The German classified job advertisement newsgroups: de.markt.arbeit.*

As one of the three moderators of the German-language newsgroups for offered and sought employment I would like to give you the necessary information. This new web page is examined and revised at present by my two new colleagues, Joris Teepe and Nikolaus Rath, so that we can represent it together in future - perhaps under a new URL, which you will find following a link on this page.

Contents

• Newsgroups, Usenet - what's that?
• What are moderated newsgroups?
• Which de.markt.arbeit newsgroups are for what?
• Checklist to advertise once by e-mail
• Checklist to become a Usenet participant
• Checklist for frequent advertising
• List of typical mistakes

Newsgroups, Usenet - what's that?

In order to participate in Usenet, you need a newsreader and the right to access a specific news server. A newsreader is a program to publish own messages, to delete (cancel) them again from all news servers and to read other people's messages. A popular, free newsreader is the Forte Free Agent. Further newsreaders can be found here. Also some WWW browsers can be used as newsreader, e.g. Netscape. In the configuration of the newsreader you define which news server to access. To clarify this you can ask your ISP, who should operate one.

Usenet is organised in the sense of a tree structure or a hierarchy and consistst of newsgroups on individual topics. Some newsgroups are discussion forums, some newsgroups contain classified advertisements, some newsgroups serve for official announcements, and in some newsgroup the users exchange pictures or music. The names of the German-language newsgroups begin with de. Therein the classified advertisement newsgroups begin with de.markt. The job advertisement newsgroups begin with de.markt.arbeit.

Usenet as interaction of so many people only works if regulations are followed, most of which were decided by a majority within a vote. Almost each newsgroup has a charter which determines what and how may be posted there. The charters of the German-language newsgroups can be found here.. Further regulations forbid spam, that's excessively repeating the same message or advertising the same service, HTML and binaries (attachments) except in special binary newsgroups and to post with forged e-mail address.

What are moderated newsgroups?

Moderated newsgroup are protected by the following mechanism: If you try to post something, the news server converts it into an e-mail to the submission address of the newsgroup. The moderator or the moderator team retreive these mails and convert them to usenet articles only if they correspond to the newsgroup charter and the other regulations. This has absolutely nothing to do with censorship, because moderators are elected democratically.

This mechanism causes that the messages appear delayed, only after the moderator had time to dispatch them. It also means that you can send the message directly to the submission address by e-mail instead of hoping that the news server will do so. You shoud observe that personal messages to the moderator do not belong there, because the moderator will more or less automate his work.

In the German-language Usenet the job advertisement newsgroups are moderated to enforce that comments and discussions are not mixed with the advertisements, but appear in the parallel discussion newsgroup de.markt.arbeit.d . Thus the advertisement newsgroups remain clear and can be scanned automatically. Vary bad experiences until 1998 have made this necessary.

Which de.markt.arbeit newsgroups are for what?

Offered jobs, no IT professions, not by recruiters:

de.markt.arbeit.biete.misc

Offered jobs, only IT professions, not by recruiters:

de.markt.arbeit.biete.it-berufe

Resumes (sought jobs), not by recruiters:

de.markt.arbeit.suche

Jobs offered and sought only by recruiters:

de.markt.arbeit.vermittler

Comments, questions, discussions, NO advertisements:

de.markt.arbeit.d

Newsgroup: de.markt.arbeit.biete.misc

Translated tagline: Offered employment.

Status: moderated

Submission address dma-biete-misc@moderators.dana.de

Translaterd charter:

In this newsgroup employment and other kind of jobs can be offered, as far as they don't belong into a different newsgroup within de.markt.arbeit.* . Discussions are not permitted here. Complete specifications include:

• activity and required qualification,
• where to work,
• form of job (contract / permanent position or other),
• where to apply,
• name or at least sufficient description (including branch) of the employer or orderer.

Advertisements with incomplete specifications are not permitted. Regular advertising for third parties by the same poster is not permitted. Advertisements for other job advertisement media and for recruiting services, e.g. profile data bases, are not permitted. Each sender may publish not more than 350 articles per week. If there are more advertisements, they have to be combined as articles with several advertisements in them. To facilitate automated search, advertisements within the same article should be separated by a blank line, left adjusted 30 dashes and a blank line, and each advertisement should begin with Subject: followed by a subject in the same line and a blank line. It is not permitted to advertise jobs which require that the candidate pays money to the employer or orderer before he can start the job. All articles must include the header: "Followup-To: de.markt.arbeit.d ".
NOTE: Please check each advertisement for honesty, before investing money and work into a new occupation. Consider also the weekly warning.

Newsgroup: de.markt.arbeit.biete.it-berufe

Translated tagline: Offered employment in IT professions.

Status: moderated

Submission address: dma-biete-it@moderators.dana.de

Translated charter:

In this newsgroup employment offers and other kind of jobs in IT professions can be published . This includes the development, installation, maintenance and administration of computer hardware, networks, system software and data bases. Discussions are not permitted here. Complete specifications include:

• activity and required qualification,
• where to work,
• form of job (contract / permanent position or other),
• where to apply,
• name or at least sufficient description (including branch) of the employer or orderer.

Advertisements with incomplete specifications are not permitted. Regular advertising for third parties by the same poster is not permitted. Advertisements for other job advertisement media and for recruiting services, e.g. profile data bases, are not permitted. Each sender may publish not more than 350 articles per week. If there are more advertisements, they have to be combined as articles with several advertisements in them. To facilitate automated search, advertisements within the same article should be separated by a blank line, left adjusted 30 dashes and a blank line, and each advertisement should begin with Subject: followed by a subject in the same line and a blank line. All articles must include the header: "Followup-To: de.markt.arbeit.d ".

Newsgroup: de.markt.arbeit.suche

Translated tagline: Sought jobs.

Status: moderated

Submission address: dma-suche@moderators.dana.de

Translated charter:

In this newsgroup exclusively requests for employment and for other kind of jobs may be published. Discussions are not permitted here. Regular advertising for third parties by the same poster is not permitted. Advertisements for other job advertisement media and for recruiting services, e.g. profile data bases, are not permitted. Each sender may publish not more than 350 articles per week. If there are more advertisements, they have to be combined as articles with several advertisements in them. To facilitate automated search, advertisements within the same article should be separated by a blank line, left adjusted 30 dashes and a blank line, and each advertisement should begin with Subject: followed by a subject in the same line and a blank line. All articles must include the header: "Followup-To: de.markt.arbeit.d ".

Newsgroup: de.markt.arbeit.vermittler

Translated tagline: Employments offered and sought by recruiters.

Status: moderated

Submission address: dma-vermittler@moderators.dana.de

Translated charter:

In this newsgroup recruiters can advertise offered and sought employment and other kind of jobs for third parties. They can also refer to their online recruiting services (e.g. profile data bases). These advertisements may not be posted to any further newsgroup within de.markt.arbeit.*. Discussions are not permitted here. Each sender may publish not more than 350 articles per week. If there are more advertisements, they have to be combined as articles with several advertisements in them. To facilitate automated search, advertisements within the same article should be separated by a blank line, left adjusted 30 dashes and a blank line, and each advertisement should begin with Subject: followed by a subject in the same line and a blank line. All articles must include the header: "Followup-To: de.markt.arbeit.d ".

Newsgroup: de.markt.arbeit.d

Translated tagline: Comments, questions, discussions.

Status: not moderated

Translated charter:

Comments on the offered and sought jobs can be posted here. Also questions on labour law and tariffs may be asked in this newsgroup. Also similar discussion topics are imagineable. It is not permitted to advertise offered or sought jobs in this newsgroup.

Checklist to advertise once by e-mail

• Authorization check
  • An employment contract or a similar agreement between an employer or orderer and an employee or contractor must be intended, the contractor being a single person, not an enterprise.
  • It may not be planned to break any specific Usenet rule deliberately.
• Configuration of the program:
  • Correct e-mail address in the From field and if used in the Reply-To field. It must be possible to answer to the article by e-mail to this address, the e-mail being read by a human. It is not permitted to falsify the address with "nospam" or similar.
  • Sender: First name(s), then surname(s) instead of company name. Recommendation: write foreign names in seven-bit ASCII.
  • Turn HTML off.
  • Turn off binary attachments (visiting cards, digital signatures)
  • Limit line lengths to 72 characters.
• Decide exactly one newsgroup (submission address where to send the mail)

  If job offered in an IT profession, then

  Mail to dma-biete-it@moderators.dana.de
  for newsgroup: de.markt.arbeit.biete.it-berufe

  If job offered, but not in an IT profession, then

  Mail to dma-biete-misc@moderators.dana.de
  for newsgroup: de.markt.arbeit.biete.misc

  If sought job, then

  Mail to dma-suche@moderators.dana.de
  for newsgroup: de.markt.arbeit.suche

  Recruiters may not advertise in any of these three newsgroups. They have their own newsgroup and need detailed knowledge of all the rules.
• Write the subject line
  • Not longer than approx. 60 characters
  • At least indicate what kind of work
  • Without "offered" or "wanted" because this is evident from the newsgroup (recommendation)
  • Location if it makes no sense to move (recommendation)
  • May not begin with Re:
  • Write in seven-bit ASCII (recommendation)
• Write message body
  • A message body may not be missing, the subject header is not sufficient.
  • Don't append any attachment, don't include any binary stuff like MS WORD *.doc, *.pdf or figure.
  • No HTML
  • Don't exceed a line length of approx. 72 characters
  • No tabular layout, because if it will be shown botched with a variably spaced character set (recommendation)
  • Don't mention any web pages which could already have been advertised excessively in the newsgroups by somebody else.
  • In job offers, pay close attention to the completeness:
    • activity and required qualification,
    • where to work,
    • form of job (contract / permanent position or other),
    • where to apply,
    • name or at least sufficient description (including branch) of the employer or orderer.
  • Do not introduce the text by any personal notice to the moderator saying that he please shall be so kind and publish the following advertisement.
  • Spell check (recommendation).
• If you attach a signature:
  • The separator line must consist of the three characters dash, dash, blank.
  • It may not exceed a length of 4 lines and a width of 80 columns.
  • Don't attach the signature which is attached to all articles by the moderator
• Send the mail.
• Remain attainable at least for the next couple of days and read your mail.
• Not earlier than approx. 6 hours after sending the mail, check if the advertisement appeared in the newsgroup. If it didn't, wait at least approx. 36 hours. In the lack of knowledge about newsreaders and news servers, you can inspect the newsgroups with a web-based service like Google. To determine why your ad possibly was rejected by the moderator, have a look at the the list of typical mistakes If that did not help, ask the moderator(s) by mail to dma-request@moderators.dana.de. Don't try to submit your advertisement again before solving the problem that caused rejection.
• Look for responses in the newsgroup de.markt.arbeit.d . In the lack of newsreader and news server knowledge e.g.. with Checklist to become a Usenet participant The following knowledge is complicated, but necessary before posting regularly. We three moderators do our best to make the job ad newsgroups available also to those who don't know anything about the newsgroups and just want to publish one single job offer or resume one single time by e-mail to the submission address. They don't necessarily have to read the follwoing complicated stuff. On the other hand, we expect that recruiters and other frequent posters know and follow the charters, the spam prohibition and the other Usenet rules in all details.
  • Look for a news server and the right to acces it. Ask your ISP or a commercial Usenet provider. If the news server is password protected (requires authentication) ask for a user id and a password.
  • Read the rules valid for that news server.
  • Look for a newsreader: Either the Forte Free agent or any other newsreader. Or determine if you are satisfied with the newsreader functionality of your WWW browser. Or, under a UNIX shell account, e.g. at the university, check if the nn or tin or similar is already available.
  • Read the instructions of the newsreader.
  • Determine whether you can cancel your own Usenet articles with that newsreader. This means to send an invisible control message, which causes the deletion of the article on all properly configured news servers. If the instructions say nothing about it and no button "Cancel Usenet message" or similar can be found, don't use this newsreader and look for a better one.
  • Configure the newsreader:
    • Name or IP number of the news server
    • News server password-protected or not (requires authentication).
    • If password-protected: User id and password.
    • Your correct e-mail address as originator of the messages. It must be possible to answer to your messages by e-mail to this address, the e-mail being read by you or another human rather than being processed automatically and discharged. Falsifying with "nospam" or similar is not permitted.
    • Your name: first name(s), surname(s) instead of company name. Recommendation: also foreign names should be written in 7-bit ASCII.
    • Switch HTML off. Also switch off multi-part messages (once as text and once as HTML).
    • Switch off binary attachments (visiting cards, digital signatures)
    • Limit the line length to 72 characters.
    • Don't let the news reader generate message IDs, it's up to the news server to do that.
    • Prepend a column with > to the text you quote when replying.
    • Connect to the news server and download the list of newsgroups.
    • Subscribe to news.newusers.questions and to all newsgroups containing "newusers" in the hierarchies you are interested in. If you unerstand at least a tiny little bit of German, also download de.newusers.infos. Subscribe to de.markt.arbeit.d and to the moderated de.markt.arbeit newsgroups where you want to advertise and to the corresponding one(s) where you want to look for advertisements. Also subscribe to alt.test or misc.test or similar.
  • Read the newsgroup news.newusers.questions and those "newusers" you subscribed to as far as you understand their language.
  • In the test newsgroup misc.test or alt.test or similar, learn how to post and how to cancel your own article.
  • Read the charters of the newsgroups where you are planning to post, if you know where to find them and if you understand their language a little. The charters of the German-speaking newsgroups can be found in the charta archive of the dana moderators .
  • Learn and understand the spam prohibition. First, read Tim Skirvin's FAQ. These regulations have been adopted with a smaller permissible Breidbart index within a different time period in many sub-hierarchies. In de.* this was decided by the majority within a voting procedure. As to the Breidbart index: A spam consists of a series of Usenet articles with the same content or advertising the same service. Each copy has been posted to one or several newgroups. Its contribution to the Breidbart index is the square root of the number of newsgroups to which this single copy was posted. These contributions are added for all copies and result in the total Breidbart index of the spam. Without crossposting, the Breidbart index is simply the number of articles. It is also significant in which time interval they were posted. The normal Breidbart index includes everything that was posted within 45 days. The BI7 - laid down for most of de.*, but not de.markt.* - includes everything posted in 7 days. Even if a specific sub-hierarchy of Usenet has its own permissible Breidbart index, copies outside that sub-hierarchiy are included when calculating it. Copies that have been cancelled already by the originator are not included. Hovever, people become very upset if somebody cancels and re-posts the same stuff nearly every day. Experience shows that this should not be done more frequently than weekly. Contents of a properly separated and sized signature are not considered advertising the same service if the articles obviously have a different purpose than just to spam the signature. These are the permissible Breidbart indices for some sub-hierarchies:

    Newsgroups	permissible BI	within
    de.markt.*	2	45 days
    de.alt.dateien.*	1	45 days
    other de.*	5	7 days
    at.anzeigen.*	1	14 days
    muc.*	2	45 days
    bln.*	3	45 days
    all newsgroups	20	45 days

    Example: Three copies of the same job offer, copied to de.markt.arbeit.biete.it-berufe, bln.markt.arbeit, z-netz.fundgrube.job-boerse are spam. However, it's no spam if only one copy exists and is crossposted to these three newsgroups.

  Checklist for frequent advertising

  • Follow the checklist to become a Usenet participant not only if you are new to Usenet. but also as experienced user to check if there is anything you have always forgotten.
  • Carefully read the charters of all newsgroups de.markt.arbeit.*.
  • Inspect the List of typical mistakes to see if there is anything you couldn't imagine even as experienced user.
  • Each time you advertise, proceed similarly to the checklist to advertise once by e-mail, however, with the following exceptions:
  • Recruiters, who may advertise in de.markt.arbeit.vermittler, should make it easy to distinguish job offers from resumes by the subject lines. Recruiters' advertisements predominantly are job offers. Therefore, resumes or job-seeking ads in de.markt.arbeit.vermittler should be clearly marked.
  • Instead of submitting the advertisements by e-mail, you can also post them with the newsreader as if the newsgroup was unmoderated. The news server will send the mail to the submission address in this case. Of course, you cannot expect your ad to show up immediately like in an unmoderated newsgroup.
  • After posting by newsreader: under no circumstances never ever forget to inspect de.markt.arbeit.d to see if unintentionally you posted there. If you did: cancel your mis-posted article immediately.
  • Don't advertise with the button of your newsreader that is for replying to another article (Followup).
  • Attempted crossposting to further newsgroups will be truncated by us. Depending on whose turn it's to moderate, the article will appear only in one newsgroup or in not more than three further newsgroups, which must be unmoderated and appropriate for such advertising.
  • You can increase your posting frequency to renew the same article from once per 45 days to once per week only under the condition that you cancel the previous copy every time before you re-post it and if you know and follow the spam prohibition.
  • About the mandatory "Followup-To: de.markt.arbeit.d " header: you don't need to know how to set it, because we, the moderators, do that for you.
  • Recruiters may advertise only in de.markt.arbeit.vermittler and not in any otther de.markt.arbeit newsgroup. The charter of de.markt.arbeit.vermittler is not a permission to spam. It still represents spam if outside of a correctly separated and sized signature web pages are excessively advertised and the articles merely are dummies rather than real meaningful employment offers.
  • For articles containing several advertisements, the syntax and frequency as laid down in the charters has to be considered.

  List of typical mistakes

  Severe violations of Usenet rules may result in an exclusion from further posting into the moderated newsgroups de.markt.arbeit without any notice. Thereafter, there it's no surprise if posting to these newsgroups doesn't work any longer.
  • Charter violations
    • Job offers or resumes in de.markt.arbeit.d
    • Job offers or resumes in other discussion newsgroups, e.g. de.soc.arbeit, de.etc.beruf.misc,de.alt.comp.sap-r3.
    • Mixing up job offers and resumes (wrong newsgroup)
    • Test articles to de.markt.arbeit newsgroups
    • Keeping the advertisement on a website, the text of the usenet article consisting merely of the URL of that website.
    • Renewal of an advertisement by clicking the Followup (Reply to newsgroup) button of the newsreader
    • Attempt to advertise the service of an enterprise rather than a single person in de.markt.arbeit.suche
    • Incomplete specifications in de.markt.arbeit.biete.misc or de.markt.arbeit.biete.it-berufe.
    • Recruiters' advertisements outside de.markt.arbeit.vermittler
    • Discussion in an advertisement newsgroup
    • Advertising recruiting services outside de.markt.arbeit.vermittler
    • Attempt to sell something to job seekers as pre-requisite to start the offered job, e.g. within MLM
    • IT-related job offers in de.markt.arbeit.biete.misc
    • Attempt to crosspost to more than one de.markt.arbeit newsgroup
    • Advertisements in muc.markt.arbeit which have nothing to do with Munich.
  • RfC violations
    • Falsification of the originator's e-mail address in the From or Reply-To header, inserting "nospam" or using a non-existent phantasy address
    • Message IDs don't end with the correct domain name
    • Completely wrong date (misconfigured computer)
    • The news server replaces the From address by a forged one, identical for all users
    • Attempt to renew an article using the Message-ID of the existing previous copy
    • Lecturer sets up an account just for the lesson, removing it after the end of the lesson, and lets the participants exercise how to post forged resumes with forged names using that e-mail address.
  • Spam and dupes
    • Desperate attempts to post over and over again because the article doesn't show up immediately
    • Repetition or renewal of an advertisement without cancelling the previous copy
    • Renewing an advertisement more frequently than once per week.
    • Posting to at.anzeigen.arbeitsmarkt and the same stuff elsewhere
    • More than 2 copies or crossposting to more than 4 newsgroups
    • Advertising a fascinating business opportunity which unfortunately has been advertised excessively already by somebody else in other newsgroups
    • Wrong separation or size of a signature which contains advertisements or mentions a web page. The correct separation line consists of the three characters dash, dash, blank.
    • Posting to the Usenet by a web-to-news interface if the operator of that service forges advertisements underneath other people's articles
    • Completely empty article (only with subject header)
  • Garbage and theft of resources
    • Binaries, attachments, e.g. MS-WORD *.doc files, PDF files, figures, digital signatures
    • HTML, Netscape visiting cards (vcard)
    • In the lack of informative subject header, compulsion of all users to open the article
    • In the lack of sufficient information in the article, compulsion of many users to waist their time with a website specified there and completely irrelevant for them
    • Theft of time at the expense of the moderators:
      • Abuse of dma-request@moderators.dana.de or personal e-mail address of a moderator as submission address
      • Questions to dma-request@moderators.dana.de which are answered already in this web page or in the sources of information specified here
      • Discussions on rejected advertisements or begging for deletion from the blacklist with the intention to repeat the same net abuse that caused blacklisting
      • Using a newsreader that can't cancel, then asking a moderator to cancel something by hand
  • VSPs (Vandalism Service Providers)
    • Only those ISPs take part in the Usenet who apply the rules that a majority of users (from all ISPs and domains) have decided, e.g. by RfD/CfV procedures. This classified job ad medium is no longer available for some ISPs who, instead, systematically support vandalism like spam or severe charter violations (posting to the wrong newsgroups).
    • If it turns out that unintentionally you are customer of a VSP (Vandalism Service Provider), you are urged to change to a responsible ISP instead of continuing to give him your money for a not furnished service and thus financing vandalism.
    • For the question which ISPs to mind, the upper part of the list http://www.newsadmin.com/cgi-bin/newsspam1 perhaps might be of relevance. We are not liable or responsible for this list.
  • Making a fool of oneself
    • Mixing up mail and news: unintentionally publishing something in de.markt.arbeit.d, which was intended as mail. The recipient does not even notice it, and others are magnificently amused.
    • Forgotten "X-No-Archive: yes" in problematic contributions in quite different newsgroups (sexuality, politics).

  We three moderators of de.markt.arbeit.* are still working on this web page and on still better moderation methods. We wish the job and personnel seekers who pay the same effort as we ...

  ... much success

        Henning Weede
        < dma request@moderators.dana.de >