he wrote:
]  thank you for your message. i'm sorry that i coursed you some trouble. i
]  didn't know that i couldn't post certain message on some email address.
]
]  please tell me whether i can post the ad. for housing to the following
]  addresses:
]  uic.wanted, uic.general, chi.wanted, chi.forsale and uic.wanted.housing

Repeat after me:
        Netnews is not email, email is not netnews.

Email is delivered to the specific people that it is addressed to. It
arrives in their filespace, takes up their quota, and is a personal
matter between the sender and the receiver. Unsolicited email is
_extremely_ bad manners, it's like sending someone a fax they didn't
ask for.

Netnews is more of a (collection of) discussion forum (fora). The
message you post is kept in a communal space on many news servers for
the public to read. This makes it an obvious place to put
advertisements, due to the large audience. It also means that people
get very tired of seeing ads in discussion.

Imagine if you were having a student organization meeting and I came
into the room, interrupted everyone to announce that you can buy pieces
of the Berlin wall for $50 at www.berlinwall.com, and left. It's not as
bad as unsolicited email, but it annoys more people, so separate
newsgroups were created for ads.

Many people are very militant about keeping ads out of their
conversation. Heck, some of them are very militant about keeping the
conversation "on-topic". To keep readers informed newsgroups usually
have a charter that explains the purpose of the newsgroup, and often an
FAQ. One or both of these are often posted at regular intervals. If they
aren't on our news server, search for them on a news archive site like
www.deja.com, or www.remarq.com, and perhaps post a message to the
group asking if someone would post the charter and/or FAQ.

When someone does something that is offensive, or prohibited by the
charter, people complain to the news admin for the poster's news server,
in your case me, and expect to see the behavior cease. I then take
punitive action against the offender, usually an official warning for
first offences, and account suspension for further offences.

Newsgroups are named to reflect the topic of the conversation that they
carry. This means that advertisements belong in newsgroups with names
that contain for-sale, wanted, marketplace, want-ads, or classifieds.
Newsgroups like chi.general, or uic.general are for discussions that do
not have a specific newsgroup, but are related to the region they
represent. Ads do not belong in .general groups unless there is no
corresponding group designated for ads.

Most of what I have said is repeated in the messages in the newsgroups
created to promote good network ettiquette:
news.newusers.questions, news.announce.newusers, and alt.newbie,
amoungst others.

In the case of your apartment ad, I would post to:
        uic.wanted.housing      because an apartment is housing.
        uic.wanted              because uic.wanted.housing is new, and
                                you want your ad seen.
        chi.wanted              because not everyone is Chicago goes to
                                UIC, and you're not advertising a dorm
                                contract.
and     chi.forsale             because the line between what belongs
                                in chi.wanted vs. what belongs in
                                chi.forsale is blurry.