Nan:2006-10-23-proposals-rfd2

From Usenet Big-8 Management Board
From: Dave Sill <de5@big-8.org>
Subject: 2nd RFD: news.groups.proposals moderated
Newsgroups: news.announce.newgroups, news.groups, news.admin.announce,
 news.admin.hierarchies
Followup-To: news.groups
Date: Mon, 23 Oct 2006 16:03:58 -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.

Discussion of active proposals will move to news.groups.proposals.
news.groups will remain unmoderated and can be used for posting articles
not appropriate for news.groups.proposals, including discussions of overall
Big-8 policy and discussions of past and/or upcoming proposals.  The B8MB
will continue to monitor news.groups.


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 will take place in news.groups.proposals.  Proponents with
active RFDs must conduct their discussions in NGP.

news.groups.proposals is hand-moderated.  Discussions should pertain to
specific active 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
     - General discussions not relating to a specific active proposal

  * Articles with unacceptable content, such as:
     - HTML
     - Copyright violations
     - Excessive quoting
     - Threats and/or advocation of violence
     - Binaries, except PGP signatures, X-Face headers, and other
       ancillary meta-data
     - Personal attacks, including derogatory nicknames
     - Flames

  * Attempts to subvert the system, such as:
     - Forgery or imitation of a valid e-mail address
     - Unauthorized approval headers
     - Excessive morphing/nym-shifting

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 if ".invalid" is stripped from
the end).  Users of munged addresses should not expect to get any notices
about the disposition of their posts by the moderation system, but the
presence or absence of a munged address will not be used to decide whether
a submission is suitable for posting.

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.

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


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.

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-request@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@big-8.org
Administrative Contact:   ngp-request@big-8.org

The NGP 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 B8MB reserves the right to expel members of the NGP moderation
panel as necessary.

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:

2006-10-23     2nd RFD
2006-10-09     1st RFD