RFD: RECHARTER + NEW MODERATORS: uk.announce
Iain Bowen
REQUEST FOR DISCUSSION (RFD)
This is a formal Request For Discussion (RFD) for the following changes
in the uk.* Usenet hierarchy:
amend the charter for uk.announce
*** ALL DISCUSSION MUST TAKE PLACE IN UK.NET.NEWS.CONFIG ***
This is not a Call for Votes (CFV); you cannot vote at this time.
Further procedural details are given below.
RATIONALE: uk.announce
In recent times, uk.announce has fallen by the wayside mainly due to
the moderator who had expected to be part of a team not getting any
support. An RFD has been raised for its removal - along with the
other groups in the uk.announce.* hierarchy. The proponent belives
that uk.announce could still be useful and that it should subsume the
uk.announce.events function as well. However, the proponent only
believes that this will work if there is actually team based
moderation and a moderation team in place.
END RATIONALE
CHARTER: uk.announce
The new charter should be as follows
uk.announce is a moderated group for announcing news or events of
specific interest to the UK readership. for announcing UK events. It
provides a means of posting announcements to a wider UK audience than
the readership of the newsgroups in which their subjects would
naturally place them. Announcements targetting a global audience are
inappropriate. Any post that is not announcing something is
unacceptable.
Follow-ups within the group are only acceptable when from the original
poster repairing a factual error. Follow-ups will be set as a default
by the moderators to poster, however, Follow-ups to an appropriate
group will be accepted with the moderators having the power to deem
what is appropriate.
Announcements must not depend heavily on specialist knowledge or
external sources of information in order for it to be clearly
understood what is being announced. Simply posting a URL pointing to
the actual announcement is unacceptable.
Subject to the above constraint announcements should be as concise as
is comfortably possible, giving additional details by URL if
necessary. There is limit of 4kbytes but few announcements should
exceed 2kbytes.
Subject lines must give a accurate impression (in English) of what is
to be found in the body of the announcement. Their intent must be to
maximise the reader's ability to determine relevance and hence should
avoid terms that will be unfamilar to most readers. The use in subject
lines of superlatives, unusual punctuation, ALL CAPS, or enigmatic or
misleading wording to draw attention is unacceptable.
Announcements from individuals seeking to locate long-lost individuals
are inappropriate. Geneological announcement seeking to locate family
roots are inappropriate.
Reviews and testimonials in themselves are inapproriate as these are
the poster's opinion, not information. An announcement may, however,
quote reviews of the entity being announced.
Posts announcing substantially the same thing as has been announced in
the preceeding 3 months are unacceptable.
Binaries
Posts must be in plain un-encoded text (excepting cyptographic signatures).
Advertising
No advertising will be permitted except of events - uk.adverts.*
exists for this purpose.
Crossposting
Crossposts between uk.announce and other moderated newsgroups will not
be approved by the uk.announce moderators, however
<con...@usenet.org.uk> may do so for administative posts.
Other relevant crossposting is acceptable provided sensible thought is
given to the "Followup-to" header. However, crossposting to newsgroups
not accessible to the moderator may be technically infeasible.
Posting something to uk.announce and also separately to each of
several unmoderated groups (Spamming) is totally unacceptable even if
it falls below the usual Spam cancelation threshold. A limit of
two groups as well as uk.announce is set for cross-posting.
Moderation Procedure
Posting to the moderated newsgroups in the usual way will result in
the post being emailed to the submission address
<uk-an...@usenet.org.uk>. Mail for the attension of the moderation
team should be addressed to <uk-announ...@usenet.org.uk> and
*not* the submission address.
Moderation shall be done by suitable software such as STUMP or its
equivalent. This software will enable moderation by a team via the
WWW.
Moderators are not obliged to accept messages that require
modification. However, moderation may alter header lines as
appropriate, clean up the formatting of text, strip attachments, strip
signatures added by transport services, prepend clearly identified
comments in square brackets and append a signature. No other changes
are allowed.
Notifications of rejection shall be mailed and shall include this
charter unless the latter was already sent.
Moderators
There shall be a team of moderators between 2 and 6 in number.
Moderators may be appointed by the UK Usenet Committee
<comm...@usenet.org.uk> or elected under analogous procedures to
those for UK newsgroup creation.
Moderation submission address
End new charter
=====================================================================
The current charter of uk.announce follows:
uk.announce is a moderated group for announcing news of specific
interest to the UK readership. uk.announce.events is a moderated group
for announcing UK events. They provide a means of posting
announcements to a wider UK audience than the readership of the
newsgroups in which their subjects would naturally place them.
Announcements targetting a global audience are inapproriate. Any post
that is not announcing something is unacceptable. Hereinafter any
reference to uk.announce includes uk.announce.events where
appropriate. The moderator may redirect submissions from one group to
the other.
Follow-ups within the group are only acceptable when from the original
poster repairing a factual error. Unmoderated .d subgroups provide for
discussion of announcements and all annoucements will have this added
to their "Followup-To".
Announcements must not depend heavily on specialist knowledge or
external sources of information in order for it to be clearly
understood what is being announced. Simply posting a URL pointing to
the actual announcement is unacceptable.
Subject to the above constraint announcements should be as concise as
is comfortably possible, giving additional details by URL if
necessary. There is limit of 4kbytes but few announcements should
exceed 2kbytes.
Posts not in English must provide an explanation in English.
Subject lines must give a sober and accurate impression (in English)
of what is to be found in the body of the annoucement. Their intent
must be to maximise the reader's ability to determine relevance and
hence should avoid terms that will be unfamilar to most readers. The
use in subject lines of superlatives, unusual punctuation, ALL CAPS,
or enigmatic or missleading wording to draw attention is unacceptable.
Subject lines should, where possible, start with one or more keyword
tags (in caps) and include approximate location and date where
applicable.
Announcements from individuals seeking to locate long-lost individuals
are inappropriate. Announcements from veterans' organisations, alumni
associations and such like seeking to locate groups of people are
appropriate where they are also announcing an enhanced service to
these people. A new/improved registry/newsletter is an enhanced
service, as is a reunion.
Reviews and testimonials in themselves are inapproriate as these are
the poster's opinion, not information. An announcement may, however,
quote reviews of the entity being announced.
Posts announcing substancially the same thing as has been announced in
the preceeding 3 months are unacceptable.
Binaries
Posts must be in plain un-encoded text (excepting cyptographic signatures).
Advertising
This is not a forum for your typical classified advertisement. Posts
seeking or offering a few specific items of property for sale/hire are
unacceptable. Similarly advertisements by inviduals (as opposed to
groups) seeking to contact other inviduals with shared interests or to
share/exchange some resource are inapproriate. The uk.jobs hierachy
exists - stuff that belongs there does not belong here.
Announcements of commercial goods or services are appropriate provided
they otherwise conform to the charter and are in the style of a "Press
Release" rather than in the exaggerated style of an
"advertisement". The balance between information and hype is the major
factor. All such announcements must have "COMMERCIAL" amongst their
subject tags.
Crossposting
Crossposts between uk.announce and other moderated newsgroups will not
be approved by the uk.announce moderators, however
<con...@usenet.org.uk> may do so for administative posts.
Other relevant crossposting is acceptable provided sensible thought is
given to the "Followup-to" header. However, crossposting to newsgroups
not accessible to the moderator may be technically infeasible.
Posting something to uk.announce and also separately to each of
several unmoderated groups (Spamming) is totally unacceptable even if
it falls below the usual Spam cancelation threshold.
Moderation Procedure
Posting to the moderated newsgroups in the usual way will result in
the post being emailed to the submission address
<uk-an...@usenet.org.uk>. Mail for the attension of the moderation
team should be addressed to <uk-announ...@usenet.org.uk> and
*not* the submission address.
Moderators may delegate day-to-day operations to a robot. The
"Approved" header shall contain a valid address of a human-read
mailbox and shall indicate which moderator (possibly the robot)
approved the post. Items are posted as soon as workload allows, but a
latency of 2 working days should be allowed for when submitting items.
Replies generated as part of the moderation procedure shall be sent to
an announcement's "From" address - not the "Sender", "Reply-to",
signature or envelope addresses. An announcement's "Reply-to" header
can be used to indicate an entity (not necessarily sentient)
responsible for handling replies where this is different from the
person responsible for the announcement. Moderation may require that
mail sent to the "From" address be intelligently acknowledged. If an
automatic receipt requiring acknowledgment is sent to the "From"
address then notification of this fact shall be sent to the "Reply-to"
address.
Moderators are not obliged to accept messages that require
modification. However, moderation may alter header lines as
appropriate, clean up the formatting of text, strip attachments, strip
signatures added by transport services, prepend clearly identified
comments in square brackets and append a signature. No other changes
are allowed.
Notifications of rejection shall be mailed and shall include this
charter unless the latter was already sent.
Moderators
Moderators may be appointed by the UK Usenet Committee
<comm...@usenet.org.uk> or elected under analogous procedures to
those for UK newsgroup creation.
Moderation submission address
END CHARTER
PROCEDURE:
This is a request for discussion, not a call for votes. In this phase of
the process, any potential problems with the proposal should be raised
and resolved. The discussion period will continue for a minimum of 10
days, starting from when this RFD is posted to uk.net.news.announce
(i.e. until December 20th) after which a Call For Votes (CFV) may be
posted by a neutral vote taker if the discussion warrants it.
Alternatively, the proposal may proceed by the fast-track method. Please
do not attempt to vote until this happens.
This RFD attempts to comply fully with the "Guidelines for Group Creation
within the UK Hierarchy" as published regularly in uk.net.news.announce.
Please refer to this document if you have any questions about the process.
DISTRIBUTION:
This RFD has been posted to the following newsgroups:
uk.net.news.announce
uk.net.news.config
uk.announce
uk.announce.d
uk.announce.events
uk.announce.events.d
Proponent:
Iain Bowen <ala...@alaric.org.uk>
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: PGP 6.5.1i
Charset: noconv
iQCVAwUBPBN+KWOfGXkh8vHZAQGxLQP+IEqHeUk536xE9xJZokwOnd0rvzqRsXCM
FK1URTeHV8Pw9kTu4hnhbKLxU7oQj4b8/sa/Q/xBdBjrrr8ZkCFDCnHQALAWm4q2
CfjEXM70aVpgzZIq7Jr5n/4ujZDw3TKLBtzen+6npzeDJSiaF9EQSTpftl3Q75rW
PG2NZDmhRbM=
=DVSo
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----