Nan:2007-10-22-misc.education.home-school-reorg-rfd
From Usenet Big-8 Management Board
From: Jayne Kulikauskas <jayne.kulikauskas@gmail.com>
Subject: RFD: reorganization of the misc.education.home-school.* hierarchy
Newsgroups: misc.education.home-school.christian, news.announce.newgroups,
misc.education.home-school.misc, news.groups.proposals
Followup-To: news.groups.proposals
Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 14:37:43 -0500
Organization: http://www.big-8.org/
REQUEST FOR DISCUSSION (RFD)
reorganization of the misc.education.home-school.* hierarchy
This is a formal Request For Discussion (RFD) for the reorganization of a
Usenet hierarchy, as listed below:
NEWSGROUPS:
misc.education.home-school.resources blogs, websites, curricula, conferences, etc. (Moderated)
misc.education.home-school.christian remove, merge into m.e.h-s.misc
RATIONALE:
This proposal calls for the reorganization of the misc.education.home-school
sub-hierarchy by the addition of a moderated announcement group and the
consolidation of two under-utilized unmoderated groups into one. The
moderated group is envisioned as a place for descriptions, reviews and
links for homeschooling-related web sites, discussion fora and blogs. It
could also include information about other homeschooling resources, both
online and off, and homeschooling conferences. This would be a low
traffic moderated group that would not have discussions on it. It would
direct people interested in moderated discussion to the meh-sc.org web
forum or to misc.education.home-school.misc if they prefer something
unmoderated.
The group removal is in order to consolidate the very small amount of
home-schooling discussion taking place in two existing unmoderated
groups into one place. There are four main possibilities for dealing
with the existing groups: Retain the status quo. Remove both and
create an new unmoderated group. Remove misc.education.home-school.misc
and direct its traffic to misc.education.home-school. Remove
misc.education.home-school.christian and direct its traffic to
misc.education.home-school.misc. While all of these have disadvantages,
the last of the possibilities seems the best to the proponent.
The status quo is that there is no longer homeschooling discussion in
misc.education.home-school.misc. Requests for homeschooling information
are unanswered. The main non-spam content consists of periodic resource
posts by Steven Saus - links to educational sites that may be of interest
to homeschoolers. Meanwhile, misc.education.home-school.christian is
flooded by posts from a nym-shifting anti-homeschooler. The situation
became so untenable that the majority of regular posters migrated to a
web forum around a year ago. The few remaining regulars rarely discuss
homeschooling from a specifically Christian perspective. They are not
even all Christian homeschoolers. The group does not match its newsgroup
line description or its charter. Both groups are of very limited use to
people seeking home-schooling information or support.
Removing both of these and replacing them with a new group is impractical
due to propogation issues. Consolidating the groups under the
misc.education.home-school.christian name does not match the nature of the
current discussion. While the name misc.education.home-school.misc is a
better match, the remains of a community and the small amount of current
discussion exist on misc.education.home-school.christian. These people do
not like the idea of removing their group.
Whatever is decided about the disposition of the unmoderated groups, the
most important part of this proposal is the creation of the moderated
group. This creation would mean that once again Usenet would be relevant
to people seeking homeschooling information and support.
CHARTER:
misc.education.home-school.resources is a moderated group intended to
provide information about resources that will be helpful to
homeschoolers. Suitable topics include descriptions/reviews of
homeschoolers' blogs, homeschooling discussion fora and information
sites. It also welcomes information about homeschooling books and
curricula and announcements of upcoming conferences. It is not
intended for discussions.
MODERATION POLICY: misc.education.home-school.resources
misc.education.home-school.resources is expected to be a low traffic group
that can be easily hand moderated. Limited commercial advertising will
be allowed.
MODERATOR INFO: misc.education.home-school.resources
Moderator: Vic Kulikauskas <dadkulio@yahoo.ca>
Advisory Moderator: Chris Barnes <moderator@txbarnes.com>
More moderators are sought for the moderation panel.
Article Submissions: TBD
Administrative Contact: TBD
PROCEDURE:
For more information on the newsgroup creation process, please see:
http://www.big-8.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=policies:creation
Those who wish to influence the development of this RFD and its final
resolution should subscribe to news.groups.proposals and participate in the
relevant threads in that newsgroup. This is both a courtesy to groups in
which discussion of creating a new group is off-topic as well as the best
method of making sure that one's comments or criticisms are heard.
All discussion of active proposals should be posted to news.groups.proposals.
To this end, the 'Followup-To' header of this RFD has been set to this group.
If desired by the readership of closely affected groups, the discussion
may be crossposted to those groups, but care must be taken to ensure
that all discussion appears in news.groups.proposals as well.
We urge those who would like to read or post in the proposed newsgroup
to make a comment to that effect in this thread; we ask proponents to
keep a list of such positive posts with the relevant message ID
(e.g., Barney Fife, <4JGdnb60fsMzHA7ZnZ2dnUVZ_rWdnZ2d@sysmatrix.net>).
Such lists of positive feedback for the proposal may constitute good
evidence that the group will be well-used if it is created.
DISTRIBUTION:
This document has been posted to the following newsgroups:
news.announce.newgroups (moderated)
news.groups.proposals (moderated)
misc.education.home-school.christian
misc.education.home-school.misc
The proponent will also post pointers to:
http://www.meh-sc.org/
PROPONENT:
Jayne Kulikauskas <jayne.kulikauskas@gmail.com>
CHANGE HISTORY:
2007-10-22 1st RFD
