ADMIN: CHARTER: soc.culture.african.american.moderated
SCAA.mod Moderators
Soc.culture.african.american.moderated shall serve as a moderated
newsgroup for the discussion of African-American culture, for the
discussion of issues of concern to African-Americans, and in order to
provide an opportunity for African-American fellowship on
Usenet. Proponents and opponents of any topics relevant to the above
definition are welcome and are encouraged to post to
soc.culture.african.american.moderated for the purpose of civil debate
and discussion, subject to the restrictions explicitly outlined in the
section on moderation policy.
Posts which request information about a particular topic of
African-American culture are also welcome, and every effort shall be
made by the posters of soc.culture.african.american.moderated to
compile a thorough text-only FAQ describing the fundamentals of
African-American culture, as well as describing the moderation and
posting policies of soc.culture.african.american.moderated and its
reason for creation.
Crossposting of any kind shall not be permitted, excepting
administrative posts such as further RFDs, CFVs, the FAQ, and
"pointers" to specific threads within
soc.culture.african.american.moderated. With the approval of the
appropriate administrator such material may be crossposted to
news.announce.newgroups, news.answers, news.groups, soc.answers, and
any other groups deemed necessary by the moderator(s). The strict
policy on crossposting is necessary because various aspects of
African-American culture are often viewed as either controversial or
else intertwined with other topics. As such, many crossposted
discussions frequently are either irrelevant, or only marginally
related, to African-American culture. This policy is also necessary in
order to eliminate excessive and frequently abusive crossposts, ads,
and spamming. In the past, the latter type of posts has been largely
responsible for the creation and maintainence of an atmosphere of
intimidation on soc.culture.african.american. Both types of posts
continue to be a major problem with SCAA.
Moderation Policy:
The newsgroup shall be moderated through a combination of auto- and
hand-moderation. The initial moderators were selected from among
volunteers from the regular contributors/readers of
soc.culture.african.american. A moderator is free to serve as long as
he or she desires to, provided said moderator has not abandoned the
newsgroup (see below). The initial size of the moderator panel shall
be three. The minimum size of the moderator panel shall be two. The
moderators are responsible for making any change in the size of the
moderator panel that they deem necessary, compatible with the above
minimum size restriction. A minimum two-thirds majority vote of
approval by the moderators is required for the implementation of anysuch
change.
The moderators shall be responsible for selecting a new moderator(s)
should one of the following occur:
(1) retirement of a moderator(s);
(2) death of a moderator(s);
(3) abandonment of the newsgroup by a moderator(s)*;
(4) expansion of the size of the moderator panel.
* For the purposes of this charter, abandonment is defined as the
neglect of moderator duties by a moderator for 30 consecutive days.
New moderators shall be selected by the existing moderators from
among a list of volunteers acceptable to the readership of
soc.culture.african.american.moderated. Those who desire to be
included in the above list must publicly volunteer themselves.
Public nominations by third parties of people for inclusion in the
above list are not allowed. A minimum two-thirds majority vote of
approval by the existing moderators is required for the approval
of a new moderator. If no one on the list is approved, the existing
moderators are authorized to issue as many calls for moderator
volunteers as necessary in order to fill the open moderator position(s).
The moderators shall reject all articles containing the following
technical violations:
A) Articles that contain more than 80 characters per line;
B) Articles that are crossposted, except as outlined in the charter;
C) Articles containing an excessive amount of quoted text, generally
defined as articles longer than twenty lines that contain more than
75% quoted text;
D) Encoded binary messages;
E) Articles whose submitter has been expelled from this newsgroup
(see below);
F) Articles containing improper or missing attributions for quoted text.
G) Articles written in any format other than plain text (ASCII).
The submitters of automatically rejected articles shall be sent a copy
of the above rejected categories to inform them of the reason why
their submissions were rejected.
Moderators may only accept or reject submitted articles in their
entirety. Moderators may not edit or attach comments to approved
articles, except to warn the posters when they are about to exceed the
boundaries of civil debate and discussion, in which case the
moderators may attach a brief, relevant comment. Moderators may not
exclude any person from soc.culture.african.american.moderated based
on his or her race, ethnicity, religion, or gender. The moderator(s)
are permitted to post their own replies to others' articles, as well
as their own articles, to soc.culture.african.american.moderated,
subject to the conditions outlined in the charter.
Any submitter of a post that is rejected because it is considered
off-topic (defined below) may appeal said rejection to the entire
panel of moderators. If at least one-half of the moderator panel
agrees that the post should have been approved, it shall be declared
so and posted to the newsgroup.
The moderators of soc.culture.african.american.moderated shall be
required to post a digest of all rejected postings to the newsgroup at
biweekly intervals.
Postings of a commercial nature shall not be permitted; the moderator(s)
are authorized to reject said postings if and when they
appear, return them to the submitter, and forward a copy of the
charter and moderation policy of this newsgroup.
Postings commonly acknowledged by the Usenet community to be "spam" or
similar forms of net-abuse, e.g. personal attacks, ethnic baiting,
posting of private e-mail, forged postings, shall not be permitted;
the moderator(s) are authorized to reject (or cancel, in the case of
forged postings) all such posts, return them to the submitter, inform
the submitter of his or her decision, and forward a copy of the
charter and moderation policy of this newsgroup. If the abuse persists
after an initial warning, the submitter may, upon unanimous consent of
the moderator panel, be expelled from the newsgroup for a period of
two months. In addition, moderator(s) are authorized, at their
discretion, to inform the submitter's ISP and any other relevant
Usenet news administrators for appropriate action.
The moderator(s) may also reject postings which are off-topic for the
newsgroup. For the purposes of this charter, a posting may be
considered off-topic if its content is unrelated to African-American
culture or pertains to an issue that has no direct bearing on
African-American life or experience.
END CHARTER.
MODERATOR INFO: soc.culture.african.american.moderated
Moderator: Arthur Johnson <ajoh...@panix.com>
Moderator: L. A. Jeter <je...@scaa-moderated.org>
Administrative contact address: scaa-...@scaa-moderated.org
Moderation policy contact address: scaa-...@scaa-moderated.org
Article submission address: sc...@moderated.org
END MODERATOR INFO.
(Last amended on July 26, 2000)