offered jobs
sought jobs

The German employment advertisement newsgroups: de.markt.arbeit.*

As moderator of the German-language newsgroups for offered and sought employment I would like to give you the necessary information.

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. If everything works fine, you browser will launch a newsreader when you click on a newslink: news:de.markt.arbeit.biete.

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.

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?

Newsgroup: de.markt.arbeit.biete

Translated tagline: Offered employment.

Status: moderated

Submission address dma-biete@moderators.dana.de

Translaterd charter:

In this newsgroup employment and other kind of jobs can be offered. Discussions are not permitted here. Complete specifications include:

• activity and required qualification,
• location 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. 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 ".

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. 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:
  • Appropriate e-mail address in the From field and if used in the Reply-To field. Unfortunately, the advertisement will also cause loads of unsolicited bulk e-mail (UBE). It is recommended to use a temporary e-mail account only for this advertisement with powerful UBE filters.
  • 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 themail)

  If job offered, then

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

  If sought job, then

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

• Decide the language. Although de.* is the german language part of Usenet, it's not forbidden to post in English. Most Germans, Austrians and Swiss speak English.
• 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
  • Location
  • May not begin with Re:
• 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,
    • location 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.
  • Be careful with mentioning any e-mail address. Spammers harvest them automatically. You can write buddy (at) foo.bar instead of buddy@foo.bar or mention it only on a web page to which the advertisement refers.
  • 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.
• Send the e-mail.
• Remain attainable for the next couple of weeks and read your e-mail.
• Not earlier than approx. 24 hours after sending the e-mail, check if the advertisement appeared in the newsgroup. If it didn't, wait at least approx. half a week. 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 . It very often occurs that people mix up mail and news and unintentionally publish there what they wanted to send by e-mail. Also public criticism and questions are conceivable. For fastening your search, sort the articles by date or search for a typical string of your subject header.
• Do not publish the same stuff again in any newsgroup before 45 days.

Checklist to become a Usenet participant

• 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
• 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 name and e-mail address
  • 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, de.markt.arbeit.biete, de.markt.arbeit.suche. 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 what spam is and that it's not allowed. The rules and definitions for the whole Usenet are in Tim Skirvin's FAQ. Additionally, there are more restrictive rules for the German newsgroups.
  Definition of 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 standard 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.

  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

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:
• 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.
• Don't advertise with the button of your newsreader that is for replying to another article (Followup).
• 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 I as moderator do that for you.

List of typical mistakes

• 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 in 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
  • Discussion in an advertisement newsgroup
  • MLM and similar Ponzi schemes. Attempt to make unemployed job seekers become entrepreneurs. Attempt to abuse the bank accounts of job seekers for money laundry.
  • Attempt to crosspost to more than one de.markt.arbeit newsgroup
• RfC violations
  • Message IDs don't end with the correct domain name
  • Completely wrong date (misconfigured computer)
  • 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
  • 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 moderator:
    • Abuse of dma-request@moderators.dana.de or personal e-mail address of the 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 the moderator to cancel something by hand
• Embarrassing postings
  • Mixing up mail and news: unintentionally publishing something in de.markt.arbeit.d, which was intended as e-mail. The recipient does not even notice it, and others are very amused.
  • Forgotten "X-No-Archive: yes" in problematic contributions in quite different newsgroups (sexuality, politics).

I wish you much success

      Henning Weede
      <dma-request@moderators.dana.de>
      28835446 in your e-mail ensures that it won't be removed by my filters.