Charter for news.announce.important

Moderated Group news.announce.important

CHARTER:

The news.announce.important newsgroup is intended to be a VERY LOW VOLUME newsgroup for general announcements that are so important that nearly everyone on Usenet should read them. While announcements about Usenet, UUCPnet, or the Internet are certainly within the scope of the newsgroup, in rare cases, announcements about other topics that are of great interest to the readers of the newsgroup may be accepted.

news.announce.important exists for the benefit of its readers, not for the benefit of the author of an announcement. No announcement will be accepted unless reading the announcement will be of primary benefit to the reader. In particular, this means that commercial advertisements, announcements of new programs, and other announcements whose primary purpose is to benefit the poster will be rejected.

Postings to this newsgroup must conform to these rules. Exceptions to the rules are at the sole discretion of the moderator.

(1) Announcements must be short. The target length is 20 lines, so that the posting plus headers fits in a single display screen. All extra text, such as .signature files, should be trimmed before submission. Long announcements (especially those over 60 lines) will generally be refused, although if they are posted elsewhere, a short pointer article giving the newsgroup, date, and Message-ID of the full article might be accepted if it meets all other criteria.

(2) News.announce.important is a worldwide newsgroup. Postings must be of worldwide interest. There is no way to make a local posting in this newsgroup: find a local announcement or general newsgroup for local postings.

(3) Cross-posting is generally disallowed. If the announcement is to be accepted for news.announce.important, it should stand alone. The quarterly posting of this charter, crossposted to news.answers, is an exception to this rule.

(4) All articles must be approved by the moderator before posting. In some cases, the moderator may ask the advice of a panel of other moderators, but the final decision rests with the moderator.

(5) Only articles of general interest to most of those using newsgroups are acceptable. Specialized articles should be posted to an appropriate special interest newsgroup.

(6) Discussions in this newsgroup are not permitted. Second and subsequent submissions on the same subject will be rejected. If a discussion is anticipated, include a Followup-To: header line to another appropriate newsgroup. (It is suggested that the same message or a pointer to the message in news.announce.important be separately posted to that other newsgroup.) If a Followup-To: header line is not provided and the original submitter has not provided a valid E-mail address, feedback to the posting will likely be lost.

(7) Postings must be of primary benefit to the readers, not to the poster.

(8) All postings must be in English. At the moderators' discretion, however, the English content may be followed in the same posting by content expressed in another language with the same meaning and sense as the English content.

Examples of acceptable and unacceptable postings:

"A new type of message will be posted to Usenet that will break any software older than 3 years, effective in 2 months. Please upgrade your software by then or disconnect the machine from the net". This would likely be approved.

"The Internet is running out of IP addresses, please conserve your addresses and give any you are not using back to the NIC." This would likely be approved.

"Please do not send any more cards to Craig Shergold, he got into the Guinness Book of Records years ago and no longer needs them, the cards are causing problems in the Post Office." This would likely be approved.

"We have a new wonderful spiffy product for sale." This would likely be rejected as being commercial.

"Call for Papers for the Computers in Astrology Conference". This would likely be rejected as not of general interest; it should instead be submitted to news.announce.conferences.

"The Australian Internet is in trouble - write your legislator". This would likely be rejected as of only regional interest; it should instead be submitted to a regional newsgroup.

"Dinette Set for Sale in Denver". This would likely be rejected as it violates most of the policies.

"The Former Soviet Union is announcing the sale of mining and mineral rights at bargain prices." This would likely be rejected as being too commercial.

"There will be a showing of the movie 'The Graduate' at the Student Union at 7 PM Saturday night." This would likely be rejected as of only local interest.

This charter will be posted to news.announce.important quarterly.

MODERATION POLICY:

The moderators shall operate in a manner that enforces the charter.

MODERATOR INFO:

All moderators are selected from the membership of the Big8-Usenet Management Board. The members of the Management Board are listed at <http://www.big-8.org/wiki/Big-8_Management_Board>. The Management Board may be reached via E-mail at <board@big-8.org>.

(Adapted from the original News.Announce.Important Policy, last modified September 28, 1993, by the previous moderator, Mark Horton.)