About sci.nanotech

[Jim Logajan]

The sci.nanotech Usenet newsgroup is for discussions related to the field
of molecular nanotechnology, as currently defined here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molecular_nanotechnology

The newsgroup is moderated - that is, all posts are first sent to a
moderation e-mail address for approval or rejection by a person (moderator)
who has volunteered to keep conversations moderately civil and topical. The
moderator reserves the right to delegate the screening task to a computer
program. Such programs reduce the moderation burden and expedite approvals,
but unfortunately allow for the occasional appearance of non-civil and non-
topical posts.

Once a post is approved, it is forwarded to Usenet service providers around
the world. Some of these Usenet service providers (e.g. Google Groups)
provide access via web browsers. Readers need to be aware that Google
Groups and similar sites provide no support, nor control, over the group.
Likewise, the volunteer moderator has no control and can offer no support
to users of any Usenet service providers. Any help the moderator attempts
to provide is strictly gratis and limited by moderator time.

Because Usenet is a loose non-binding cooperative, once a post is approved
it will be copied to hundreds of systems, including probably several
archival systems, so the moderator and poster both lose effective control
of the disposition of that post. Specifically, that means there is
generally no way to cancel or alter a post after it is approved.

Unlike nanotechnology blogs where the blogger has complete editorial
control over content (e.g. by design the blogger is generally the only
person allowed to start "threads" and can retroactively remove both blogger
and reader comments) the design of Usenet is such that once approved,
retroactive editing is effectively impossible. Since a non-moderated Usenet
group exists (alt.sci.nanotech) the volunteer moderator of sci.nanotech can
gain little by rejecting posts on other than basic civility and topicality
grounds.