Charter for news.groups.proposals

The newsgroup news.groups.proposals is for the announcement, discussion, and development of proposals for changes to the Big 8 hierarchies, as documented at:

http://www.big-8.org/

All official discussion of proposals as described in the creation documents and elsewhere takes place in news.groups.proposals. Proponents with active RFDs must conduct their discussions in news.groups.proposals.

Discussions in news.groups.proposals generally pertain to specific proposals based on a recent RFD published in news.announce.newgroups, although a formal RFD is not a prerequisite. Recently completed proposals may be discussed if, in the judgment of the moderators, further discussion seems useful, interesting, or informative. Discussion about the newsgroup creation policies for the Big-8 newsgroup hierarchies, the Big-8 Management Board, and the history and culture of the Big-8 and Usenet in general should be posted to news.groups or elsewhere, unless there is a clear connection to a specific proposal being discussed in news.groups.proposals.

Crossposting to unmoderated newsgroups relevant to a particular proposal may be permitted, at the discretion of the moderators. With some exceptions (such as RFD announcements and FAQs), crossposting to other moderated groups is not permitted. Content that is not conducive to the development of a proposal is disallowed, including personal attacks, derogatory nicknames, repetitive arguments, and flames.

news.groups.proposals is hand-moderated. In addition to the above restrictions, the following are not allowed:

• Off topic articles, as described above and specifically including:
  • Discussion of proposals relating to other hierarchies, such as alt.* or regional hierarchies.
  • Articles about "the news" or other world events.
  • General discussions not relating to a specific newsgroup proposal.

• Articles with unacceptable content, such as:
  • HTML
  • Copyright violations
  • Excessive quoting
  • Threats and/or advocating violence
  • Binaries, except PGP signatures, X-Face headers, and other ancillary meta-data
  • Personal and/or commercial advertisements, including chain letters, money-making schemes, and EMP spam.

• Attempts to subvert the system, such as:
  • Forgery or imitation of a valid e-mail address
  • Unauthorized approval headers
  • Excessive morphing/nym-shifting