XPost: sci.bio.food-science, news.answers

Archive-Name: sci/food-science-faq/diff

Posting-Frequency: biweekly
Last-modified: 2014/04/18

RECENT CHANGES (18 April 2014):

Some changes to Where to download the FAQ. The temporary site name xvm-75.mit.edu is added and faqs.org is deleted, as it contains faqs
that are years out of date.

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INFORMATION FOR NEW USERS
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NOTES ON 'NETTIQUETTE:

Please read also FAQ 1/3, Part I: GENERAL GUIDELINES FOR POSTING IN
SCI.BIO.FOOD-SCIENCE

There has been a slow but sure trend in recent years for some
posters to get emotional or to bait emotional debates with their
postings. This is never a good thing, since discussions most
commonly deteriorate into name-calling and so on. Others wonder
why their posts hardly get any responses from this group. All this
is discussed here.

Emotional debates are common in any topic for which adherents hold
passionate, but opposing, beliefs. One of life's many paradoxes
holds that if you shout, you will not be heard. Keep your
conversations polite and cordial. The basis of politeness means
that you must realise that this is a text medium, and people
cannot see your body language to find out what you intend with
these words, and as a result most people tend to assume the worst.
You have to be extra careful in how you word things with others.

However, there are many other reasons your postings do not get
desirable responses. First of all, realise that this is a food
science newsgroup, and that most of the posters tend to tow the
party line of science. If you find this hard to take, there are
many other newsgroups that you might find more friendly. In FAQ
1/3, for example, the newsgroup has many explicitly-stated goals,
along with a newsgroup charter. These were agreed to and voted on
over 10 years ago. Charters and statements of goals are a fact of
life of all newsgroups under the sci.* hierarchy, and other
hierarchies as well.

While we welcome posts from anybody and everybody, you must ensure
that your postings are on-topic. Some newsgroups dealing with
other aspects of foods which we don't deal with:

sci.med.nutrition rec.food.preserving rec.food.cooking
rec.food.recipes alt.food.wine alt.food.fat-free
rec.food-veg rec.food.veg.cooking alt.support.diet
alt.food.vegan alt.food.vegan.science
alt.animals.ethics.vegetarian alt.sport.weightlifting.vegetarian
alt.support.diet.* (there are several newsgroups in this
hierarchy)

If you wonder why your posting garners few or no responses, it
could be due to several reasons, including: 1) Nobody understood
your post; 2) your post was not on-topic for the newsgroup, 3)
your post showed an obvious intent at baiting an argument, and
people properly ignored it, or 4) your post perhaps gave nothing
for others to respond to.
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This FAQ has been accepted to the *.answers newsgroups, and can be found in both sci.answers and news.answers.

DOWNLOADING This FAQ: This is not an exhaustive list. Pick a
site nearest you. All paths end in "sci/food-science-faq/"
except for Gopher sites, which use menus, and FSP sites, which have
protocols that I am unfamiliar with. FSP stands for "File Service
Protocol". There are several other sites not mentioned here. To get
the very latest list, look under:

<http://tinyurl.com/7f3v7>

Other WWW Pages with a copy of the FAQ:

ftp://xvm-75.mit.edu/pub/usenet-by-hierarchy/sci/bio/food-science/
http://sunsite.org.uk/public/usenet/news-faqs/
My website: http://foodsci.info/

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Professional food scientists, academics, and others involoved in the
food industry are invited to list their "favourite", or "most highly recommended" textbooks in the food science field to be added to the FAQ
for the benefit of non-food scientists. The following format is
preferred for ease of editing (loosely based on the Journal of Food
Science):

SUBJECT: Author(Year). Title. Edition. City: Publisher. ISBN. Comments.

The basic idea is to provide enough information for someone to walk into
a library or bookstore and order it. The ISBN number is essential.
Comments are optional.
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You are all encouraged to contact one of us if you have suggestions
additions, or other 'major' questions we haven't thought of. Our names
are:

Rachel Zemser, creator of the newsgroup sci.bio.food-science:

J Ralph Blanchfield, Food Science, Food Technology & Food Law
Consultant, Chair, IFST Member Relations & Services Committee and
Web Editor, IFST Web on the WWW

Paul King, Creator and Maintainer of the List of Common Abbreviations,
and New User Info: sciguy@vex.net

For a glossary of scientific, marketing, industry, technical and
legal terms of relevance to food science, see FAQ 2 of 3. For a list
of common questions and answers about food and food science, see
FAQ 3 of 3.

- Paul King








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