of
USENET newsgroups for the discussion of Ercoupe, Forney and Alon (oh OK
Dave, Mooney M10 also) airplanes.  These newsgroups are retro-moderated.
This means that I reserve the right to remove posts that are off topic,
use
unacceptable language or attempt to start a flame war.  That said, I hope
that these newsgroups will build an online community of useful information
about Ercoupes.  The advantage of newsgroups over the mail list is that
the
newsgroups posts are always available and you can choose when to view
them.
Also there are very good newsreader tools for selecting what and how to
view
newsgroups postings (see agent and free agent at http://www.forteinc.com)

I have set the newsgroups to retain posts for as long as possible so it
should be easy to return here to see past postings.

Initially I have created three newsgroups:

ercoupe.maintenance  - discussions of repair and maintenance issues
ercoupe.performance - discussions of performance or flying technique
ercoupe.chat - everything else

I plan to be very strict about retro moderating the first two groups.
These
are technical groups, please do not post fluff or off topic items to these
groups.  The chat group is pretty much open to anything about Ercoupes
except flames, insults or rude language.  Poems, jokes, flying
announcements
(as long as they pertain to Ercoupes) are all acceptable.

Finally, normal USENET rules are in effect.  Please do not post in
UPPERCASE
except to shout.  Also post in ASCII text only, no html posts please.

If you have suggestions for addition specific topic newsgroups please let
me
know at [EMAIL PROTECTED]

--
David Abrams
Galactic Industries Corp
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://ercoupe.com





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