Nan:2006-11-18-proposals-welcome
From Usenet Big-8 Management Board
From: ngp-board@ngp.big-8.org (news.groups.proposals Moderation Team)
Subject: [ADMIN] Welcome to news.groups.proposals!
Newsgroups: news.groups.proposals, news.groups
Followup-To: news.groups.proposals
Date: Sat, 18 Nov 2006 15:03:59 -0600
Organization: Killfiles, Unlimited
Archive-name: ngp/welcome
Posting-Frequency: twice monthly
Last-modified: 2006/11/18
Version: 1.0
URL: http://www.killfile.org/~tskirvin/faqs/ngp.html
news.groups.proposals (NGP) is an international newsgroup to discuss
new groups and changes to groups in the Big-8 Usenet hierarchy.
The official discussion of proposals, between publishing the RFD
(Request for Discussion) and the decision by the Board, is conducted in
news.groups.proposals. This provides a central location for the proponent
to explain the the proposal and for the Board to follow the discussion.
How To Post
===========
(This section assumes that you already know how to post to Usenet
newsgroups in general.)
NGP is a hand-moderated group. A moderator must approve all messages
before they appear in the group. Things that must be true for the article
to be approved:
o The article may be crossposted to groups that are affected by the
proposal, although care must be taken to insure that the members of
the target group wish to participate in the discussion in their
group. Crossposting to moderated groups is not allowed.
o Followups must not be set to groups other than NGP.
o Postings should be formatted within 80 characters in width (limiting
your lines to 76 characters is recommended).
o Postings must be in plain text. In particular no HTML or mixed text
and HTML posts will be allowed, nor will binary messages (with the
exception of small cryptographic signatures, such as GPG or S/MIME).
o Postings must contribute to the discussion of an active group
proposal. Discussion of groups that have not had an RFD published
in news.announce.newgroups should be held in news.groups. After a
decision is rendered on a proposal, the discussion in NGP will be
brought to a close. Submissions containing flames or personal
attacks do not contribute to the discussion.
o The submission should consist primarily of original, not
quoted material. Quoting to set context or make your response
clear is fine, but quoting someone else's article to say "I
agree" is not.
All submissions will be subjected to a number of anti-spam filters;
messages that are found to be spam will be silently dropped.
If all of these criteria are passed, then the message is approved and an
approval notice is sent back to the poster. If the post is not approved,
then a rejection notice is sent back to the poster. Note that these
notices will not arrive if the return address is invalid; as such, the
use of non-replyable/munged addresses is strongly discouraged. Posters
who feel that they must use a munged address are encouraged to append
".invalid" to the end of the email address, to indicate that the address
is not deliverable.
Submissions to the group may also be made by mailing ngp@ngp.big-8.org.
How To Read
===========
If your news server already carries NGP, simply add the group to your list
of subscribed newsgroups. If your news server doesn't carry NGP, it might be
a bit more of a challenge; just ask your news administrator (politely!) to
add it. Include the following detail:
Moderation Address: news-groups-proposals@moderators.isc.org
Once this is done, messages should automatically appear on your system,
and you can post as you would to any normal newsgroup; if you have
questions about how to do this, ask your local news administrator.
Finally, there is a public web interface available to both read and post
to NGP available at:
http://news.killfile.org/
Charter
=======
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 will take place in news.groups.proposals. Proponents with
active RFDs must conduct their discussions in news.groups.proposals.
Discussions in news.groups.proposals should pertain to specific proposals,
based on a recent RFD published in news.announce.newgroups. 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 active 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
CURRENT MODERATION INFORMATION
==============================
news.groups.proposals is run by a STUMP moderation package, written by
Igor Chudov <ichudov@algebra.com> and modified and maintained by Jonathan
Kamens <jik@big-8.org>. More information on the default STUMP software is
available at:
http://www.algebra.com/~ichudov/stump/
Submissions are approved or rejected by the moderation team based on the
criteria listed in the charter and in this FAQ. The moderation team
will attempt to handle all submissions promptly, and (as a team) will
not knowingly "blackhole" a poster by taking no action on the person's
submissions.
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. 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 decisions can be appealed by contacting ngp-board@ngp.big-8.org.
If necessary, the moderation panel will refer the case to the Big-8
Management Board for a final decision.
All substantive modifications to the moderation policy will go through an
RFD/LCC process before implementation.
The news.groups.proposals moderation panel consists of volunteers approved
by the Big-8 Management Board.
If the moderation team decides that more members are needed, they may post
an invitation for new volunteers. New members must be approved by vote of
the current moderation team and are subject to veto by the Big-8 Management
Board. The Big-8 Management Board reserves the right to expel members of
the news.groups.proposals moderation panel as necessary.
Current contact information:
Head Moderator: Steve Bonine <spb@pobox.com>
Moderator: Kevin Cannon <kcannon@insurgent.org>
Moderator: Doug Freyburger <dfreybur@yahoo.com>
Moderator: Aatu Koskensilta <aatu.koskensilta@xortec.fi>
Moderator: Kathy Morgan <kmorgan@aptalaska.net>
Advisory Moderator: Brian Edmonds <brian@big-8.org>
Advisory Moderator: Jonathan Kamens <jik@big-8.org>
Advisory Moderator: Tim Skirvin <tskirvin@big-8.org>
Article Submissions: ngp@ngp.big-8.org
Administrative Contact: ngp-board@ngp.big-8.org
Newsgroup Homepage: http://www.big-8.org/~ngp
--
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