On Thu, 11 Mar 2010, notbob wrote:

Another question. Being a big usenet user, but new to amateur radio,
I've been looking at all the groups available. This one appeared to
have the least noise for a general discussion group, so I posted here.
Is this type of question ok, here, or is there a more appropriate
group for rank newbie questions I'm sure to be pestering the ham
community with?

Well you're really confused, because this newsgroup has nothing to do with
amateur radio. There's a whole hierarchy, rec.radio.amateur.* that's
intended for that. They cover a wide variety of topics, and there's even
a moderated one.

This newsgroup is about listening. "Shortwave" is in the title since it
sort of defined what the newsgroup was supposed to be about, the same way
that back forty years "SWL" meant "shortwave listening" but often the same
people also did BCB DXing and monitoring the public service bands. It's a
description of the type of person, not the spectrum to be covered.

That confuses a lot of people, they think this is for amateur radio
because it's "shortwave". But it was never meant to be a place to discuss
amateur radio, beyond discussing monitoring the ham bands (which has
always had some followers). The charter defines that, and the fact that
there is a whole hierarchy intended for amateur radio should also
reinforce that. Besides. amateur radio isn't just about shortwave,
indeed while once you couldn't really get a ham license without starting
out on the shortwave bands, now I suspect there are a good percentage,
maybe even a small majority, who have never operated on the shortwave
bands.

Michael