RFD: removal of sci.psychology.psychotherapy.moderated
Tim McNamara
This is a formal Request for Discussion (RFD) to remove the
moderated newsgroup sci.psychology.psychotherapy.moderated.
Newsgroups Line:
Practice of psychotherapy. Moderated
Distribution:
news.announce.newgroups
news.groups.proposals
sci.psychology.psychotherapy.moderated
sci.psychology.psychotherapy
Proponent: Tim McNamara <tim...@bitstream.net> (one of eight moderators).
Charter:
Overview: Sci.psychology.psychotherapy.moderated (hereinafter "sppm")
exists as a forum for the discussion of psychotherapy. Anyone with an
interest in such discussion is welcome. This would include practitioners
of all types (psychologists, psychiatrists, marriage/family counselors,
social workers, etc.), students of therapy, and therapy clientele.
Appropriate and Inappropriate Posts: Some examples of topics
appropriate for discussion in sppm include (but are not limited to) the
following:
* a particular type of psychotherapy (e.g., cognitive-behavioral,
psychodynamic), or a comparison between two types. There will be no
restrictions on the types of therapeutic modalities that are appropriate
for discussion -- save for treatments that seem to have no obvious
connection to psychology (e.g., palm-reading, crystals). The latter will
not be accepted, unless a clear, plausible connection to psychology is
made.
* a particular psychological disorder (e.g., depression, eating
disorder)
* a particular psychological theory (e.g., object relations theory,
learning theory), as it relates to the material of therapy
* research relevant to psychotherapy
* psychopharmacological (drug) or other biological treatments, as they
relate to psychotherapy
* diagnostic issues
* therapist training and supervision
* ethical issues faced by therapists
* trends in practice (e.g., emerging or alternative modalities)
* the relationship between psychotherapy and other fields of inquiry
such as philosophy or religion (as long as the discussion remains
focused on psychotherapy)
* career issues (e.g., establishing a private practice, coping with
managed care) * business related directly to psychotherapy (e.g.,
employment opportunities, equipment for sale)
* case studies (if and only if client anonymity is ensured)
* announcements and reports of meetings, conferences, and newsletters,
including those put out by self-help organizations (please consider
posting or cross-posting these to sci.psychology.announce, however)
* requests for information about a specific problem. However, those
looking for exchanges characteristic of a support group should seek out
an actual support group, as sppm was not designed to serve that function.
The following are inappropriate for sppm, and posts containing them will
be rejected:
* personal attacks, including allegations of professional misconduct
(the latter should be brought to the attention of the appropriate
authorities)
* discussions which wander far from the topic of psychotherapy
(including spam)
* cross-posting to groups outside of the psychology topic area, unless
the reason for crossposting is evident (e.g., cross-posting to a sci.med
group when drug therapy is being discussed). Responses may be made to
the same groups or a subset thereof without further justification.
* gross violations of netiquette. These may include, for example,
excessive repetition -- defined as more than 90% quoted material, or
posting more frequently than once per month an article with more than
90% unchanged text (moderators may change these value in the future, if
they find them to be unsatisfactory) -- or chronic misattribution of
quoted text.
Rationale for removal:
sci.psychology.psychotherapy.moderated has had very little relevant
traffic for the past 2 1/4 years. There were 15 posts in 2008, 9 posts
in 2009 and 0 posts to date in 2010. Perhaps 1/3 to 1/2 of these recent
posts have been forge-approved spam.
Of the eight moderators, three have e-mail addresses that no longer
work. Internal discussion among the moderators in late 2009 resulted in
three of the moderators agreeing that the newsgroup no longer serves a
purpose and the others remaining silent. On 2010-03-17 I sent a copy
of the RFD to all the moderators and received no reply from any of
them. It seems to me that the newsgroup and moderator system is pretty
much defunct. I have copied this RFD to the s.p.p.m moderators group
to see if any of them wish to support or oppose removal of the newsgroup.
History of the Group:
sci.psychology.psychotherapy.moderated was proposed by John M. Grohol
PsyD in response to chronic problems with certain abusive posters to
sci.psychology.psychotherapy. The newsgroup was created 08/22/1997 and
has had 2,240 posts in that time; there have been 24 posts in the past
27 months, perhaps 1/3 to 1/2 of those being forge-approved spam.
Procedure:
Those who wish to comment on this request to remove this newsgroup should
subscribe to news:news.groups.proposals and participate in the relevant
threads in
that newsgroup.
To this end, the followup header of this RFD has been set to
news.groups.proposals.
All discussion of active proposals should be posted to
news.groups.proposals.
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.proposals as well.
For more information on the newsgroup removal process, please see
http://www.big-8.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=policies:rmgroup
History of this RFD:
First proposal by Tim McNamara 2010-03-17, submitted to the
sci.psychology.psychotherapy.moderated moderator's mailing list.
Second proposal by Tim McNamara 2010-03-27, rejected due to needed
corrections in the RFD.
Third proposal by Tim McNamara 2010-03-29 with corrections.
======================================= MODERATOR'S COMMENT:
alba