Nan:2007-03-24-news.admin.moderation-lcc
From Usenet Big-8 Management Board
Subject: RFD: news.admin.moderation moderated (LAST CALL FOR COMMENTS)
From: The Big-8 Management Board <board@big-8.org>
Date: Sat, 24 Mar 2007 19:32:33 +0000 (UTC)
Message-ID: <nan.20070324193232$2449@killfile.org>
REQUEST FOR DISCUSSION (RFD)
news.admin.moderation
This is a formal Request For Discussion (RFD) for the creation of the
moderated Usenet newsgroup, news.admin.moderation.
PROCEDURE:
The B8MB plans to begin voting on this proposal after five days. Please
offer any final discussion or comments before the end of this waiting
period. Voting may take up to one week (7 days); a result will be posted
following the end of the voting period.
All discussion of this proposal should be posted to news.groups.proposals.
The full group creation procedure is documented here:
http://www.big-8.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=policies:proposals
NEWSGROUPS LINE: news.admin.moderation
news.admin.moderation Technical and social issues of newsgroup moderation. (Moderated)
SUMMARY OF DISCUSSION:
From the beginning, the proposal for the group, news.admin.moderation, was
met with a broad range of support for it's creation.
There were several discussions that took place mainly in news.groups.proposals
and via the mailing list as well as other sub-discussions in news.groups in
regards to this proposal.
The main subjects discussed were as follows:
1. Suggestion: add a provision in the moderation policy for adding or
removing moderators.
Conclusion: the suggested text is in the moderation policy.
2. Suggestion: the next RFD should include a mention of using the Reply-To
method of keeping real email addresses out of the From field.
Conclusion: the 'bot will look at the Reply-To address if it is set.
3. Should the new group allow or disallow discussions as to whether
"moderation is good or bad"?
Conclusion: the general consensus was that allowing these discussions
would not be conducive to allowing any *other* discussions in the
proposed group, and therefore must be ruled off-topic if the new group
is to be useful. These discussions will remain on-topic in news.groups,
news.admin.censorship, and elsewhere.
4. Discussion of other subjects deemed on or off topic for the group?
Several people active participated in discussion of what exactly would
be on-topic or off-topic for this group.
Conclusion: Sections of the charter were rewritten or added to, to
fully describe the subject matters deemed acceptable or unacceptable
within the new group. See below.
5. Should news.admin.moderation be a moderated group?
Conclusion: after a lively discussion on news.groups, it was determined
that NAM must be created as a moderated group, so as to prevent the
otherwise-expected off-topic posting, especially the fore-mentioned
'is moderation good or bad' discussion.
RATIONALE: news.admin.moderation
Currently, newsgroup moderation is discussed primarily in meta-discussions
throughout the Big-8 hierarchies, especially in news.groups.* and
news.admin.net-abuse.*. However, none of these newsgroups is truly
appropriate for these discussions. A dedicated newsgroup would help
consolidate and nurture these conversations.
CHARTER:
news.admin.moderation is a moderated newsgroup for discussion of newsgroup
moderation. Some suitable topics for discussion include:
* how to be a good moderator
* moderation "best practices" - for example, how/whether articles should
be edited before approval; should articles be re-directed to other
newsgroups; how should article rejections be handled
* developing appropriate moderation policies and implementations
* methods for filling vacancies in a moderation team
* moderation software and moderation hosting services
* whether moderation is appropriate for a specific topic
* what to do if the moderator of a group you use disappears, and other
problems with specific moderated groups
* whether it would be appropriate to propose demoderating a specific
group (the actual proposal, if made, would be to the appropriate
configuration newsgroup)
Unsuitable topics include:
* discussion of moderation of web forums, mail lists, etc, except in
as much as they pertain to newsgroup moderation
* actual proposals for a new moderated newsgroup (such discussion
should occur in news.groups.proposals or other configuration
newsgroups)
* "moderation in general: good or bad?"
* flames, attacks and derogatory comments or nicknames
Minimal crossposts may be allowed at the discretion of the moderators.
MODERATION POLICY: news.admin.moderation
news.admin.moderation is team-moderated, based on the above criteria.
Ideally, most posts will be automatically approved by a robot moderator,
to improve post turnaround time and reduce moderator load.
Users will be added to a group whitelist after a small number (typically
1-5) of hand-moderated posts. Users may be removed from the whitelist at
the discretion of the moderators. Site and subject watchlists and
blocklists may be implemented to monitor group content and to stop
forgers and abuse; posts so marked will (generally) be kept for manual
approval, and not automatically rejected.
A current list of posting criteria will be published regularly.
Posting with a non-replyable or "munged" address is strongly discouraged.
If you feel that you must use a munged address, you are encouraged to
append ".invalid" to the end of the munged email address to indicate
that the address is not deliverable even when ".invalid" is stripped from
the end; in any case, the moderators will not attempt to unmunge any
addresses. Users who do not munge their email address will be notified of
rejected submissions via email. Note that submissions may be filtered to
remove spam, spews, and other attacks.
MODERATOR INFO: news.admin.moderation
Lead Moderator: Nigel Sixsmith <n6smith@gmail.com>
Technical Moderator: Tim Skirvin <tskirvin@killfile.org>
Moderator: Kevin A. Cannon <kcannon@insurgent.org>
Moderator: Marcel Beaudoin <marcel.beaudoin@gmail.com>
Moderator: Charles Calvert <nam@celticwolf.net>
Backup Moderator: Steve Bonine <spb@pobox.com>
Backup Moderator: Vito Kuhn <fam.admin@gmail.com>
Backup Moderator: Doug Freyburger <dfreybur@yahoo.com>
Backup Moderator: Nancy Leitner <gnn4ever@surewest.net>
Advisory Moderator: Kathy Morgan <kmorgan@aptalaska.net>
If the moderation team decides that more members are needed, they may
post an invitation for new volunteers. New members must be approved by
simple majority vote of the current moderation team. A member of the
moderation panel may be expelled by 2/3 majority vote of the other team
members.
Article Submissions: news-admin-moderation@killfile.org
Administrative Contact: news-admin-moderation-request@killfile.org
DISTRIBUTION:
This document has been posted to the following newsgroups:
news.announce.newgroups
news.groups.proposals
news.admin.announce
news.software.nntp
news.admin.net-abuse.policy
The proponent will also post pointers to:
moderators@isc.org mailing list
news.groups
news.admin.censorship
PROPONENT:
Tim Skirvin <tskirvin@killfile.org>
CHANGE HISTORY:
2007-02-22 1st RFD
2007-03-01 2nd RFD
2007-03-15 3rd RFD
2007-03-24 4th RFD/LCC
