Nan:Asatru-lcc

From Usenet Big-8 Management Board
From: board@big-8.org (The Big-8 Management Board)
Subject: RFD: soc.religion.asatru moderated (LAST CALL FOR COMMENTS)
Newsgroups: news.announce.newgroups, news.groups, alt.religion.asatru,
 soc.religion.paganism
Followup-To: news.groups
Date: Thu, 18 May 2006 08:27:38 -0700
Reply-To: board@big-8.org

                     REQUEST FOR DISCUSSION (RFD)
                 moderated group soc.religion.asatru

This is a formal Request For Discussion (RFD) for the creation of the
moderated Usenet newsgroup, soc.religion.asatru.  

NEWSGROUPS LINE: 

soc.religion.asatru	Following the Gods and Goddesses of Northern Europe. (Moderated)


RATIONALE: soc.religion.asatru

The newsgroup alt.religion.asatru has operated since 1993 with many
discussions on topics of interest to members of the religion.  After years
of maintaining traffic and being subject to troll attacks, the need for a
moderated newsgroup has become clear.  Since making alt.religion.asatru
moderated is unlikely to propagate, the solution seems to be a new
newsgroup on the topic, allowing alt.religion.asatru to remain an open
place to post. You may ask, why two newsgroups on the same obscure
religon?  Because long term on topic traffic has justified a place
in the soc.religion.* hierarchy and it is impractical to remove a
newsgroup in the alt.* hierarchy.  Regular messages will be posted to
alt.religion.asatru to point to the new newsgroup so new posters are able
to find it.

Historically, with the Druids on the west and the Slavs on the East,
Asatru was the majority religion in the pan-Germanic region of northern
Europe from the ancient past until the tribes in the area converted
to Christianity.  Many influences of ancient Asatru remain in modern
pan-Germanic culture.  One memory of ancient Asatru remains in the English
names for days of the week - Tuesday for Tiw or Tyr, Wednesday for Woden
or Odin, Thursday for Donnar or Thor and Friday for Freya or Frigg.
The Thing and Althing traditions have become modern trial by jury and
Parliment.

There have since been several revival movements.  The Wandervogel
movement in Germany and Austria was violently suppressed by the
Nazis.  The modern movement began in 1970 separately in Iceland,
the UK and the US and has since grown to most of the nations where
Germanic languages or traditions exist - English, German, Dutch,
Afrikaans, Icelandic, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian as well as some
Spanish speakers in Argentina.


CHARTER: soc.religion.asatru

Soc.religion.asatru is a place for people from around the world to
meet and discuss topics of interest to Asatru, its rites, beliefs, and
practices.  Asatru is broadly defined as the ancient religion of the
peoples of Northern Europe known collectively as the pan-Germanic tribes,
both in its historical ancient form and its modern reconstruction.

Only discussion relating to the practices of Asatru, both ancient
and modern, or discussion among those practicing the religion, is
allowed.  Friendly guests are welcome.  To reduce spam and troll postings,
cross-posted messages are only allowed by prior arrangement with the
moderators.  Expect only cross-posted FAQ files to be approved by the
moderators.  Posts promoting, arguing for or bashing other religions
are off topic.  Readers wishing to discus these topics may do so in the
appropriate newsgroups.  Posts comparing Asatru with other religions
are on topic. The rules of netiquette should be observed at all times.
Irrelevant profanity should be avoided but is tolerated.  Anonymous
postings are allowed at the discretion of the moderators.  Posters using
consistent aliases are allowed.

Since English is the standard language of the Big-8 UseNet heirarchies,
use of English is encouraged but not required.  Some fraction of the
traffic is expected to be in ancient Old Norse (mostly quotes for use in
translations), modern German, modern Icelandic, and other languages in
the pan-Germanic language families.  Parallel English translations are
requested when possible.  Character sets diverse enough to render Old
Norse are not considered binary content.  Use of runic fonts is allowed
if accompanied by non-binary transliteration or translation.  Short
quotes using other alphabets like Sanskrit, Cyrillic or Greek are allowed
but entire posts in other alphabets are not allowed.  Do not expect
the majority of readers to be able to render or read other alphabets.
Non-English traffic without parallel translation are rejected by the
moderators if it reaches 10% of the total posts.  Any binary format other
than alternate alphabets must be approved by the moderators and are
usually rejected.  For binary content please store on the web and include
a URL.  PGP signatures are allowed.

The newsgroup is moderated with the following in mind. On the positive
side: Is the post relevant to Asatru?  Is it discussion among established
Asatruar?  On the negative side: Is the post abusive?  Is it cross-posted?
Is it spam?  Posts advocating hate, racism, anti-Semitism or neo-Nazism
are off topic and are rejected.  On the neutral side: Posts by adherents
to various opinions within Asatru are accepted even by moderators who hold
other opinions.

In the event that the moderators wish to add another moderator, the
procedure for doing so is as follows.  First, they call for volunteers on
the newsgroup.  Next, they winnow the volunteers by dropping any to whom
strong objections are raised.  They then select one or more person(s) from
the remaining volunteers.

END CHARTER.


TRAFFIC JUSTIFICATION:

The traffic on alt.religion.asatru as of 03 Mar 2006:

      Jan   Feb   Mar   Apr   May   Jun   Jul   Aug   Sep   Oct   Nov  Dec
1995   25   103    59           2                 1           1    22    9
1996  255   387   351   314   306   341   455   636   466   658   538  706
1997  626   679   395   836   236   404   335   286   808   410   540  548
1998  675   583   899   781  1816  1268   919  1346  2090  1380  1469 1143
1999 1220   805  1304  1342  1190  1028  1489  1007  1367  4871  4560 1761
2000  769   834  1223  1596  1979  2110  2391   950   608  1237  2344 3238
2001 3518   512  1293   849   895  1180  2611   880  1280  1837  2017 1876
2002 1634  1297  1077  1693  1219   740  1798  1680  1031   485  1322  888
2003 1825   865  1315  1547  2034  1063   815  1915  2641   827   867  837
2004  611   257   555   797   529   734   796   608  1352  1334  2397  968
2005 1388  1321  1429   573   961  1378  1409  1503  1487  1862  4792 1929
2006 1675  1395   169

Number of threads 15758

For over a decade it has maintained an average of more than 1000 posts
in more than 100 threads per month in the face of several waves of troll
attacks.  Some former posters driven off by the trolls have stated they
will return to a troll-free moderated group, though it is up to the
proponent and moderators to market traffic on the group.

To view the extent of non-troll traffic, consider May 1998 as the first
month with over 1000 posts and the year following.  Sep and Oct in that
year have significant troll traffic but the other 10 months do not.  To
view the extent of troll traffic, consider all of 2001.  The newsgroup has
seen entire years with a great deal of on-topic traffic and entire years
under attack by trolls.  The total non-troll traffic keeps returning after
each troll attack.

There are also numerous Asatru mailing lists that average over a hundred
messages per month each.  Several are listed in Dirk Bruere's "Asatru
Resources" list.  While it is assumed that members of mailing list will
remain on those lists the same as alt.religion.asatru posters, the lists
demonstrate that there is a sufficient worldwide population of Asatru
adherents that a moderated newsgroup is viable.

On 08 Apr 2006 a Google search for "Asatru" in the newsgroup
soc.religion.paganism gave 1860 hits, with a very large number of
them by Dirk Bruere trying to keep joint traffic alive.  Since Asatru
is in the charter for that newsgroup it's natural to expect traffic
there.  Drawing traffic to SRP was tried but it didn't work.  Given
this history there is insufficient overlap between Asatru and other
pagan faiths.

END TRAFFIC JUSTIFICATION.


MODERATOR INFO: soc.religion.asatru

Moderator: Doug Freyburger <dfreybur@yahoo.com>
Moderator: Dirk Bruere <dirk.bruere@gmail.com>
Moderator: Nik Warrensson <republican@iconz.co.nz>
Moderator: Robert Bowman <bowman@montana.com>

Submissions:    sra-submit@stump.algebra.com
Contact:        sra-admin@stump.algebra.com

Since moderation software is used (initially STUMP), the list of
moderators is changed to their accounts on a moderation server at the time
the newsgroup is created.

END MODERATOR INFO.


PROCEDURE:

The newsgroup creation process is currently undergoing revision.  Please
refer to the newsgroup creation policies listed here:

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

The B8MB plans to begin voting on this proposal shortly.  Voting may take 
up to one week (7 days), and will be followed by a 5 day waiting period.  

All discussion of this proposal should be posted to news.groups.


DISTRIBUTION:

This RFD has been posted to the following newsgroups:

  news.announce.newgroups, news.groups, alt.religion.asatru,
  soc.religion.paganism 


PROPONENT: 

Doug Freyburger <dfreybur@yahoo.com>


HISTORY:

2006-05-18   Final RFD, prepared by Tim Skirvin.
2006-05-04   Revised by Tim Skirvin for formatting only.
2006-04-28   Revisions based on suggestions by Joe Bernstein.
2006-03-28   Gods and Goddesses in newsgroup line, expand weekdays
             to mention both Saxon and Norse names to show the 
             pan-Germanic nature of Asatru.
2006-03-03   Rewrite taking into account comments by the Big-8
             Moderation Board on news.groups.  Add change history, 
             shorten newsgroups line, present tense, more historical 
             and placement justification, traffic justification.
2005-12-13   Initial version based on Swain Wodening's 1999 RFD.
             Rewritten to take into account the objections voiced 
             at that time.  Includes review by the initial moderator 
             volunteers.