Newsgroup Information
Information about the two Usenet psoriasis support newsgroups.
alt.support.skin-diseases.psoriasis (ASSDP) is an open, unmoderated forum for the discussion of all things psoriatic. Discussions range from the serious to the silly; from the theoretical to the very real. No question gets asked so often that someone won’t answer it, or at least offer up an explanation of why it can’t be answered easily. The newsgroup does not even have a normal, everyday “FAQ,” but instead has an extensive list of resources for information about psoriasis (also known as the PFAQ, it is maintained by one of the regulars).
Advertising by promoters of treatments is strongly discouraged, and may be met with sneers, jeers, and outright hostility (posting of ads to Usenet may even be an illegal act in some circumstances). Please read Ed Anderson’s User’s Guide and also, if you are new to Usenet in general, read Lost in Usenet for information applicable to all newsgroups.
You can also view, and write to, the ASSDP newsgroup through Google.
A personal suggestion is that when discussing drugs on the Newsgroup, please use as generic a term as possible. The same drug may have several different brand names in different countries, so much confusion can be avoided by using the generic names. This doesn’t eliminate all the problems (for example, anthralin is referred to as dithranol about half the time), but it can eliminate some.
Note that the alt.support.psoriasis (ASP) newsgroup is not very active at all, and is a likely home for few except for spammers and scammers. All reading and posting should be done in the alt.support.skin-diseases.psoriasis (ASSDP) newsgroup. If you find a link to alt.support.psoriasis, please be sure to inform the person who lists that newsgroup that it is, for the most part, unused and “dead.”
Update, May 8, 2010: And now, it appears that ASSDP is pretty much “dead,” also. Looking at the last calendar month, I count only 32 posts, and 23 of them were written by just one guy who has a peculiar and somewhat opaque posting style. Only two of the messages were spam, but considering how few messages are being posted, total, the signal-to-noise ratio is pretty bad. There are plenty of other online forums which are much more active and much easier to use than Google Groups or newsreader software.
Unreviewed Newsgroup-related Pages
Other Places to find the FAQ
Goodie Domain Service
Institute of Information & Computing Sciences
Internet FAQ Archive
Psychology & Support Groups Newsgroup Pointer
Vienna University of Technology
Unreviewed Lists of Newsgroups
The following are simply lists of newsgroups, which usually contain at least one of the two mentioned above.
Art Matrix — Lightlink
Computing for the Bewildered
Cotse.Net
EasyNews®
Health-Related USENET Newsgroups