Nan:2006-11-08-proposals-lcc
From Usenet Big-8 Management Board
From: board@big-8.org (The Big-8 Management Board)
Subject: 3rd RFD: news.groups.proposals moderated (LAST CALL FOR COMMENTS)
Newsgroups: news.announce.newgroups, news.groups, news.admin.announce,
news.admin.hierarchies
Followup-To: news.groups
Date: Wed, 08 Nov 2006 10:22:58 -0800
REQUEST FOR DISCUSSION (RFD)
news.groups.proposals
This is a formal Request For Discussion (RFD) for the creation of the
moderated Usenet newsgroup, news.groups.proposals.
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.
The full group creation procedure is documented here:
http://www.big-8.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=policies:proposals
NEWSGROUPS LINE: news.groups.proposals
news.groups.proposals Development of Big 8 proposals. (Moderated)
SUMMARY OF DISCUSSION:
The most contentious item in the proposal was the composition of the
moderation panel. In the first RFD, the Board was proposed to moderate
the group. Based on the discussion, the moderation panel was opened to
the public, several people volunteered, and some of the Board members
voluntarily withdrew from the panel. The second most contentious issue
was the disposition of articles rejected by the moderation panel:
would they be bounced via e-mail, posted to news.groups or some other
group, etc. A dozen or so options were discussed, but the decision was
made to leave this to the discretion of the moderation panel, which
favors e-mail rejection at this time. The issues of whether to allow
non-group-related proposals to be discussed and whether to allow
informal proposals were resolved in the second RFD by defining the
scope of the group as limited to proposals published in
news.announce.newgroups.
Public response was mixed--as expected--but Martin Moleski's straw
poll showed that more respondents support the proposal than oppose it.
RATIONALE: news.groups.proposals
Proposals for changes to the Big 8 hierarchies (e.g., creating new
groups or removing dead groups) are currently discussed and developed
in news.groups, which is unmoderated. Unfortunately, the environment
in news.groups has not been conducive to this process for some time.
As noted by Russ Allbery in his recent "hierarchy management transition"
document (<1159661096.29508@isc.org>), "[t]he biggest risk facing
the Big Eight newsgroup creation system going forward is the lack of a
congenial and constructive place for discussion of changes to the group
list."
The proposed news.groups.proposals would solve this problem by creating a
healthy environment where ideas can be raised, discussed, and developed.
The group will be manually moderated to remove personal attacks, flames,
and other inappropriate content, but disagreement and dissenting opinions
will still be encouraged.
Discussion of active proposals will move to news.groups.proposals. The
unmoderated news.groups can be used for posting articles inappropriate for
news.groups.proposals, including discussions of overall Big-8 policy and
discussions of past and/or upcoming proposals. The Big-8 Management Board
will continue to monitor news.groups.
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
MODERATION POLICY: news.groups.proposals
All submissions will be approved or rejected by the moderation team based
on the above criteria. 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.
MODERATOR INFO: news.groups.proposals
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
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.
END MODERATOR INFO
DISTRIBUTION:
This document has been posted to the following newsgroups:
news.announce.newgroups
news.groups
news.admin.announce
news.admin.hierarchies
PROPONENT:
Dave Sill <de5@big-8.org>
CHANGE HISTORY:
2006-11-08 3rd RFD/LCC
2006-10-23 2nd RFD
2006-10-09 1st RFD
