On Feb 12, 8:36 pm, "Moby Dick" wrote:
On Feb 12, 8:12 pm, "riverman" wrote:



On Feb 13, 2:40 am, Bill Tuthill wrote:

John Fereira wrote:

Thanks Mike. If the group is for more than kayakers (and that's fine),
then use all the dang keywords: "kayaking", "canoing", "paddling".
That way people searching for any of the above stumble upon the group.

This group isn't a Google group or Yahoo group in the same sense that you
may be familiar with. It's a usenet newsgroup and doesn't have any
associated keywords. Usenet was around long before Google or Yahoe or any
other web site (I've been participating on Usenet since 1985). This group
has been around for well over a decade (that's how long I've been
participating and there are several here that were around long before I). I
don't want to discourage you from particpating but it's not wise to jump
into a group that's been around for a long time and dictate to those that
have been partipating in it for many years how to use the group.

How does one add keywords to a Usenet group? It must be possible,
because I see (some) group descriptions in my newsreader.

I'm not sure what 'adding keywords to a Usenet group' even means.
There are some places in different websites and newsreaders where
there is a description of the newsgroup, but those are external
things, like wrapping paper. The group itself doesn't have a structure
that would have keywords, etc. Your newsreader is google.groups, so
you are seeing the web interface that Google puts on Usenet. THEY
provide a description of the group, but if someone is accessing
through some other medium or even another website, they won't see the
same descriptions.

Try putting 'rec.boats.paddle' into google. You'll get hit after hit,
all describing the newsgroup, but none of them will be the actual
newsgroup itself; you need a newsreader to access the group. Each of
these different newsreaders will have their own description of what
the group is, does, discusses, etc. Each of them will enable you to
post messages, but none of them are THE place where the messages are
posted.

HTH

BTW: Moby--don't stop posting on this thread. This is an excellent way
to learn some Usenet etiquette and meet the various folks who hang out
here. This is a good forum to ask all sorts of silly questions, like
"What does 'HTH' and 'BTW' mean?"

--riverman

So far the usenet etiquette strikes me as bizarre. However, I'll
continue posting. I've been posting to rec.woodworking (through the
Google font end) for years (although not as far back as "1985.") I
also moderate a Yahoo! group called signal and image proccessing. So I
know a lot of the acronyms like BTW. I'll DAGS HTH to see what that
means......

Ahh. HTH = Hope this helps.
BYW, DAGS = Do a Google Search.
IMHO, the Google interface is quite nice. You can rate posters and see
ratings of post so you don't waste you time with spam-like postings.
You can see the reply tree, too. Plus, you don't have to load any
special readers and junk. But of course, there's the tempation to top-
post.