HKRFC951116: GUIDELINES FOR HK NEWSGROUP CREATION (posted at 20080501073001)
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REQUIREMENTS FOR GROUP CREATION:
These are guidelines that have been generally agreed upon on 2sep95
by a group of HK ISPs, who met to discuss ISP matters in general.
They enable the creation of new hk.* newsgroups. Even though they are
far from ideal, they work; attempts to amend them now are likely to
result only in more delays to create hk.* newsgroups.
A group creation request which follows these guidelines to a
successful result may be honored by major newsservers in HK, and a
request which fails to follow these procedures or to obtain a
successful result from doing so should be dropped, except under
extraordinary circumstances. The reason these are called guidelines
and not absolute rules is that it is not possible to predict in advance
what "extraordinary circumstances" are or how they might arise.
It should be pointed out here that, as always, the decision whether
or not to create a newsgroup on a given machine rests with the
administrator of that machine. These guidelines are intended merely as
an aid in making those decisions.
The Discussion
1) A request for discussion on creation of a new newsgroup should be
posted to hk.newsgroups.announce, and also to any other groups
or mailing lists at all related to the proposed topic if desired.
The group is moderated, and Followup-to: headers should be set
to direct discussion away from it. Users on sites which have
difficulty posting to moderated groups may mail submissions intended
for hk.newsgroups.announce to newsg...@comp.hkbu.edu.hk.
The article should be cross-posted among the newsgroups, including
hk.newsgroups.announce and hk.newsgroups.discuss, rather than posted as
separate articles. Note that standard behaviour for posting
software is to not present the articles in any groups when
cross-posted to a moderated group; the moderator will handle that
for you.
2) The name and charter of the proposed group and whether it will be
moderated or unmoderated (and if the former, who the moderator(s)
will be) should be determined during the discussion period. If there
is no general agreement on these points among the proponents of a
new group at the end of 14 days of discussion, the discussion should
be taken offline (into mail instead of in newsgroups) and the
proponents should iron out the details among themselves. Once that
is done, a new, more specific proposal may be made, before going
back to step 1) above.
The Vote
Only readers normally residing in HK should vote, but there is
practically no way to check out identities, so we leave it to the
reader to decide whether her/himself normally resides in HK. [One
acid test: if you don't understand what is "normally residing", you're
not. ;)] Only votes emailed to a commonly-acknowledged vote taker
should be counted. Currently, vo...@comp.hkbu.edu.hk volunteers to be
such a Votetaker.
The Votetaker may reject any votes originating from a site s/he believes
to be outside Hong Kong. It is up to the voter to prove her/im wrong.
1) AFTER the discussion period, if it has been determined that a new
group is really desired, a name and charter are agreed upon, and
whether the group will be moderated and if so who will moderate it,
the following Request For Vote (RFV) may be sent to the Votetaker:
To: Vote-...@comp.hkbu.edu.hk
Subject: RFV hk.foo.fubar
Charter: [ area of discussion ]
RFD: took place from 1dec95 to 13dec95
moderated: Y/N
moderator: eaddr
proponents: eaddr, eaddr, eaddr, ...
Cross-post-to: newsgroup newsgroup newsgroup ...
Votetaker will check whether the proper RFD had been duly completed.
If so, Votetaker will post a CFV (Call For Vote) article in the
relevant newsgroups (including hk.newsgroups.announce),
stating:
- the newsgroup name to be voted;
- the charter;
- how to vote; (by email only)
- the voting period;
2) The voting period should last for 14 days, no matter what the
preliminary results of the vote are. The exact date that the voting
period will end will be stated in the call for votes. Only votes
that arrive on the Votetaker's machine prior to this date will be
counted.
3) The original CFV (Call For Vote) article posted by Votetaker may be
reposted by anyone wanting to remind voters that a vote is in
progress, during the voting period. The original CFV article must
be reposted without modification.
4) ONLY votes MAILED to the Votetaker will be counted. Votes posted to
the net for any reason (including inability to get mail to the
vote-taker) and proxy votes (such as having a mailing list
maintainer claim a vote for each member of the list) will not be
counted.
5) Votes may not be transferred to other, similar proposals. A vote
shall count only for the EXACT proposal to which it responds.
In particular, a vote for or against a newsgroup under one name
shall NOT be counted as a vote for or against a newsgroup with a
different name or charter, a different moderated/unmoderated status
or (if moderated) a different moderator or set of moderators.
6) A vote should be run only for a single group proposal. Attempts to
create multiple groups should be handled by running multiple
parallel votes rather than one vote to create all of the groups.
The Result
1) At the completion of the voting period, the Votetaker will post the
vote tally and the E-mail addresses and (if available) names of the
voters received to hk.newsgroups.announce and any other groups
or mailing lists to which the original call for votes was posted.
The tally should include a statement of which way each voter voted
so that the results can be verified.
2) AFTER the vote result is posted, there will be a 5 days waiting
period, beginning when the voting results actually appear in
hk.newsgroups.announce, during which the net will have a chance
to correct any errors in the voter list or the voting procedure.
3) AFTER the waiting period, and if there were no serious objections
that might invalidate the vote, and if 50 more valid YES/create
votes are received than NO/don't create AND at least 2/3 of the
total number of valid votes received are in favor of creation, a
request to create that newsgroup will be sent out. If the 50 vote
margin or 2/3 percentage is not met, the group should not be
created.
4) The newgroup message will be sent by the hk.newsgroups.announce
moderators at the end of the waiting period of a successful vote.
5) A proposal which has failed under point (3) above should not again
be brought up for discussion until at least three months have passed
from the close of the vote. This limitation does not apply to
proposals which never went to vote.