Nan:2006-10-09-proposals-rfd

From Usenet Big-8 Management Board
From: Dave Sill <de5@big-8.org>
Subject: RFD: news.groups.proposals moderated
Newsgroups: news.announce.newgroups, news.groups, news.admin.announce,
 news.admin.hierarchies
Followup-To: news.groups
Date: Mon, 09 Oct 2006 10:02:03 -0700

                      REQUEST FOR DISCUSSION (RFD)
                 moderated group news.groups.proposals

This is a formal Request For Discussion (RFD) for the creation of the
moderated Usenet newsgroup, news.groups.proposals.


NEWSGROUPS LINE: news.groups.proposals

news.groups.proposals	Development of Big 8 proposals. (Moderated)


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.  All proposal discussions that currently take
place in news.groups will move to news.groups.proposals upon its creation.

news.groups will remain unmoderated and can be used for posting articles
less appropriate for news.groups.proposals, including discussions of overall
Big-8 policy.  The B8MB will continue to monitor news.groups, and regular
announcements will continue to be posted there.


CHARTER:

The newsgroup news.groups.proposals is for the announcement, discussion,
and development of 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 should take place in news.groups.proposals.
All proponents must follow news.groups.proposals.

news.groups.proposals is hand-moderated.  Discussions should pertain to
existing or potential proposals to create, remove, or modify newsgroups
in the Big-8 newsgroup hierarchies (comp, humanities, misc, news, rec,
sci, soc, and talk).  For example, the following are not allowed:

  * Off topic articles, including:
     - Personal advertisements
     - Commercial advertisements and money-making schemes
     - Chain letters
     - EMP spam

  * Articles with unacceptable content, such as:
     - HTML
     - Copyright violations
     - Advocation of violence
     - Threats
     - Binaries, except PGP signatures, X-Face headers, and other
       ancillary meta-data
     - Personal attacks
     - Flames

  * Attempts to subvert the system, such as:
     - Forgery of valid e-mail addresses
     - Unauthorized approval headers
     - Excessive morphing/nym-shifting
     - Crossposting excessively or to unrelated groups

Posting with a non-replyable/munged address is discouraged.  If you feel
you must use a munged address, you are encouraged to append ".invalid" to
the end of the email address to indicate that the address is not deliverable.

Discussions of overall Big-8 policy will remain in news.groups.


MODERATION POLICY: news.groups.proposals

All submissions may be approved or rejected by a single member of 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 neither approving nor rejecting his or
her submissions.

Where reasonable, users will be notified of rejected submissions via email.
Rejections may be appealed by contacting the Big-8 Management Board, at
board@big-8.org.  Note that submissions may be filtered to remove spam,
spews, and other attacks.

All substantive modifications to the moderation policy will go through the
standard RFD/LCC system before implementation.

Crossposting limitations are still under discussion.


MODERATOR INFO: news.groups.proposals

Moderator:                Joe Bernstein <joe@big-8.org>
Moderator:                Brian Edmonds <brian@big-8.org>
Moderator:                James Farrar <james@big-8.org>
Moderator:                Jonathan Kamens <jik@big-8.org>
Moderator:                Thomas Lee <tfl@big-8.org>
Moderator:                Martin Moleski <moleski@big-8.org>
Moderator:                Dave Sill <de5@big-8.org>
Moderator:                Tim Skirvin <tskirvin@big-8.org>

Article Submissions:      news-groups-proposals@big-8.org
Administrative Contact:   news-groups-proposals-request@big-8.org

All members of the Big-8 Management Board will be members of the
news.groups.proposals moderation team.  Board membership policy is
documented at:

  http://www.big-8.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=policies:membership

Additional non-Board Member moderators may be added or removed from
the moderation team at the discretion of the Board.

END MODERATOR INFO



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 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.

To this end, the followup header of this RFD has been set to
news.groups.

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 as well.



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>

Co-Proponent: The Big-8 Management Board <board@big-8.org>


CHANGE HISTORY:

2006-10-09     1st RFD