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Archive-name: soc-politics-intro.txt
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Last-modified: 2005/01/15 23:49:36
Version: 1.3
URL: http://www.robomod.net/soc.politics/

                      soc.politics Posting Guidelines

                     Copyright 2003-2005, Brian Edmonds
               $Revision: 1.3 $ $Date: 2005/01/15 23:49:36 $

   The latest version of this document can be found at
     * http://www.robomod.net/soc.politics/
     * post to the newsgroup or mailing list with the following text in
       the subject (without the quotes): "send file: guidelines.txt"

   Any inquiries, comments or suggestions should be sent to the group
   moderation coordinator at soc-politics-tech...@robomod.net.
     _________________________________________________________________

Contents

     * Introduction
     * Charter
          + Miscellaneous Policies
          + Robomoderation
     * How To Submit a Post
     * The Mailing List
     _________________________________________________________________

Introduction

   The soc.politics newsgroup was created in the mists of history, and
   was previously moderated by Charles McGrew. He disappeared from the
   group sometime in the mid 1990s.

   In March 2003 moderation of the group was passed to Brian Edmonds. The
   team of Brian Edmonds and Graham Drabble are running the group and a
   companion, gated mailing list with the assistance of Brian's
   robomoderation software.

   Since its creation a number of control messages have been sent which
   at some sites appear to have erroneously changed the status of the
   group to unmoderated. If this is the case at your site, you should
   bring it to the attention of your news admin, as any postings you make
   to a moderated group which is not properly recognized as such at your
   site will be silently discarded at any site where the group is
   correctly carried as moderated.
     _________________________________________________________________

Charter

   The group dates from before the time of formal charters, so the best
   official description of the group is its original tagline: Political
   problems, systems, solutions.

   In practice the group appears to have been used for discussions of
   political science, including posting and analysis of the campain
   platforms put forward by political candidates. The group is not for
   the posting of political ranting and railing, though impassioned (but
   civil) debate is obviously to be expected.

   Currently the group is open for unfettered posting, apart from the
   conditions listed in the policies below. This means that there will be
   occasional spam that slips through the filters. At some future point
   when a community is well established, moderation may change to utilize
   poster registration, whereby submissions from new posters are held for
   manual approval and address whitelisting.

  Miscellaneous Policies

   The moderation software may (now or possibly in the future) enforce
   the following policies:
     * Postings must be in plain text. In particular no HTML or mixed
       text and HTML posts will be allowed. Excessive quoting and large
       sigs are strongly discouraged.
     * Postings should be formatted within 80 characters in width
       (limiting your lines to 72 characters is recommended), and also
       should not exhibit the long/short/long/short/etc misformatting
       that some posting agents can produce when misconfigured.
     * No binary postings of any sort will be accepted. Exceptions will
       be made for cryptographic signatures and such. S/MIME signatures
       are usually far too bulky and will probably not be accepted.
     * Crossposting is only allowed to one other group, and followups are
       only allowed to two groups. If the poster does not set a followups
       header it will default to soc.politics alone. Crossposts are not
       allowed to another moderated group. Contact the moderator if you
       feel you need to bypass any of these restrictions.
     * Mail address blacklisting and whitelisting may be implemented as
       deemed necessary. In addition a number of anti-spam filters are in
       place, and will be expanded as needed.

   All posts (with a working return address) will either be returned with
   a rejection notice, or posted to the newsgroup and mailing list. One
   exception is that rejection notices for the same error are suppressed
   for a few minutes after the first one is sent to reduce the danger of
   the robomoderator being used as a mailbombing agent.

   Posting with a non-replyable address is strongly discouraged. If you
   feel you must post with such an address, please make sure you are not
   using one in a valid mail domain; appending .invalid to the address is
   the recommended way to ensure this.

  Robomoderation

   The robomoderation software (robomod) enforces various anti-spam and
   text formatting requirements. Note that in order to receive rejection
   notices or other information from robomod it must have a valid email
   address for you. More information on the registration process,
   including how to use munged addreses, can be found at
     * http://www.robomod.net/register.html
     * post to the newsgroup or mailing list with the following text in
       the subject (without the quotes): "send file: register.txt"

   The moderators may at their discretion register addresses for
   auto-approval, or revert them to hand moderated status.
     _________________________________________________________________

How To Submit a Post

   At a correctly configured site you should simply be able to post to
   soc.politics and everything will be managed for you behind the scenes.
   If you find this does not work for you, you can submit directly to the
   submission agent by mailing your posting to soc-polit...@robomod.net.

   Please try the newsgroup first, and be sure to bring any problems to
   the attention of your local news administrator so that they can be
   dealt with.
     _________________________________________________________________

The Mailing List

   All postings to soc.politics are also distributed to the mailing list
   soc-polit...@robomod.net, which is available in both regular and
   digest format. For subscription information, send email to
   soc-politics-requ...@robomod.net or visit the list webpage at
   http://www.robomod.net/mailman/listinfo/soc-politics.

   Likewise, all postings to the mailing list are also distributed to the
   newsgroup, so subscribers can use whichever of the newsgroup, list, or
   digest formats is most comfortable.
     _________________________________________________________________

    Brian Edmonds
    $Date: 2005/01/15 23:49:36 $