RFD: rec.radio.amateur.moderated moderated
Paul W. Schleck, K3FU
moderated group rec.radio.amateur.moderated
This is a formal Request For Discussion (RFD) for the creation of the
moderated Usenet newsgroup, rec.radio.amateur.moderated.
NEWSGROUPS LINE: rec.radio.amateur.moderated
rec.radio.amateur.moderated Amateur radio practices, rules, etc. (Moderated)
RATIONALE: rec.radio.amateur.moderated
rec.radio.amateur.moderated is a moderated alternative to the existing
rec.radio.amateur.misc and rec.radio.amateur.policy newsgroups. The
rec.radio.amateur.misc newsgroup is chartered to discuss amateur ("ham")
radio practices, contents, events, rules, etc., including anything
related to amateur radio not specifically covered by another
rec.radio.amateur.* newsgroup. The rec.radio.amateur.policy newsgroup
is chartered to discuss ham radio rules, regulations, and policy. Over
the past several years, the traffic on both groups has become largely
flame wars, spam, and personal ad-hominem discussions of past, present,
and future violations and violators, having little or no bearing on
amateur radio. Polite requests by serious group posters to the
offenders to refrain from such behavior have not resulted in elimination
of such behavior and has in fact resulted in another series of flame
wars. As a result, many knowledgeable and concerned posters in both
groups have ceased being active therein.
Prior to the deterioration of rec.radio.amateur.misc and
rec.radio.amateur.policy, both groups had active discussion of their
chartered topics. It is expected that offering a moderated group will
persuade those who formerly participated to resume their participation
in rational, focussed, and informed discussion. Proper moderation will
enable serious postings to the group to remain on topic while not
limiting who can voice opinions or what opinions can be voiced.
Combining the topics of the unmoderated rec.radio.amateur.misc and
rec.radio.amateur.policy newsgroups into a single moderated newsgroup is
offered as the most practical solution for both the moderators and the
participants at this time. This proposal does not necessarily presume
that any other rec.radio.amateur.* newsgroups and their topics require
moderated alternatives at this time.
CHARTER:
rec.radio.amateur.moderated is for the discussion of amateur ("ham")
radio. It is not limited to the rules of any one country or time
period. Possible topics include past, present, and future operating
practices; events; contests; past, present, and potential-future rules;
power limitations; authorized frequencies; allowed modes and band plans
(or other gentlemen's agreements) that govern how we are to operate;
what constitutes the acceptable operation of amateur stations.
General communications law or government policy of various government
agencies is also on-topic, as long as the discussion relates to amateur
radio. Examples would be emergency communications, local antenna
restrictions, and property deed restrictions applying to operation of
amateur radio stations.
Discussion of other type of radio, such as Citizens Band, Broadcast,
other Personal Radio Services, Commercial or Private Land Mobile, and
Marine or Aviation services are off-topic, except when *directly*
related to amateur radio. Similarly, discussion of methods violating
applicable communication law and regulations concerning radio equipment or
operations are off-topic.
The following are prohibited:
* Personal advertisements.
* Commercial advertisements and money-making schemes.
* Chain letters.
* Posts in HTML.
* EMP spam.
* Binaries, apart from PGP signatures, X-Face headers, and other
ancillary article meta-data.
* Forgery of valid e-mail addresses.
* Excessive morphing/nym-shifting.
* Copyright violations. Pointers to news articles, blogs, etc. on
this topic are welcome but are required to comply with fair use
standards.
* Personal attacks and flames, as defined by the moderation team.
* Advertising items and/or services for sale.
* Links to "objectionable" web content, including pornographic sites,
sites encouraging illegal activities, or sites deemed unacceptable
by the moderation team.
* Discussion of moderation decisions. See below for information on
appealing moderator action.
LINKS:
Amateur Radio Newsgroups in Total Meltdown (QRZ)
http://www.qrz.com/ib-bin/ikonboard.cgi?s=ff745d20e58c50c63315835c3cefd8d9;act=ST;f=7;t=119282
Amateur Radio Newsgroups: Total Meltdown (eHam)
http://www.eham.net/articles/13581
Secure, Team-Based Usenet Moderation Program (STUMP)
http://www.algebra.com/~ichudov/stump/
MODERATION POLICY: rec.radio.amateur.moderated
A moderation robot will scan all submitted posts. Each post will be
either automatically approved, rejected, or sent to the moderators for
manual review. The moderator 'bot will enforce the following guidelines:
* Crossposting is generally not allowed, with the general exception of
crossposts of bulletins, FAQ's, and other informational articles to
rec.radio.info, rec.answers, and news.answers. Infrequent
administrative crossposts may occasionally be allowed at the sole
discretion of the moderator.
* Postings must be in plain text. In particular no HTML or mixed text
and HTML posts will be allowed. Messages that are
multipart/alternative will be automatically filtered to pass just
the text/plain version to the newsgroup.
* No binary postings of any sort will be accepted. Exceptions will be
made for cryptographic signatures and such.
* Messages must not have a 'Followup-To' header that points out of
rec.radio.amateur.moderated (other than to "poster").
* Messages must not continue a thread that has been "closed" by the
moderators.
Individual posters may be temporarily banned for consistently violating
the group charter. Posters who feel that their posts have been unfairly
rejected or banned by a specific moderator may appeal the decision by
contacting the Appeals Board, consisting of a rotating group of 2 or
more moderators, at the Administrative Contact address below. The Board
will discuss and vote on the appeal and respond within 14 days if the
appeal is successful.
Multiple temporary bans, attempting to circumvent the ban, or abuse of the
appeal system may result in a permanent ban.
MODERATOR INFO: rec.radio.amateur.moderated
Moderator: Paul W. Schleck, K3FU <psch...@novia.net>
Moderator: Bob Diepenbrock, KC4UAI <bob_...@yahoo.com>
Moderator: Jack Cook, VK2CJC <vk2...@bigpond.com>
Moderator: Jim Hampton, AA2QA <aa...@frontiernet.net>
Moderator: Ace Ratliff, WH2T <a...@wh2t.com>
Moderator: Jeff Angus, WA6FWI <jan...@socal.rr.com>
Moderator: Hans Brakob, K0HB <k0...@arrl.net>
In addition, the rec.radio.amateur.moderated Moderation Team will
utilize the expertise of the following consultants:
Consultant: Cecil A. Moore, W5DXP <Cecil....@ieee.org>
Consultant: Phil Kane, K2ASP <k2...@arrl.net>
Consultant: Brian Short, K7ON <k7...@comcast.net>
The moderators are seeking additional candidates for the moderation team
in order to ensure minimal posting delays and to avoid any appearance of
bias. We would especially like to find moderators in other time zones,
countries/continents, etc.
Article Submissions: rec-radio-ama...@panix.com
Administrative Contact: rec-radio-amateur...@panix.com
END MODERATOR INFO
PROCEDURE:
For more information on the newsgroup creation process, please see:
http://www.big-8.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=policies:creation
Those who wish to influence the development of this RFD and its final
resolution should subscribe to news.groups.proposals and participate in the
relevant threads in that newsgroup. This is both a courtesy to groups in
which discussion of creating a new group is off-topic as well as the best
method of making sure that one's comments or criticisms are heard.
All discussion of active proposals should be posted to news.groups.proposals.
To this end, the 'Followup-To' header of this RFD has been set to this group.
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.
We urge those who would like to read or post in the proposed newsgroup
to make a comment to that effect in this thread; we ask proponents to
keep a list of such positive posts with the relevant message ID
(e.g., Barney Fife, <4JGdnb60fsMzHA7Z...@sysmatrix.net>).
Such lists of positive feedback for the proposal may constitute good
evidence that the group will be well-used if it is created.
DISTRIBUTION:
This document has been posted to the following newsgroups:
news.announce.newgroups
news.groups.proposals
rec.radio.info
rec.radio.amateur.misc
rec.radio.amateur.policy
The proponent will also post pointers to:
PROPONENT:
"Paul W. Schleck, K3FU" <psch...@novia.net>
CHANGE HISTORY:
2007-01-10 1st RFD
Steve Bonine
> REQUEST FOR DISCUSSION (RFD)
> moderated group rec.radio.amateur.moderated
This proposal reads,
> rec.radio.amateur.moderated is a moderated alternative to the existing
> rec.radio.amateur.misc and rec.radio.amateur.policy newsgroups.
The other newsgroups in the hierarchy are
rec.radio.amateur.antenna
rec.radio.amateur.boatanchors
rec.radio.amateur.digital.misc
rec.radio.amateur.dx
rec.radio.amateur.equipment
rec.radio.amateur.homebrew
rec.radio.amateur.space
So this means that discussion of topics covered by these groups is not
allowed in the proposed group, based on the line,
> This proposal does not necessarily presume
> that any other rec.radio.amateur.* newsgroups and their topics require
> moderated alternatives at this time.
So discussion of antennas, boatanchors, digital modes, DX, homebrew and
other equipment, and space-related topics is not allowed in the proposed
group. This presents a difficult situation for both moderators and
participants.
I suggest that the proposed group be presented as an alternative
location for any discussion related to amateur radio, rather than as an
alternative to .policy and .misc.
Rick
>rec.radio.amateur.moderated is a moderated alternative to the existing
>rec.radio.amateur.misc and rec.radio.amateur.policy newsgroups.
I strongly support the idea of moderated rec.radio.amateur newsgroups
and commend those who have taken the initiative to begin. I
appreciate your concern and your efforts.
My only comment is that if the proposed newsgroup is successful and
other r.r.a. newsgroups follow suit we need to be certain that the
proposed name is appropriate.
I feel that it may not be a good description of its purpose.
By that I mean the subject indicates to me that
"rec.radio.amateur.moderated"
covers all aspects of amateur radio, whereas the proponents say it is
an alternative to rec.radio.amateur.misc and rec.radio.amateur.policy.
(It sits at the top of the rec.radio.amateur hierarchy and therefore
appears to cover all aspects of the hierarchy)
A suggestion would then be to propose elimination of those two
newsgroups (policy and misc) and change the name of the subject
newsgroup to something more appropriate such as
rec.radio.amateur.administration.moderated.
Thanks for your consideration of my comments.
73
Rick K2XT
Doug Freyburger
>
> moderated group rec.radio.amateur.moderated
>
>
> rec.radio.amateur.moderated is for the discussion of amateur ("ham")
> radio. It is not limited to the rules of any one country or time
> period.
English is the default language of the Big-8 hierarchy but with a
hobby this international, do you plan on addressing posts in other
languages? It doesn't seem like a good subject to broach as far
as Usenet traditions go, but I wonder if the group would draw
discussion in other languages limited by the mod team's ability
to understand the posts.
> Discussion of other type of radio, such as Citizens Band, Broadcast,
> other Personal Radio Services, Commercial or Private Land Mobile, and
> Marine or Aviation services are off-topic, except when *directly*
> related to amateur radio ...
Yet all but commercial is amateur. I don't see this as a large problem
but it seems strange when phrased this way.
> The following are prohibited:
>
> * Personal advertisements.
Not even regular posters who want to sell used equipment to other
regular posters? I could see requiring such posts to have some
amount of non-offer discussion to be able to make it through the
mod team, but I like the idea of regulars with an established record
of on topic contribution being able to trade parts.
> * Commercial advertisements and money-making schemes.
But political and religious advertisements are allowed?
> * Posts in HTML.
International Morse has no upper or lower case. That's far too
restrictive a character set compared to vanilla ASCII. How about
other fancy characters?
> * Links to "objectionable" web content, including pornographic sites,
> sites encouraging illegal activities, or sites deemed unacceptable
> by the moderation team.
Does the mod team plan on following links to check this? There is
a tradeoff of the extra work versus letting through occasional posts
that have okay content plus objectionable URLs.
> * Discussion of moderation decisions. See below for information on
> appealing moderator action.
Metadiscussion of what is and isn't on topic for a group has long
been considered on topiuc for any group as long as such discussion
is a minority of the traffic. If a post is accepted but folks feel it
should have been rejected this means they should contact the mod
team not post about it, right?
> LINKS:
>
> Secure, Team-Based Usenet Moderation Program (STUMP)
> http://www.algebra.com/~ichudov/stump/
I would move this one from the charter to the moderation policy
and the other links to the rationale section. Moving all of the links
to the rationale would do just as well.
> MODERATION POLICY: rec.radio.amateur.moderated
>
> * Messages must not have a 'Followup-To' header that points out of
> rec.radio.amateur.moderated (other than to "poster").
This may end up being an unpopular stance. Who objects is
important to note - Consider their prior history of positive content.
> Individual posters may be temporarily banned for consistently violating
> the group charter. Posters who feel that their posts have been unfairly
> rejected or banned by a specific moderator may appeal the decision by
> contacting the Appeals Board, consisting of a rotating group of 2 or
> more moderators, at the Administrative Contact address below. The Board
> will discuss and vote on the appeal and respond within 14 days if the
> appeal is successful.
>
> Multiple temporary bans, attempting to circumvent the ban, or abuse of the
> appeal system may result in a permanent ban.
You will likely find that with good moderation folks lose interest
before it is necessay to blacklist them. Keeping the option open
doesn't mean you'll use it.
> The moderators are seeking additional candidates for the moderation team
> in order to ensure minimal posting delays and to avoid any appearance of
> bias. We would especially like to find moderators in other time zones,
> countries/continents, etc.
Worldwide coverage works very well.
> DISTRIBUTION:
>
> This document has been posted to the following newsgroups:
>
> news.announce.newgroups
> news.groups.proposals
> rec.radio.info
> rec.radio.amateur.misc
> rec.radio.amateur.policy
There's a hard limit of 5 imposed by many NSPs and a soft limit
of 4 imposed by NGP moderation. Consider separate pointer posts.
> The proponent will also post pointers to:
>
> http://www.qrz.com/
>
> PROPONENT:
>
> "Paul W. Schleck, K3FU" <psch...@novia.net>
Good work.
KC4UAI
Steve Bonine wrote:
> Paul W. Schleck, K3FU wrote:
>
> > REQUEST FOR DISCUSSION (RFD)
> > moderated group rec.radio.amateur.moderated
>
>
> I suggest that the proposed group be presented as an alternative
> location for any discussion related to amateur radio, rather than as an
> alternative to .policy and .misc.
Your point is well taken, but the intent is to provide an alternate to
the most offensive of the current unmoderated groups. We did not want
to disturb the bulk of the groups or take on the logistics of offering
a full replacement of the current hiracy with a moderated one. Such a
move was considered but would have been disruptive to the current
groups as well as much more complex to accomplish so it was rejected by
the team.
This does not mean that posts about antennas won't be accepted, but the
moderation team may suggest that such posts be directed to groups where
the topic is more suitable and the readership more interested.
Remember that our purpose here is to provide an alternate place for the
useful and interesting discussions that used to take place in the two
unmoderated groups in question.
In the future, if posters in other groups wish to create moderated
alternates for their groups I feel that the moderation team will likely
be willing to discuss taking on new topics and/or creating new groups.
But in my mind that is a topic for another day.
-= Bob =-
KC4UAI
Doug Freyburger wrote:
> Paul W. Schleck, K3FU wrote:
> >
> > REQUEST FOR DISCUSSION (RFD)
> > moderated group rec.radio.amateur.moderated
> >
> > CHARTER:
> >
> > rec.radio.amateur.moderated is for the discussion of amateur ("ham")
> > radio. It is not limited to the rules of any one country or time
> > period.
>
> English is the default language of the Big-8 hierarchy but with a
> hobby this international, do you plan on addressing posts in other
> languages? It doesn't seem like a good subject to broach as far
> as Usenet traditions go, but I wonder if the group would draw
> discussion in other languages limited by the mod team's ability
> to understand the posts.
>
> > Discussion of other type of radio, such as Citizens Band, Broadcast,
> > other Personal Radio Services, Commercial or Private Land Mobile, and
> > Marine or Aviation services are off-topic, except when *directly*
> > related to amateur radio ...
>
> Yet all but commercial is amateur. I don't see this as a large problem
> but it seems strange when phrased this way.
The phrasing is intended to limit the posts to things of interest to
the avarage ham radio operator. We sometimes compair and contrast the
rules of other services with ham radio, but we don't want to co-opt
discussions more suited to other groups by allowing them here.
> > The following are prohibited:
> >
> > * Personal advertisements.
>
> Not even regular posters who want to sell used equipment to other
> regular posters? I could see requiring such posts to have some
> amount of non-offer discussion to be able to make it through the
> mod team, but I like the idea of regulars with an established record
> of on topic contribution being able to trade parts.
Yes.. This is a slippery slope problem that we would rather just stay
away from. The purpose of this group is not to become a place to
advertise stuff and services for sale but where discussions about ham
radio can freely take place. There is a huge grey area created when we
start allowing "personal" for sale content. When does it become a
business (which we wish to avoid) and how can the moderation team know?
It seemed better to just not allow it.
> > * Commercial advertisements and money-making schemes.
>
> But political and religious advertisements are allowed?
Ahh.. But they would be off topic.
<snip>
> > * Links to "objectionable" web content, including pornographic sites,
> > sites encouraging illegal activities, or sites deemed unacceptable
> > by the moderation team.
>
> Does the mod team plan on following links to check this? There is
> a tradeoff of the extra work versus letting through occasional posts
> that have okay content plus objectionable URLs.
One of the problems in the two unmoderated groups is a huge number of
links to objectionable pictures, personal BLOGS and other such
objectionable material. The point here is that we reserve the right to
moderate posting of such links should it get out of hand, and that the
content behind such links may be reason for us to reject posts.
> > * Discussion of moderation decisions. See below for information on
> > appealing moderator action.
>
> Metadiscussion of what is and isn't on topic for a group has long
> been considered on topiuc for any group as long as such discussion
> is a minority of the traffic. If a post is accepted but folks feel it
> should have been rejected this means they should contact the mod
> team not post about it, right?
Yes. Any issues that folks have with the moderation of the group need
to be directed to the moderation team and not the group. Such
discussions will very likely be considered off topic for the group and
rejected.
<snip>
> > MODERATION POLICY: rec.radio.amateur.moderated
> >
> > * Messages must not have a 'Followup-To' header that points out of
> > rec.radio.amateur.moderated (other than to "poster").
>
> This may end up being an unpopular stance. Who objects is
> important to note - Consider their prior history of positive content.
It was seen as necessary to avoid interacting with the existing groups
or flooding other groups by allowing followup headers that point
outside. I would wonder what the point of having such in a post would
actually be? We don't allow most cross posting, so a followup would
only cause follow ups to flow to groups that didn't get the original.
<snip>
> You will likely find that with good moderation folks lose interest
> before it is necessay to blacklist them. Keeping the option open
> doesn't mean you'll use it.
Thanks, that was our hope too.
<snip>
>
> Good work.
Thanks.
Steve Bonine
> Your point is well taken, but the intent is to provide an alternate to
> the most offensive of the current unmoderated groups. We did not want
> to disturb the bulk of the groups or take on the logistics of offering
> a full replacement of the current hiracy with a moderated one. Such a
> move was considered but would have been disruptive to the current
> groups as well as much more complex to accomplish so it was rejected by
> the team.
In that case your proposed newsgroup is mis-named. The name does not
suggest that the topics are limited.
> This does not mean that posts about antennas won't be accepted, but the
> moderation team may suggest that such posts be directed to groups where
> the topic is more suitable and the readership more interested.
> Remember that our purpose here is to provide an alternate place for the
> useful and interesting discussions that used to take place in the two
> unmoderated groups in question.
I think that your goal is flawed. You're not going to be able to
replace two newsgroups with one unless the topics of the two are very
close. If you want to replace the policy group, propose
rec.radio.amateur.policy.moderated.
> In the future, if posters in other groups wish to create moderated
> alternates for their groups I feel that the moderation team will likely
> be willing to discuss taking on new topics and/or creating new groups.
> But in my mind that is a topic for another day.
But someone coming into the hierarchy for the first time will assume,
based on the name of the group, that it covers all aspects of amateur
radio. You either need to expand your scope or contract your name.
marc
Marc, KD5LUR
Kathy Morgan
> Paul W. Schleck, K3FU wrote:
> >
> > REQUEST FOR DISCUSSION (RFD)
> > moderated group rec.radio.amateur.moderated
> >
> > CHARTER:
> >
> > [...] Discussion of other type of radio, such as Citizens Band,
> > Broadcast, other Personal Radio Services, Commercial or Private Land
> > Mobile, and Marine or Aviation services are off-topic, except when
> > *directly* related to amateur radio ...
>
> Yet all but commercial is amateur. I don't see this as a large problem
> but it seems strange when phrased this way.
Not really, because in the context of radio broadcasts, "amateur" has a
special, well-defined meaning, at least in the United States. Question
for the proponent: Is that true in most of the English-speaking world?
>
> > The following are prohibited:
> >
> > * Personal advertisements.
>
> Not even regular posters who want to sell used equipment to other
> regular posters? I could see requiring such posts to have some
> amount of non-offer discussion to be able to make it through the
> mod team, but I like the idea of regulars with an established record
> of on topic contribution being able to trade parts.
While some groups do allow them, participants in many groups do *not*
want to see advertisements even from regular posters. If a regular
poster to the group has something to sell, it is usually considered
acceptable to mention it within a 4-line .sig with proper .sig
delimiter.
I think allowing just regular posters to post ads would create a lot of
additional work and headache for the moderators, such as: How many
on-topic contributions are required to be eligible? How many ads does
the regular get to post and how frequently? Can he have one ad for each
on-topic post? Five? One ad for every 2 on-topic? Why did you reject my
ad after so-and-so posted one?
> But political and religious advertisements are allowed?
Actually, it might be better to just say all advertisements are
prohibited except in a properly delimited .sig of 4 lines or less
appended to an otherwise on-topic post.
> Metadiscussion of what is and isn't on topic for a group has long
> been considered on topiuc for any group as long as such discussion
> is a minority of the traffic. If a post is accepted but folks feel it
> should have been rejected this means they should contact the mod
> team not post about it, right?
That's something that varies according to the group. Most groups accept
the metadiscussion but others don't, and some have set up special
mailing lists for the metadiscussions about moderation decisions. I
don't personally have strong feelings one way or the other.
--
Kathy - member of B8MB but speaking only for myself.
KC4UAI
Steve Bonine wrote:
> KC4UAI wrote:
>
> > Your point is well taken, but the intent is to provide an alternate to
> > the most offensive of the current unmoderated groups. We did not want
> > to disturb the bulk of the groups or take on the logistics of offering
> > a full replacement of the current hiracy with a moderated one. Such a
> > move was considered but would have been disruptive to the current
> > groups as well as much more complex to accomplish so it was rejected by
> > the team.
>
> In that case your proposed newsgroup is mis-named. The name does not
> suggest that the topics are limited.
By convention, I see your point. However, we considered many options
here and this was the approach we decided on. Paul may be able to shed
more light on the reasons we went this route.
> > This does not mean that posts about antennas won't be accepted, but the
> > moderation team may suggest that such posts be directed to groups where
> > the topic is more suitable and the readership more interested.
> > Remember that our purpose here is to provide an alternate place for the
> > useful and interesting discussions that used to take place in the two
> > unmoderated groups in question.
>
> I think that your goal is flawed. You're not going to be able to
> replace two newsgroups with one unless the topics of the two are very
> close. If you want to replace the policy group, propose
> rec.radio.amateur.policy.moderated.
I think we discussed this option, but because we wanted to offer a
moderated version of policy and misc (both being in about the same sad
state) we went with our current proposal and proposed only one group.
> > In the future, if posters in other groups wish to create moderated
> > alternates for their groups I feel that the moderation team will likely
> > be willing to discuss taking on new topics and/or creating new groups.
> > But in my mind that is a topic for another day.
>
> But someone coming into the hierarchy for the first time will assume,
> based on the name of the group, that it covers all aspects of amateur
> radio. You either need to expand your scope or contract your name.
Again, your point is understood. By convention the implications of
rec.radio.amateur.moderated could be interpreted as only limited by
rec.radio.amateur but I'm sure this is not a hard and fast rule. There
are a few exceptions even in the rec.radio groups. Given that we are
attempting to provide a moderation option for more than one group, we
did have some difficulty when discussing just this point. Our choice
of rec.radio.amateur.moderated was what we came up with in an effort to
keep it as simple as possible.
-= bob =-
Steve Bonine
> Steve Bonine wrote:
>>I think that your goal is flawed. You're not going to be able to
>>replace two newsgroups with one unless the topics of the two are very
>>close. If you want to replace the policy group, propose
>>rec.radio.amateur.policy.moderated.
>
> I think we discussed this option, but because we wanted to offer a
> moderated version of policy and misc (both being in about the same sad
> state) we went with our current proposal and proposed only one group.
Would it be reasonable to offer one general amateur radio discussion
newsgroup, rather than just trying to carve out policy and miscellaneous
discussions? Do you feel that a single group would be too busy?
It's difficult to predict what the traffic would be in a moderated
newsgroup dedicated to ham radio, with no restrictions on the topic
except that it be ham-radio-related. A quick archive check indicates
that the current groups date from the early to mid 1990's. Even if a
number of groups was justified then, I suspect that one group would be
fine these days. I don't think that the traffic load would be too high
for the moderator team to handle. I also notice that a fair amount of
the traffic in today's groups is crossposted to multiple radio.amateur
groups, another indication that one group might be a better configuration.
I think it's going to end up being a general discussion anyway, based on
its name, so it might as well be chartered that way from the beginning.
If you really want to just carve out part of the discussion, propose two
or more groups with names that match the part of the discussion you want
to support.
Rick
Someone suggested:
>> In that case your proposed newsgroup is mis-named. The name does not
>> suggest that the topics are limited.
And the proponent of the newsgroup replied:
>By convention, I see your point. However, we considered many options
>here and this was the approach we decided on.
There are now two of us who are trying to help out here by telling the
proponent of the newsgroup that there is confusion in the naming. I
believe when a newsgroup has a name that is the same as the top of the
hierarchy (i..e rec.radio.amateur.moderated) that means it is not
limiting its topics. How is a reader who scans the new newsgroup
supposed to know that its topic is limited in scope to "policy" and
"misc" issues? If you don't describe in the newsgroup name what its
subject is, you are going to have a lot of work explaining to everyone
who wants to sell (FS), buy (WTB), list auctions (FA), talk about
antennas (I sure would - the antenna NG is full of QRM too).
Please reconsider your proposal and not shoot down the ideas being
offered to you. There haven't been changes to the r.r.a hierarchy in
about ten years, so expect that we will be living with what changes
are made for a long time.
Rick K2XT
Paul W. Schleck
Hash: SHA1
>This proposal reads,
You shrewdly narrowed in on the one aspect of this proposal that
probably represented the greatest compromise, and potential RFD
discussion :-).
When our team was planning this proposed newsgroup and RFD, we had
considered several alternatives, with various pros and cons:
- Create just rec.radio.amateur.policy.moderated
Pros: Addresses the most problematic (in terms of off-topic posts,
personal attacks, etc.) newsgroup in the rec.radio.amateur.*
hierarchy. Presumes to replace only one newsgroup with a
moderated alternative.
Cons: Leaves the close-second problem newsgroup in the hierarchy (.misc)
twisting in the wind. Many articles are cross-posted between
.misc and .policy, anyway.
- Create both rec.radio.amateur.misc.moderated and
rec.radio.amateur.policy.moderated
Pros: Addresses the two most problematic newsgroups in the
rec.radio.amateur.* hierarchy. Presumes to replace only two
newsgroups with moderated alternatives.
Cons: Moderating two newsgroups is more complicated than moderating one.
Articles may have to be rejected simply because they are posted to
the "wrong" newsgroup. There are more potential combinations of
cross-posting and followups that we would have to track. Many
articles are cross-posted to .misc and .policy, anyway, a practice
that would probably continue with submitters.
- Create rec.radio.amateur.moderated
Pros: Only one newsgroup to moderate.
Cons: Because it is at the same hierarchy level as all other newsgroups,
and with a general name, it may be viewed as presuming to "steal"
the topics of other newsgroups, whose readership may not necessary
feel that they need or want a moderated newsgroup. Alternatively,
since the charter states that it is intended to emulate .misc and
.policy, then that implies that other topics (like .dx, .antenna,
etc.) are banned.
The team voted to have one newsgroup for the proposal and put it out for
discussion to see if that was the public consensus. I don't feel that
there is a perfect solution between the alternatives of banning
non-misc/non-policy discussion for the newsgroup one one hand, versus
stealing articles from the other newsgroups by trying to make one
unified moderated newsgroup for all of rec.radio.amateur.* on the other.
Though the RFD states that it does not necessarily presume that other
topics need moderated alternatives, I know personally that there has
been some undercurrents of discussion/support for moderated version of
at least the .antenna and .dx newsgroups, due to growing problems in
those newsgroups (some of the problems often resulting by cross-posting
by malevolent individuals between those newsgroups and .misc/.policy).
The .space and .digital.misc newsgroups are probably considered too
low-traffic to have a problem with noise. The *.boatanchors newsgroup
is arguably its own distinct culture. Not sure what to do about
..equipment.
I personally am not interested in running the moderation team or teams
for more than two discussion newsgroups, .misc and .policy. I feel
strongly that solutions to problems in other newsgroups should be a team
effort, and the readership of those newsgroups broadly fall into that
team.
I feel that this new newsgroup could be seen as a trailblazer, or
proof-of-concept, such that additional teams could step forward in the
near future to create, for example, .antenna.moderated and .dx.moderated.
I will not serve as a moderator on those teams, but would be available
as a consultant.
What I might propose as a compromise at this point would be a promised
12-month moratorium on the new newsgroup accepting material that is not
strictly .misc or .policy. This would give other teams a fair chance to
create additional moderated newsgroups. If they are created, our
newsgroup would refer their topics to them. If, after 12 months, a
moderated newsgroup for a given topic is not created, we will start
accepting submissions on those topics. Any accusations of "stealing"
posts from existing newsgroups would be mitigated by the reasonable
claim that there was strong expressed support to develop moderated
alternatives for those newsgroups, but no one acted in a reasonable
timeframe (12 months).
- --
Paul W. Schleck
psch...@novia.net
http://www.novia.net/~pschleck/
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Paul W. Schleck
Hash: SHA1
In <1168451876....@77g2000hsv.googlegroups.com> "Doug Freyburger" <dfre...@yahoo.com> writes:
>Paul W. Schleck, K3FU wrote:
>>
>> REQUEST FOR DISCUSSION (RFD)
>> moderated group rec.radio.amateur.moderated
>>
>> CHARTER:
>>
>> rec.radio.amateur.moderated is for the discussion of amateur ("ham")
>> radio. It is not limited to the rules of any one country or time
>> period.
>English is the default language of the Big-8 hierarchy but with a
>hobby this international, do you plan on addressing posts in other
>languages? It doesn't seem like a good subject to broach as far
>as Usenet traditions go, but I wonder if the group would draw
>discussion in other languages limited by the mod team's ability
>to understand the posts.
The rec.radio.amateur.* newsgroups are by default, and by custom,
English-language forums. This is probably true for the rec.*
newsgroups, and the Big-8 hierarchy in general (with some notable
exceptions, mostly soc.culture.*). There do exist Amateur Radio Service
newsgroups in other hierarchies, including dk.* (Denmark), pt.*
(Portugal), and fr.* (France) where presumably those countries' native
languages are used. As with General Aviation and other
internationally-scoped endeavors, the Amateur Radio Service has a strong
custom of the use of English (and the Latin alphabet), even between
amateurs for whom it is not their native language.
>> Discussion of other type of radio, such as Citizens Band, Broadcast,
>> other Personal Radio Services, Commercial or Private Land Mobile, and
>> Marine or Aviation services are off-topic, except when *directly*
>> related to amateur radio ...
>Yet all but commercial is amateur. I don't see this as a large problem
>but it seems strange when phrased this way.
The RFD probably didn't explain this well enough. Amateur, as in
Amateur Radio Service, as defined in Federal Communications Commission
Regulations (Part 97), U.S. law, and in similar laws and regulations in
other countries, based on international treaty. The Amateur Radio
Service has specific prohibitions on commercial content, content for
hire, or its use as a regular substitute for other commercial services.
It is also distinct from other personal radio services like Family Radio
Service and Citizen's Band, the latter of which has its own newsgroup,
rec.radio.cb. Amateur radio operators and operation would be defined as
that performed under the color of Amateur Radio Service operator and
station licenses issued by governments. Use of other licenses (or
lawful or unlawful activity without a license) would be arguably out of
the scope of our newsgroup.
>> The following are prohibited:
>>
>> * Personal advertisements.
>Not even regular posters who want to sell used equipment to other
>regular posters? I could see requiring such posts to have some
>amount of non-offer discussion to be able to make it through the
>mod team, but I like the idea of regulars with an established record
>of on topic contribution being able to trade parts.
The rec.radio.swap newsgroup has existed for many years, and the
previous rec.ham-radio.swap newsgroup for years before that. Past
newsgroup discussion and votes since at least the late 1980's were
strongly in favor of putting radio-related buy/sell/trade posts in their
own newsgroup.
>> * Commercial advertisements and money-making schemes.
>But political and religious advertisements are allowed?
Political and religious "advertisements" would be off-topic. The one
exception would be discussions of Amateur Radio Service regulatory
politics.
>> * Posts in HTML.
>International Morse has no upper or lower case. That's far too
>restrictive a character set compared to vanilla ASCII. How about
>other fancy characters?
I would strongly prefer to only have to deal with text/plain, ASCII, ISO
Latin 1, ISO-8859-1, etc. If STUMP and INN will pass it, and it's
readable as English, I suppose that would be OK.
>> * Links to "objectionable" web content, including pornographic sites,
>> sites encouraging illegal activities, or sites deemed unacceptable
>> by the moderation team.
>Does the mod team plan on following links to check this? There is
>a tradeoff of the extra work versus letting through occasional posts
>that have okay content plus objectionable URLs.
STUMP can be configured to insert the following disclaimer headers in
approved posts:
X-Comment-1: The moderators do not necessarily agree or disagree with this article.
X-Comment-2: Moderators do not verify the accuracy of posted information.
X-Comment-3: Acceptance does not convey approval of any external references.
With STUMP's web interface, it should be possible to cursorily check the
present contents of a web link, while still allowing us to disclaim
endorsement for the entire present or future contents of the site. The
emphasis would be on filtering out disruptive or off-topic submissions,
not completely endorsing the material submitted to us.
>> * Discussion of moderation decisions. See below for information on
>> appealing moderator action.
>Metadiscussion of what is and isn't on topic for a group has long
>been considered on topiuc for any group as long as such discussion
>is a minority of the traffic. If a post is accepted but folks feel it
>should have been rejected this means they should contact the mod
>team not post about it, right?
That's right. We propose to have a special appeals process set up, with
a rotating team of moderators who are not directly involved in the
approval/disapproval of postings during their term on the appeals board.
We have an Administrative Contact address set up for this purpose.
[...]
>> MODERATION POLICY: rec.radio.amateur.moderated
>>
>> * Messages must not have a 'Followup-To' header that points out of
>> rec.radio.amateur.moderated (other than to "poster").
>This may end up being an unpopular stance. Who objects is
>important to note - Consider their prior history of positive content.
The rec.radio.amateur.* hierarchy has an unfortunate track record of
users who have been engaging in cross-posting and setting of Followup-To
headers for malicious purposes, including disrupting other newsgroups
with off-topic material. I'd prefer to start out the newsgroup with no
cross-posting (save for rec.radio.info, rec.answers. and news.answers
with moderator(s) approval), and no followups outside of the moderated
newsgroup, except to poster. This is how misc.kids.moderated started
out. They later decided to open things up a bit, so such future action
is not out of the questions. I'd just rather not start out with such
open cross-posting policies.
>> Individual posters may be temporarily banned for consistently violating
>> the group charter. Posters who feel that their posts have been unfairly
>> rejected or banned by a specific moderator may appeal the decision by
>> contacting the Appeals Board, consisting of a rotating group of 2 or
>> more moderators, at the Administrative Contact address below. The Board
>> will discuss and vote on the appeal and respond within 14 days if the
>> appeal is successful.
>>
>> Multiple temporary bans, attempting to circumvent the ban, or abuse of the
>> appeal system may result in a permanent ban.
>You will likely find that with good moderation folks lose interest
>before it is necessay to blacklist them. Keeping the option open
>doesn't mean you'll use it.
But I'd still like to keep the option open, though you may be correct
when (if?) the new newsgroup is eventually created and used.
>> The moderators are seeking additional candidates for the moderation team
>> in order to ensure minimal posting delays and to avoid any appearance of
>> bias. We would especially like to find moderators in other time zones,
>> countries/continents, etc.
>Worldwide coverage works very well.
We have one moderator in Australia, and are open to additional overseas
moderators, especially ones that are in timezones not presently covered,
including Europe, Africa, Central Asia, and the Pacific (Hawaii, etc.).
[...]
>Good work.
Thanks!
- --
Paul W. Schleck
psch...@novia.net
http://www.novia.net/~pschleck/
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Rick
"Paul W. Schleck" <psch...@novia.net> wrote
>If, after 12 months, a moderated newsgroup for a given topic is not
>created, we will start
> accepting submissions on those topics.
Oh, come on Paul. You mean to tell me this time next year the new newsgroup
is
going to be wide open - with antennas, dx, misc, policy, equipment, and
boatanchors all piled
on top of one another?
Why is it that you cannot simply name your new newsgroup with the title of
the subject it covers?
If it covers both misc and policy material name it something that represents
that, removing all ambiguity?
I suggested rec.radio.amateur.administration.moderated but you can probably
come up with
a more appropriate name.
If your proposal also included eliminating misc and policy (which I would
support) you could
name it rec.radio.amateur.misc&policy.moderated.
Just don't let it be a catch-all, or sit at the top of the hierarchy with a
limitation that is not reflected in the name.
Rick K2XT
Nate Bargmann
topics would be most welcome and has my full support.
- Nate >>
--
"The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds,
the pessimist fears this is true."
Michael Black
> "Paul W. Schleck" <psch...@novia.net> wrote
>
>>If, after 12 months, a moderated newsgroup for a given topic is not
>>created, we will start
>> accepting submissions on those topics.
>
> Oh, come on Paul. You mean to tell me this time next year the new newsgroup
> is
> going to be wide open - with antennas, dx, misc, policy, equipment, and
> boatanchors all piled
> on top of one another?
>
equivalent of rec.radio.amateur is to ignore the fact that years ago it was
decided one newsgroup was too unwieldy.
I can see a possible need to moderate rec.radio.amateur.misc and
rec.radio.amateur.policy but the only reason the other newsgroups would
need moderating is because of the cross-posting coming from those newsgroups.
Indeed, the reason that .misc and .policy can even be considered lumped
together into one moderated newsgroup is because the cross-posting between
those two newsgroups has gone on a lot longer and is more constant than the
cross-posting to the other newsgroups in the hierarchy.
So having taken care of the problem with a moderated newsgroup, then it's
too easy to say "we can abandon the other newsgroups by letting people
post about all of the sub-interests of amateur radio here".
That should never happen. Whether or not there should be moderated
equivalents of the current sub-groups, their topics should not be
mixed in with this moderated newsgroup if they don't get moderated
equivalents.
That sounds too much like sort of cleaning up the back yard
and not caring about the neighbors. Leave the problem behind, and
then the only reason the other newsgroups in the hierarchy need
the moderated newsgroup is because of the mess left behind.
Michael
Michael Black
>> Does the mod team plan on following links to check this? There is
>> a tradeoff of the extra work versus letting through occasional posts
>> that have okay content plus objectionable URLs.
>
> One of the problems in the two unmoderated groups is a huge number of
> links to objectionable pictures, personal BLOGS and other such
> objectionable material. The point here is that we reserve the right to
> moderate posting of such links should it get out of hand, and that the
> content behind such links may be reason for us to reject posts.
>
But surely it's really that the posts are malicious. A personal blog
is not objectionable, it's the intent of the poster pointing to it
that may be objectionable.
Unlike some of the posters in those two newsgroups, I don't see the problem
as disagreement, but the animosity that goes on over the disagreement. That's
what's damaging, especially when it spills over to the other newsgroups
in the rec.radio.amateur.* hierarchy and even into newsgroups in the
rec.radio.* hierarchy that aren't related to amateur radio.
ANd that's what any moderating of this newsgroup has to be about. The
only people posting links to porn are either going to be "spammers" or
people being malicious. The former would be off-topic, at the very least,
because they have nothing to do with amateur radio. The latter, well it
shouldn't matter what they are pointing to because if their intent is
to be malicious, that's what you want to keep out of the newsgroup.
So I'd say this point needs to be rethought, because it's nitpicking
on a point that really should be covered elsewhere in the RFD (and
may be covered).
Michael
Michael Black
>> The following are prohibited:
>>
>> * Personal advertisements.
>
> Not even regular posters who want to sell used equipment to other
> regular posters? I could see requiring such posts to have some
> amount of non-offer discussion to be able to make it through the
> mod team, but I like the idea of regulars with an established record
> of on topic contribution being able to trade parts.
>
This shouldn't even be an issue.
Most posters in the hierarchy may not realize it, but buy and sell
ads don't belong in any of the rec.radio.amateur.* newsgroups Either
by default (because they were created before the internet went commercial
so there was no reason to explicitly prohibit ads on a group by group
basis) or because the charter actually does prohibit ads.
It's a common misconception that rec.radio.amateur.equipment is
a buy and sell newsgroup, but it's not at all for ads. It's
for the discussion of such equipment.
Now oddly, the last of the newsgroups created, rec.radio.amateur.boatanchors,
its charter actually allows for buy and sell ads, though it's way
down the list, and obviously limited to things related to boatanchors.
It came late enough that the issue of ads could even come up, and it
wsa decided that buying and selling was too integral to that area of
the hobby. The result is that too often it is a buy and sell newsgroup,
and once there are ads, people think they can sell their non-boatanchor
ham equipment, and their guns and computers and audio equipment.
Just make no buy and sell ads allowed in this moderated newsgroup,
because that reflects the existing hierarchy (even if the policy
isn't always followed).
It's interesting that despite the mess that overflows from .misc
and .policy, those newsgroups never seem to get many buy and
sell ads.
Michael
an old freind
Paul W. Schleck, K3FU wrote:
>
posts so far none have either been posted nor has anything returned to
my email box saying that the post has been rejected
i question the choice of moderotrs I question wether any serious
discussion of thei sproposal is going to be permitted at all
an old freind
first the timing of this proposal would seem to indicate that the
makers of the of are unable to deviler the proposed NG in a timely
manner as this was first being discussed in July 2006 with a promised
delveiery date of falll 2006 as can be by this being JAN 2007 I find
it highly dubious that the ng can in fact function in timely if it
can't be rolled out in a timly manner
the charter would exclude materail from the general topic of
comuncation by RF which means it can't not truely further the
interestes of the Topic amateur except in reinforcing the insular view
held by some Hams that Ham radio exists in total isolation from the
rest of RF
>Moderator: Paul W. Schleck, K3FU <psch...@novia.net>
>Moderator: Bob Diepenbrock, KC4UAI <bob_...@yahoo.com>
>Moderator: Jack Cook, VK2CJC <vk2...@bigpond.com>
>Moderator: Jim Hampton, AA2QA <aa...@frontiernet.net>
>Moderator: Ace Ratliff, WH2T <a...@wh2t.com>
>Moderator: Jeff Angus, WA6FWI <jan...@socal.rr.com>
>Moderator: Hans Brakob, K0HB <k0...@arrl.net>
>
the pronent has hardly been in RRAP in year
amoug the moderators areis at least one individual that has taken part
in the flaming ot flaming of myself that being WH2T posting material
insiting that I must be mental ill by distorting the works of the AMA
and APA indeed was part of the fuel thrown on the flame
none of the llist a single repsentive form the largest class indeed
all seem to be respentives of one the smalest class of US licnse
holder which certainly inpsires no confendince that the interest or
view point of the 90 of the holder of Us Ham tickets will be
respected, nor do ANY of the moderator show to my PERSONAL knowledge
any real signs of being knowledge of, let alone sympathetic to the
interest of the tech/vhf and up user of Ham Radio
the body consists of people largely unknown to a comon poster over
many years what poster I know something NONE comes from that gruop
that thinks Code USE is not good for the ARS not merely testing and as
far as I know only one was even a member of NCI or the NoCode test
movement in general
what apears is an effort to establish another version of Good old boys
club (in literal sense as well as figuritly) to at least partails
replace the one that NCI has recently otherthwon
I honestly don't see where the new gruop is needed. indeed now that
the current issue has been settled we already see signs of claming and
a setttling down even the return of some poster that had abesnted
themselves the cuase truly of the normal sniping geting out of hand is
it becoming obvois that one side was wining the Code debate which had
caesed being a deabte but a ralling cuase where both side had to
contiue to keep the follow interested excetra and some of the parties
resorted to same sort of negitive campaigning that we see in the outer
world in politics
I must furth object to insiting the the proposals be required as it is
NOT carried by my prefered provider
http://kb9rqz.blogspot.com/
--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com
======================================= MODERATOR'S COMMENT:
This is very close to the edge of the boundary for a civil article and further escalation will not be permitted.
Jonathan Kamens
>is it going to realy permited to coment on this propasal
Yes.
>I have made 4
>posts so far none have either been posted nor has anything returned to
>my email box saying that the post has been rejected
Rejection notices were sent to kons...@hotmail.com for the articles
that were rejected. I have confirmed from examining the server logs
that those notices were successfully delivered to hotmail's servers. I
of course can't comment on what happened to them after that.
Your previous two submissions (two, not four) were rejected both
because you quoted the entire RFD in your response and because you were
uncivil.
--
Member of the Big-8 Management Board, www.big-8.org
(Speaking for myself, not for the Board)
deefl...@comcast.net
As with anything, it can be expected to develop over time. Some of the
rules may prove unnecessary or new ones by prove to be needed.
I'd say go ahead and start as is and develop changes, if needed, after
the group has been in existence for a period of time.
Steve Bonine
> "Rick" (rick...@hotmail.com) writes:
>
>>"Paul W. Schleck" <psch...@novia.net> wrote
>>
>>>If, after 12 months, a moderated newsgroup for a given topic is not
>>>created, we will start
>>>accepting submissions on those topics.
>>
>>Oh, come on Paul. You mean to tell me this time next year the new newsgroup
>>is
>>going to be wide open - with antennas, dx, misc, policy, equipment, and
>>boatanchors all piled on top of one another?
>>
> It should never be that way.. To make this moderated newsgroup the
> equivalent of rec.radio.amateur is to ignore the fact that years ago it was
> decided one newsgroup was too unwieldy.
Years ago was . . . years ago. The current amateur-radio hierarchy was
built in the early 1990's. A lot has changed since then.
There are many less Usenet users now. A traffic analysis would show
that the number of on-topic messages has decreased significantly. In
addition, many of the current articles in the amateur-radio groups are
crossposted to several groups, indicating a basic flaw in the hierarchy
organization.
There are several additional methods for ham radio operators to
communicate via the Internet. Forums like eHam and QRZ provide an
alternative to Usenet. There are any number of groups on Yahoo that
address general and specialized topics. These alternatives reduce the
traffic in the Usenet groups.
News readers are very good at allowing their users to follow threads
that interest them and discard postings on topics they don't care about.
All of this suggests that even though there was a need at one point to
split the group, there may no longer be a justification for it.
> I can see a possible need to moderate rec.radio.amateur.misc and
> rec.radio.amateur.policy but the only reason the other newsgroups would
> need moderating is because of the cross-posting coming from those newsgroups.
The fact that there is excessive crossposting suggests a problem of some
kind. I don't understand why there would ever be a justified crosspost
between one of the specific groups and the misc group. If an article
fits in one of the specific groups, by definition it does not belong in
misc.
> Indeed, the reason that .misc and .policy can even be considered lumped
> together into one moderated newsgroup is because the cross-posting between
> those two newsgroups has gone on a lot longer and is more constant than the
> cross-posting to the other newsgroups in the hierarchy.
I do not think that it is reasonable to create a group named
rec.radio.amateur and expect potential participants to somehow divine
that the topic is policy plus any topic not discussed in one of the
existing groups. Pardon me for bringing a non-ham-radio topic into the
discussion, but this is exactly the same problem as was just hashed over
with another proposed group, sci.physics.fundamentals. The obvious
interpretation of the name does not match the charter of the group, so
people are going to be submitting articles (on topics like antennas) and
having them rejected by the moderators.
> So having taken care of the problem with a moderated newsgroup, then it's
> too easy to say "we can abandon the other newsgroups by letting people
> post about all of the sub-interests of amateur radio here".
>
> That should never happen. Whether or not there should be moderated
> equivalents of the current sub-groups, their topics should not be
> mixed in with this moderated newsgroup if they don't get moderated
> equivalents.
Or the new group can be defined as a moderated alternative for ALL of
the other groups. This is becoming a common scenario in Usenet. Group
X becomes unusable because of noise so a group X.moderated is created to
provide people who want to discuss X a place to do so. In this case, X
is amateur radio and the "Group X" is a hierarchy of groups, but the
principle is the same.
My suggestion is to open the charter up for the proposed group to cover
the topic that its name suggests. With one group there will not be a
crossposting problem. If it becomes unweildy, the common topics can be
split into their own moderated groups. I don't think this will be
necessary.
This gives participants a full choice to use a moderated group or the
existing unmoderated hierarchy.
> That sounds too much like sort of cleaning up the back yard
> and not caring about the neighbors. Leave the problem behind, and
> then the only reason the other newsgroups in the hierarchy need
> the moderated newsgroup is because of the mess left behind.
Creating a moderated alternative does not harm the other groups, and in
some cases may even help them. The flip side of your analogy is "I
don't need to clean my back yard because the neighbors haven't cleaned
theirs." When solving a specific problem, it's not necessary to also
insure world peace and cure cancer.
Steve Bonine
>
> A moderation robot will scan all submitted posts. Each post will be
> either automatically approved, rejected, or sent to the moderators for
> manual review. The moderator 'bot will enforce the following guidelines:
I would leave out this first paragraph. It doesn't matter, in terms of
the moderation policy, whether the job is done by a computer or a human.
> * Postings must be in plain text. In particular no HTML or mixed text
> and HTML posts will be allowed. Messages that are
> multipart/alternative will be automatically filtered to pass just
> the text/plain version to the newsgroup.
The fact that no HTML is allowed has already been indicated in the
"prohibited" section of the RFD; it does not need to be repeated here.
But this text suggests that submissions will be changed and approved.
This should not be done. HTML and other prohibited formats should be
simply rejected and returned to the submitter.
> * No binary postings of any sort will be accepted. Exceptions will be
> made for cryptographic signatures and such.
This is already covered and I see no reason to repeat it.
> Individual posters may be temporarily banned for consistently violating
> the group charter. Posters who feel that their posts have been unfairly
> rejected or banned by a specific moderator may appeal the decision by
> contacting the Appeals Board, consisting of a rotating group of 2 or
> more moderators, at the Administrative Contact address below. The Board
> will discuss and vote on the appeal and respond within 14 days if the
> appeal is successful.
What about if the appeal is unsuccessful . . . no response then?
I don't think I would have included the words "by a specific moderator".
Appeals should not depend on identification of who rejected the
submission.
Kathy Morgan
> NEWSGROUPS LINE: rec.radio.amateur.moderated
>
> rec.radio.amateur.moderated Amateur radio practices, rules, etc. (Moderated)
>
>
> RATIONALE: rec.radio.amateur.moderated
>
> rec.radio.amateur.moderated is a moderated alternative to the existing
> rec.radio.amateur.misc and rec.radio.amateur.policy newsgroups. [...]
>
> Combining the topics of the unmoderated rec.radio.amateur.misc and
> rec.radio.amateur.policy newsgroups into a single moderated newsgroup is
> offered as the most practical solution for both the moderators and the
> participants at this time. This proposal does not necessarily presume
> that any other rec.radio.amateur.* newsgroups and their topics require
> moderated alternatives at this time.
I agree with the comments by Steve Bonine and Rick that the proposed
name is likely to cause confusion about what is on topic in the group
and that the traffic for the group would be manageable if you open it to
discussion of all aspects of ham radio rather than just .misc and
.policy. If the other unmoderated rec.radio.amateur.* newsgroups are
currently healthy, most of their users are unlikely to move to the new
moderated group.
If you want to provide a moderated forum for only .misc and .policy
discussion, a better name might be
rec.radio.amateur.policy+misc.moderated
Tim Skirvin
>> MODERATION POLICY: rec.radio.amateur.moderated
>> A moderation robot will scan all submitted posts. Each post will be
>> either automatically approved, rejected, or sent to the moderators for
>> manual review. The moderator 'bot will enforce the following guidelines:
> I would leave out this first paragraph. It doesn't matter, in terms of
> the moderation policy, whether the job is done by a computer or a human.
I disagree; human-vs-robot is one of the most important
distinctions in how moderation works, in practice. Yes, there's been a
bias towards human-moderation lately, but bot-moderation has its place.
I'm personally fond of the flexibility of the mixed-setup, as long as the
abusers can be chased away as necessary.
>> * Postings must be in plain text. In particular no HTML or mixed text
>> and HTML posts will be allowed. Messages that are
>> multipart/alternative will be automatically filtered to pass just
>> the text/plain version to the newsgroup.
> The fact that no HTML is allowed has already been indicated in the
> "prohibited" section of the RFD; it does not need to be repeated here.
Perhaps, but it's nice to be complete when describing how the
modbot is going to work. It might be useful to simplify it to "articles
must conform to the formatting guidelines listed in the charter".
> But this text suggests that submissions will be changed and approved.
That's not really much of a change, if I read this right -
articles where two copies of the same article are sent, one HTML and one
plain text, will just drop the HTML. That's sensible.
- Tim Skirvin (sk...@big-8.org)
--
http://www.big-8.org/ Big-8 Management Board
http://www.killfile.org/~tskirvin/ Skirv's Homepage <FISH>< <*>
Jim Riley
>Paul W. Schleck, K3FU wrote:
>
>> REQUEST FOR DISCUSSION (RFD)
>> moderated group rec.radio.amateur.moderated
>
>This proposal reads,
>
>> rec.radio.amateur.moderated is a moderated alternative to the existing
>> rec.radio.amateur.misc and rec.radio.amateur.policy newsgroups.
>
>The other newsgroups in the hierarchy are
>
>rec.radio.amateur.antenna
>rec.radio.amateur.boatanchors
>rec.radio.amateur.digital.misc
>rec.radio.amateur.dx
>rec.radio.amateur.equipment
>rec.radio.amateur.homebrew
>rec.radio.amateur.space
>
>So this means that discussion of topics covered by these groups is not
>allowed in the proposed group, based on the line,
A similar situation exists in the comp.lang.perl.* hierarchy, where it
is understood that modules discussion would continue in the group
comp.lang.perl.modules rather than in comp.lang.perl.moderated. A
similar construction was used in the case of rec.games.frp.* hierarchy
where it was understood that rec.games.frp.moderated was not for
discussion specific to D&D, etc. which had their own moderated
newsgroups.
>> This proposal does not necessarily presume
>> that any other rec.radio.amateur.* newsgroups and their topics require
>> moderated alternatives at this time.
>
>So discussion of antennas, boatanchors, digital modes, DX, homebrew and
>other equipment, and space-related topics is not allowed in the proposed
>group. This presents a difficult situation for both moderators and
>participants.
I think that most would-be participants would recognize the specific
purpose of the antenna, boatanchors, digital, dx, equipment, homebrew,
and space groups from their names.
There may be more ambiguity about the meaning of "policy", especially
given that the other specific groups were split out of "misc" after
the original split into "policy" and "misc".
>I suggest that the proposed group be presented as an alternative
>location for any discussion related to amateur radio, rather than as an
>alternative to .policy and .misc.
Why would people use a more general group when there is a specific
group for their particular interest?
--
Jim Riley
Steve Bonine
Because the [proposed] general group is moderated.
If you visit the rec.radio.amateur hierarchy, you'll observe a common
phenomena in Usenet. The unmoderated groups are pretty useless because
of flaming, off-topic posts, excessive crossposting, and general noise.
The goal of the proposal is to provide a usable place to discuss the
topic. To quote from the RFD, "Over the past several years, the traffic
on both groups has become largely flame wars, spam, and personal
ad-hominem discussions of past, present, and future violations and
violators, having little or no bearing on amateur radio."
KC4UAI
Kathy Morgan wrote:
<snip>
> If the other unmoderated rec.radio.amateur.* newsgroups are
> currently healthy, most of their users are unlikely to move to the new
> moderated group.
>
> If you want to provide a moderated forum for only .misc and .policy
> discussion, a better name might be
> rec.radio.amateur.policy+misc.moderated
>
Thanks,
I hadn't thought of that option and I will forward this idea to the
team so we can discuss it and decide what, if any, changes we want to
make in this regard. I would not say that the whole of
rec.radio.amateur.* is healthy except policy and misc, but these two
seemed to be the worst of the bunch which is why we specifically
targeted these groups.
>From my perspective, I don't see where I would object to a slight topic
change to include general discussions of amateur radio and keep the
proposed name, with the understanding that posters could be directed to
the unmoderated forum most appropriate to their topic of choice if a
more targeted group exists. The only exception is that we will not
redirect policy and misc which used to be one forum (misc or so I'm
told) a long time ago. In a way we are recombining them now. Your
proposed name certainly captures the spirit of what we wanted to
accomplish.
I've started the discussion with the Team and I'll see that the results
of this discussion get relayed to this thread.
-= Bob =-
KH6HZ
I wholeheartedly support this proposal.
Unfortunately, the existing .misc/.policy groups have degraded into sludge
due to the actions of a few with self-control problems. A moderated
newsgroup is a necessity to promote healthy discussions regarding ham
radio-related activities and policies. Many active participants from
rec.radio.amateur.misc/.policy have migrated to other amateur radio forums
off-USENET due precisely to these problems.
While this proposal may not be ideal in some eyes (such as the name of the
group, as one individual here pointed out), it is a good starting point and
certainly can be refined as time goes on.
If there was simply a way to moderate the existing .misc and .policy groups
without any name changes, certainly that would be "ideal" in my eyes. It has
been quite a few years since I've been activity involved in newsgroup
creation or even read a group in the news.* hierarchy, so I do not even know
if that is possible within the current rules structure governing the "big 8"
hierarchies. Adding another level (rram.moderated or rrap.moderated) seems
convoluted to me, and I would discourage the Board from actively considering
such a proposal.
The members of the proposed moderation team are well-known amateur operators
in both USENET and other forums. While I myself have had disagreements with
their opinions in the past, I have the utmost confidence in their ability to
fairly moderate the newsgroup without prejudice and callous levity for
someone's opinions, even if they differ from those of the moderator.
In absence of any substantive changes suggested in this forum and agreed
upon by the moderators of the proposed group, I ask that the Board support
this proposal, vote to the affirmative, and create the new newsgroup.
73
KH6HZ
Michael Black
> Jim Riley wrote:
>
>> On Wed, 10 Jan 2007 12:36:19 CST, Steve Bonine <s...@pobox.com> wrote:
>
>>>I suggest that the proposed group be presented as an alternative
>>>location for any discussion related to amateur radio, rather than as an
>>>alternative to .policy and .misc.
>>
>> Why would people use a more general group when there is a specific
>> group for their particular interest?
>
> Because the [proposed] general group is moderated.
>
> If you visit the rec.radio.amateur hierarchy, you'll observe a common
> phenomena in Usenet. The unmoderated groups are pretty useless because
> of flaming, off-topic posts, excessive crossposting, and general noise.
No.
rec.radio.amateur.misc and rec.radio.amateur.policy are pretty useless
because of all that.
While some of the other sub groups suffer from some of that, they don't
get the same amount and hence are not made useless.
I can't speak for .antennas or .dx for the simple reason that in 12
years I've barely looked in the former and never in the latter. But
.homebrew, .boatanchors and .equipment are relatively clean. Yes,
they suffer from those things you mention, but unlike .misc and .policy
they have not been made uninhabitable.
And this is an issue. The proponents of the moderated newsgroup are
discussing a real issue in two of the newsgroups (which as I mentioned
have basically become one since cross-posting between the two is nearly
automatic and has gone on long enough that .misc and .policy basically
have no separate identity, and there is far more cross-posting between
those two newsgroups than the cross-posting to the other newsgroups
in the hierarchy).
They aren't really discussing the hierarchy at large, but to even
begin to consider that this moderated newsgroup become a catch all
affects the hierarchy in general. They aren't talking about a moderated
newsgroup because the whole hierarchy is a mess, they are talking about
it because two specific newsgroups have become a mess.
It is significant that given it does affect all the hierarchy, the
RFD was not cross-posted to the full hierarchy. Yes, that should
be covered by the newsgroups it was posted to, but people can go a long
time in the sub groups without ever visiting .misc or .policy Ironically,
some may miss the RFD because those two specific newsgroups have become
inhospitable.
Obviously, we aren't seeing many people interested in this discussion from
the concerned hierarchy. But looking at who is posting, I get the impression
I'm the only one who is speaking as a poster to some of the other sub
groups in the hierarchy.
The trend of this discussion seems to be away from putting a more valid
name on this proposed moderated newsgroup, to justifying the name by
making it all encompassing.
And ultimately, I am concerned because what might be the only solution
(though I'm not fully convinced that moderating is the only solutiion
since the problem isn't just the obnioxious posts but the lack of
valid posts to balance it, and too many seem to have given up on
the newsgroups) to the problem in .misc and .policy will siphon
people away from the other newsgroups not because they are in bad
shape, but because people somehow like the notion of being moderated.
And that last is quite different from trying to solve a problem in
.misc and .policy
I don't like the possiblity of good newsgroups being abandoned
becuse some people perceive a few off-topic posts as being "too
much". (And I should point out that while I often will address
off-topic posts in these other rec.radio.amateur.* newsgroups, my
intent is mostly to deter future postings of that nature, so it
doesn't make the newsgroup unusable)
An alternative to finding a suitable name that encompasses .misc and
.policy is to make a moderated version of one of them. So
rec.radio.amateur.misc.moderated would be like the existing .misc
except moderated, with the usual point that it covers what remains
after the topics in the sub groups are removed. Now it's hard
to imagine what remains to discuss, since it's been a long time
since there's been real discussion in there, but I'd suggest it
makes sense to make it moderated first for the simple reason that
someoe new to the hobby might want to ask questions, and as things
are now, they not only get lost in the feuding, but often seem
to become part of the feuding.
Michael
Jim Riley
>Jim Riley wrote:
>
>> On Wed, 10 Jan 2007 12:36:19 CST, Steve Bonine <s...@pobox.com> wrote:
>
>>>I suggest that the proposed group be presented as an alternative
>>>location for any discussion related to amateur radio, rather than as an
>>>alternative to .policy and .misc.
>>
>> Why would people use a more general group when there is a specific
>> group for their particular interest?
>
>Because the [proposed] general group is moderated.
They might. But if they have a specific interest in DX'ing or
antennas or boatanchors, I believe many persons would try those groups
first, regardless whether they were moderated. If only 1% of the
discussion in a general group is devoted to boatanchors, those with an
interest in boatanchors aren't going to use the group, even if they
have to muddle through a lot of noise in an unmoderated group specific
to the topic.
>If you visit the rec.radio.amateur hierarchy, you'll observe a common
>phenomena in Usenet. The unmoderated groups are pretty useless because
>of flaming, off-topic posts, excessive crossposting, and general noise.
Can you provide an analysis specific to *each* group?
A moderated group called rec.radio.amateur.moderated covering the
topic-space of rec.radio.amateuer.misc and rec.radio.amateur.policy
could be viable, even if it doesn't do anything for the other
sub-topics. And including the other sub-topics in the charter won't
necessarily solve whatever problems there are in the other groups, or
even attract users from those groups.
> The goal of the proposal is to provide a usable place to discuss the
>topic. To quote from the RFD, "Over the past several years, the traffic
>on both groups has become largely flame wars, spam, and personal
>ad-hominem discussions of past, present, and future violations and
>violators, having little or no bearing on amateur radio."
I think the key element here is "both groups".
--
Jim Riley
Paul W. Schleck
Hash: SHA1
In <3I6dnbCjSNm-zDvY...@deskmedia.com> Steve Bonine <s...@pobox.com> writes:
[...]
>> * Postings must be in plain text. In particular no HTML or mixed text
>> and HTML posts will be allowed. Messages that are
>> multipart/alternative will be automatically filtered to pass just
>> the text/plain version to the newsgroup.
>The fact that no HTML is allowed has already been indicated in the
>"prohibited" section of the RFD; it does not need to be repeated here.
>But this text suggests that submissions will be changed and approved.
>This should not be done. HTML and other prohibited formats should be
>simply rejected and returned to the submitter.
I see this as a valid exception to the general policy (that I agree
with) that we should not be editing posts, but accepting/rejecting them
in their entirety, including headers like Newsgroups and Followup-To.
It's been my personal experience on the Internet, sending and receiving
E-mail over many years, that many users are absolutely oblivious to what
their mail client software is sending out. Rejecting their
multipart/alternative messages over and over with instructions to send
plain text only, will result in endless aggravation on both sides. I
was surprised to find myself almost getting into serious arguments with
close friends and relatives over this, many of whom were intelligent
people, often successful professionals. Pointers to excellent sites
regarding how to configure E-mail clients to only send plain text, such
as the following:
http://www.expita.com/nomime.html
went unheeded.
The amateur radio community is technically savvy, but is savvy in the
fields of engineering and applied sciences, not necessarily computer
science or information technology. Most amateur radio software is
written for Windows, not Unix. Many amateurs on Usenet are using
Microsoft software like Outlook Express, or mail sites like Hotmail,
Gmail, etc., with hazardous default behaviors like sending rich
text/HTML E-mail with no obvious indication it is doing so, or how to
turn it off.
The only realistic alternative I found was to let my E-mail
correspondents send whatever they wanted without further complaint from
me, but filter/convert it on my end to something suitable for my reading
and storage requirements.
Furthermore, it seems to me that a reasonable interpretation of
multipart/alternative is something like, "take the alternative that you
can display/process, they're all the same basic content, differing only
by format." I don't see it as rewriting someone's submission simply to
take the text/plain alternative out of, say, a mixed message containing
both text/plain and text/html.
I expect that most submitters will be using a newsreader, which will
send us plain text. The filtering of everything but text/plain out of
multipart/alternative messages would be a minor exception that would
allow us to accept E-mail submissions to the newsgroup without
subjecting the submitters to nit-picking requirements that they can't or
won't comply with.
[...]
>> Individual posters may be temporarily banned for consistently violating
>> the group charter. Posters who feel that their posts have been unfairly
>> rejected or banned by a specific moderator may appeal the decision by
>> contacting the Appeals Board, consisting of a rotating group of 2 or
>> more moderators, at the Administrative Contact address below. The Board
>> will discuss and vote on the appeal and respond within 14 days if the
>> appeal is successful.
>What about if the appeal is unsuccessful . . . no response then?
We are leaving open the possibility that if we have some abusive
submitter that is spewing to us, or otherwise submitting large numbers
of frivolous appeals, that we aren't obligating ourselves to reply to
each and every submission sent. We would likely reply to every sincere,
non-abusive submitter regardless of the decision. I can reword this
section of the RFD to explain this more clearly.
>I don't think I would have included the words "by a specific moderator".
> Appeals should not depend on identification of who rejected the
>submission.
I see two possible pitfalls to our initial moderation decisions:
- We are rejecting article contents for the wrong reasons.
- We have a moderator who is not being fair and objective to submitters
(possibly a specific submitter) regardless of article contents.
I would strongly hope that the latter is not going to happen. However,
we are all human beings here, with human flaws. The appeals process is
a pragmatically necessary safety-net to ensure that either pitfall does
not happen, or if it does, that we can detect it and correct the
situation as soon as possible. I can reword this section, also.
- --
Paul W. Schleck
psch...@novia.net
http://www.novia.net/~pschleck/
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Doug Freyburger
> KC4UAI writes:
> > Doug Freyburger wrote:
>
> >> Does the mod team plan on following links to check this? There is
> >> a tradeoff of the extra work versus letting through occasional posts
> >> that have okay content plus objectionable URLs.
>
> > One of the problems in the two unmoderated groups is a huge number of
> > links to objectionable pictures, personal BLOGS and other such
> > objectionable material. The point here is that we reserve the right to
> > moderate posting of such links should it get out of hand, and that the
> > content behind such links may be reason for us to reject posts.
>
> But surely it's really that the posts are malicious. A personal blog
> is not objectionable, it's the intent of the poster pointing to it
> that may be objectionable.
Putting on my hat as a moderator of soc.religion.asatru, when I go
through that queue I don't check URLs at all. I only check the
content of what's written in the post.
Putting on my hat as a moderator of news.groups.proposals, when I
go through that queue I need to check the URLs for content unless
the regular content is enough to get it rejected, except stuff in
.signatures.
Different group, different policy.
> Unlike some of the posters in those two newsgroups, I don't see the problem
> as disagreement, but the animosity that goes on over the disagreement. That's
> what's damaging, especially when it spills over to the other newsgroups
> in the rec.radio.amateur.* hierarchy and even into newsgroups in the
> rec.radio.* hierarchy that aren't related to amateur radio.
Some people can't agree to disagree. Such people eventually
draw trolls or become trolls. With a bit of moderation they do not
enter that feedback loop so neither happens.
> ANd that's what any moderating of this newsgroup has to be about. The
> only people posting links to porn are either going to be "spammers" or
> people being malicious. The former would be off-topic, at the very least,
> because they have nothing to do with amateur radio. The latter, well it
> shouldn't matter what they are pointing to because if their intent is
> to be malicious, that's what you want to keep out of the newsgroup.
That's the deal - Checking the content first then the URL after
that works. If the post is accepted on content the chances are
the URL wasn't all that bad. If the post was rejected on content
who cares if the URL posted to garbage.
Steve Bonine
> Steve Bonine (s...@pobox.com) writes:
>>If you visit the rec.radio.amateur hierarchy, you'll observe a common
>>phenomena in Usenet. The unmoderated groups are pretty useless because
>>of flaming, off-topic posts, excessive crossposting, and general noise.
> No.
>
> rec.radio.amateur.misc and rec.radio.amateur.policy are pretty useless
> because of all that.
>
> While some of the other sub groups suffer from some of that, they don't
> get the same amount and hence are not made useless.
OK. Point taken. My impression differs, but I understand what you're
saying.
> The trend of this discussion seems to be away from putting a more valid
> name on this proposed moderated newsgroup, to justifying the name by
> making it all encompassing.
I don't think that's the case. Both have been suggested. I don't have
a problem if the name is changed, or the charter is changed, but I do
believe that one or the other needs to happen. If the intent is to
cover policy+misc, I rather like Kathy's suggestion of using that string
in the name.
Nate Bargmann
> If there was simply a way to moderate the existing .misc and .policy groups
> without any name changes, certainly that would be "ideal" in my eyes. It has
> been quite a few years since I've been activity involved in newsgroup
> creation or even read a group in the news.* hierarchy, so I do not even know
> if that is possible within the current rules structure governing the "big 8"
> hierarchies. Adding another level (rram.moderated or rrap.moderated) seems
> convoluted to me, and I would discourage the Board from actively considering
> such a proposal.
When this moderated newsgroup is added, will the current .policy and .misc
groups continue to exist? Is there some way to mark them as "dead" so
that they will not accept new posts?
Kathy Morgan
> When this moderated newsgroup is added, will the current .policy and .misc
> groups continue to exist?
Yes, or at least probably yes. Someone could propose that they be
removed, and it's possible the B8MB would vote to remove them, but I
think it's unlikely in the near term. (I can't say how others on the
board would vote, but I would be opposed as I suspect the majority would
be.)
> Is there some way to mark them as "dead" so
> that they will not accept new posts?
No. Even if we removed them (by sending out an rmgroup control message,
which I believe is unlikely to happen any time soon), each news server
administrator decides individually whether or not to act on the message,
and inevitably some of them won't.
Removing those two groups and replacing them with the proposed single
moderated group would be effectively moderating the groups in place,
which is close to what KH6HZ was suggesting. Past experience has shown
that that sometimes really angers a mentally unbalanced person, who then
becomes a mission poster, flooding news.groups and related groups with
rants and HipCrime attacks, while the groups that were changed to
moderated find themselves facing lots of extra problems because some
news servers switch them to moderated and others don't.
It may turn out that creation of a moderated misc+policy group would not
only provide a safe haven for those who wish to post and read those
topics in peace but also cause a reduction of the problems in the
moderated groups. When the targets of the flaming and trolling move to
another group, sometimes the flamers and trollers move on to other
pastures, leaving the original group in good condition again. There's
no way of knowing in advance if that would happen, but if it does it's
certainly okay to have the original groups plus the moderated group to
go to if the wars start up again.
--
Kathy - member of B8MB but speaking for myself.
Jim Kingdon
> newsgroup dedicated to ham radio, with no restrictions on the topic
> except that it be ham-radio-related.
Hard to predict, yes, but I can offer a previous example which may or
may not help predict it. Some time ago sci.space.moderated was
created (I can't remember which unmoderated group people were
particularly worried about - maybe .history or .shuttle but I could be
wrong on that). It accepts posts relating to any space-related topic.
The result has not been that sci.space.moderated gets overrun with
posts that would have been on-topic for one of the unmoderated groups
(.policy, .history, .shuttle, .station). In fact, sci.space.moderated
is rather lightly trafficked in general.
Whether this would also be true of ham radio, I don't know, but at
least in the space groups posters don't seem to have had much desire
to move out of their existing unmoderated groups.
Rich McAllister K6RFM
many years, I agree it's time to try a moderated group. I am,
however, somewhat persuaded by the arguments that putting the
moderated group at the r.r.a level is bad -- the fear is that the same
problems that caused us long ago to hive off .policy would
re-occur. On the other hand, the main reason .policy was hived off --
the Morse Code requirement wars, which I contributed to as much as
many -- is now basically resolved with the FCC's recent elimination of all
US Morse requirements (most other USENET-represented countries did this
several years back.) I think if we were regenerating the r.r.a
hierarchy now, we might not find a need for .policy. How about
starting with r.r.a.misc.moderated, and adding r.r.a.policy.moderated
later if licensing/requirements issues turn out to take over
..misc.moderated?
Rich, K6RFM
Rick S
I would like to voice my support for a moderated newsgroup in the
rec.radio.amateur hierarchy. I would also like to strongly endorse the
suggestions put forward by Kathy Morgan that:
1. No existing groups should be removed, and
2. the name and / or charter of the new group should be modified
slightly to reflect the group's intended use.
I feel that the establishment of a moderated newsgroup is a worthy
experiment in the effort to resolve the abuse of the rra.policy and misc
newsgroups. My own opinion is that the users who are disgusted with the
noise levels in the two problem groups have probably already abandoned
them in favor of moderated web forums such as those found at qrz.com and
eham.net. From the comments I have read in those forums, it seems
unlikely that their users will ever return to Usenet as a medium of
first choice.
Nevertheless, it would be criminal to simply abandon the misc and policy
newsgroups to the vandals, and the proposed new group offers the only
hope that I can see of creating positive changes within the troubled
groups. Ms. Morgan has pointed out that, if the serious users leave,
the troublemakers will probably grow tired of whatever is left behind
and will themselves move on. I hope that turns out to be the case. We
will certainly never know unless we try.
I personally don't like moderation (it is de facto censorship), but in
this case, I find myself fully in support of the proposed new group.
Tim Skirvin
> When this moderated newsgroup is added, will the current .policy and .misc
> groups continue to exist?
The current proposal doesn't call for the removal of the old
groups, and I don't think that any such proposal would pass a Board vote.
So those groups are safe for now.
> Is there some way to mark them as "dead" so that they will not accept
> new posts?
Not really, no.
an old freind
Paul W. Schleck, K3FU wrote:
> REQUEST FOR DISCUSSION (RFD)
> moderated group rec.radio.amateur.moderated
One why are all modorator proposed from the Extra class the smallest
clas of license?
what can be made avable about the bios of the porposed moderorators as
most as at best infrequent post to the RRAP/RRAM and other totaly
Unknown?
How may spefic concerns concerning undersible nautre of a Particular
porposed modrator be raised given the fact that Nuture of the
alegation is by it nature not conducive to esp civil disucssion?
wht are the stanrds going to accept or rejuect post of materail related
to concenrs over allegation concerning the charter of the poster
themselves?
how is the modertoring process to work if that is currently Known? if
not when is this to become avable?
Martin X. Moleski, SJ
<1168642721....@l53g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>:
> I am informed question may be asked and must be answered
Questions may be asked.
I expect the proponents to exercise discretion in
defending their proposal. They do not have to
answer every question in excruciating detail nor
do they have to repeat themselves if the answers
are already in the RFD or elsewhere in the threads.
Especially in the case of proposed moderators, I am
concerned that they give some evidence of being
reasonably reliable and trustworthy people.
In this particular case, I'm already persuaded of
that. There are some issues to be resolved, but
none of them look like show-stoppers to me.
Marty
--
Member of the Big-8 Management Board (B8MB) -- http://www.big-8.org
Unless otherwise indicated, I speak for myself, not for the Board.
Michael Black
> Paul W. Schleck, K3FU wrote:
>> REQUEST FOR DISCUSSION (RFD)
>> moderated group rec.radio.amateur.moderated
> I am informed question may be asked and must be answered
>
> One why are all modorator proposed from the Extra class the smallest
> clas of license?
>
If someone is proposing a moderated newsgroup, it makes sense to have
people in place willing to be moderators. Otherwise, you can't start
that moderated newsgroup.
And being a moderator isn't a "plush job", it takes up time and they
have to deal with people who don't like the decisions and even people
who grumble when the messages don't get through because the moderators
are asleep or doing other things.
Don't forget, they aren't talking about taking over a newsgroup and
making it moderated. They are talking about creating a new newsgroup
that will be moderated. From their standpoint, they are "putting their
money where their mouth is", not just talking about how there should
be a moderated newsgroup, but saying they will take on the unwanted
task. They don't see it as a chance to be "censors" or to "run things",
they see it as a sacrifice to ensure the discussion can continue.
You have to start with that notion. They may not be perfect, but at
least they are willing to take on the task.
Any criticism of "biased moderators" could be dismissed if other people
actually volunteered to be moderators. But a reality is that it's
hard work being a moderator, and few will be willing to take on
the task.
You seem to want to vote on who gets to be moderator. But chances are
really good they won't find many more nominees, and like a lot of
things, even if someone steps up and takes on the task, they may
find theyv'e gotten in deeper than they should have. Kind of like
my previous ISP, which was non-profit and people would be constantly
resigning from the Board of Directors when they found it required
real work.
Michael
Jeremy Nixon
> If you want to provide a moderated forum for only .misc and .policy
> discussion, a better name might be
> rec.radio.amateur.policy+misc.moderated
At that point, why bother with the extra name component "moderated"?
How about just "rec.radio.amateur.policy+misc"?
--
Jeremy | jer...@exit109.com (Member of the Big-8 Management Board)
CB
> One why are all modorator proposed from the Extra class the smallest
> clas of license?
Is there any relationship between someone's ability/desire to be a moderator
for a moderated newsgroup (not a pleasant job, as I can attest to from 90's
when I was the moderator of the biz.sco.sources newsgroup) and their ham
radio license class?
Is there any reason why moderators should be present from all license
classes?
Also, your assertion that the Extra-class license is the "smallest" of all
the classes is wrong. Of the five license classes, Extra is right in the
middle, with Techs (the entry-level ham license) being the highest and
Novice being the lowest.
Is it your claim that the number of moderators of this group should be
directly proportional to the number of people in that license class?
Can you offer any logical reason why a person's license class has any
relevance whatsoever for their ability to be a newsgroup moderator?
> wht are the stanrds going to accept or rejuect post of materail related
> to concenrs over allegation concerning the charter of the poster
> themselves?
I think it is a safe bet that most of the *uncivil* posters in RRAM/P
wouldn't have their drivel appear in the moderated newsgroup. That, IMO, is
a good thing, because it will allow people who wish to discuss aspects of
amateur radio the ability to do so w/o finding their thread hijacked, or
lost in all the other nonsense.
Gentleman can agree to disagree over topics of discussion and not need to
resort to ad hominem attacks on those who disagree with their opinions.
Unfortunately, lack of self-control has made the RRAM/P newsgroups the
cesspool they are today.
Steve Bonine
> Kathy Morgan <kmo...@spamcop.net> wrote:
>
>>If you want to provide a moderated forum for only .misc and .policy
>>discussion, a better name might be
>>rec.radio.amateur.policy+misc.moderated
>
> At that point, why bother with the extra name component "moderated"?
> How about just "rec.radio.amateur.policy+misc"?
I think it would be confusing to have newsgroups named
rec.radio.amateur.misc
rec.radio.amateur.policy
rec.radio.amateur.policy+misc
The newsgroup description line that contains "(moderated)" should help
sort this out, but how many people see that description when they're
choosing groups, and how many see only the group name? In the spirit of
research for writing these comments, I cranked up Outlook Express to see
how the hierarchy looks in the select-newsgroup function, and only the
group names are displayed. (Yes, I know that OE isn't really a news
client. Oh, wait, that's a different thread.)
Kathy Morgan
> "an old freind" <kons...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > One why are all modorator proposed from the Extra class the smallest
> > clas of license?
>
> Is there any relationship between someone's ability/desire to be a moderator
> for a moderated newsgroup (not a pleasant job, as I can attest to from 90's
> when I was the moderator of the biz.sco.sources newsgroup) and their ham
> radio license class?
>
> Is there any reason why moderators should be present from all license
> classes?
I don't think so. A holder of any class of license should be
knowledgeable enough about the subject to be able to make sound
moderation decisions.
> > wht are the stanrds going to accept or rejuect post of materail related
> > to concenrs over allegation concerning the charter of the poster
> > themselves?
Concerns and comments about the charter or moderators for the proposed
group are on topic in news.groups.proposals, but they must be expressed
in a civil manner and otherwise in accordance with the charter for this
group <news.groups.proposals>. For more detailed information, see the
periodic posting in this group titled "[ADMIN] Welcome to
news.groups.proposals!" The most recent posting has message ID
<ngp-admin-faq.20061215064500$71...@news.killfile.org>.
--
Kathy - member of B8MB, speaking just for myself
Kathy Morgan
> Kathy Morgan <kmo...@spamcop.net> wrote:
>
> > If you want to provide a moderated forum for only .misc and .policy
> > discussion, a better name might be
> > rec.radio.amateur.policy+misc.moderated
>
> At that point, why bother with the extra name component "moderated"?
> How about just "rec.radio.amateur.policy+misc"?
Yes, that is much better.
--
Kathy - speaking just for myself
Doug Freyburger
> "an old freind" <kons...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > One why are all modorator proposed from the Extra class the smallest
> > clas of license?
>
> Is there any relationship between someone's ability/desire to be a moderator
> for a moderated newsgroup (not a pleasant job, as I can attest to from 90's
> when I was the moderator of the biz.sco.sources newsgroup) and their ham
> radio license class?
Not having a license at all isn't an automatic bar to being on the
moderation team. But given that there are multiple levels of
license I am quite reassured that one or more on the team has
the highest level. Simple concept - The senior folks often like to
mentor the junior folks.
> Is there any reason why moderators should be present from all license
> classes?
Other than apparent lacks of volunteers? I don't care how many
of what level other than to notice that going through multiple
phases of licensing shows the type of longevity I value in a
moderator.
Kathy Morgan
> Jeremy Nixon wrote:
> > Kathy Morgan <kmo...@spamcop.net> wrote:
> >
> >>If you want to provide a moderated forum for only .misc and .policy
> >>discussion, a better name might be
> >>rec.radio.amateur.policy+misc.moderated
> >
> > At that point, why bother with the extra name component "moderated"?
> > How about just "rec.radio.amateur.policy+misc"?
>
> I think it would be confusing to have newsgroups named
> rec.radio.amateur.misc
> rec.radio.amateur.policy
> rec.radio.amateur.policy+misc
>
> The newsgroup description line that contains "(moderated)" should help
> sort this out, but how many people see that description when they're
> choosing groups, and how many see only the group name?
My newsreader is another one that does not show the moderation status or
one-line description. I think the difference should be immediately
obvious, though, once a person downloads a few messages. Even if he
doesn't notice the Approval header in the moderated group, he's going to
notice the difference in tone of the moderated group vs. unmoderated.
--
Kathy, speaking just for myself
Paul W. Schleck
Hash: SHA1
In <1168642721....@l53g2000cwa.googlegroups.com> "an old freind" <kons...@hotmail.com> writes:
>Paul W. Schleck, K3FU wrote:
>> REQUEST FOR DISCUSSION (RFD)
>> moderated group rec.radio.amateur.moderated
> I am informed question may be asked and must be answered
>One why are all modorator proposed from the Extra class the smallest
>clas of license?
This is an interesting question, one that I would like to address.
Mark Morgan, KB9RQZ, is correct that all of our proposed moderators and
consultants hold the highest class of Amateur Radio Service license in
their countries (Amateur Extra for the U.S. team members, Class A or
similar in the case of Jack Cook, who holds both UK and Australian
licenses). However, that doesn't mean that we would be judgemental or
unfair to other classes of license. We would certainly be open to
adding moderators to our team that hold other classes of license. We
will certainly decline articles that are disrespectful to or prejudicial
against other participants for any reason, including license class. We
would prefer to judge ideas, and take posts at face value, rather than
prejudge individuals and credentials in a vacuum.
Frankly, we didn't set out to have an all-top-class licensed moderation
team. I honestly didn't consciously filter for license class when
recruiting moderators, and only realized it when this issue was raised.
It just seemed that some of our best contributors were interested deeply
enough in amateur radio, enough to accept an invitation to be a
moderator, that they sought the highest classes of license with the
greatest operating privileges. No more or less.
>what can be made avable about the bios of the porposed moderorators as
>most as at best infrequent post to the RRAP/RRAM and other totaly
>Unknown?
The fact that we are all licensed radio amateurs, with unique
government-issued callsigns that we have used to sign our Usenet posts
with, means that our posting history is easily accessible by searching
for those callsigns at Google Groups (http://groups.google.com). My
amateur radio callsign is "K3FU". I have previously held "KD3FU". I
think that you will find that we have all been positive participants on
the newsgroups. I'm not going to claim that we are all saints, or have
never gotten aggravated or been provoked. Like my Usenet peer and
friend Jonathan Kamens himself has admitted, I too had what I would call
my "Young Turk" period (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Turks for
the origin of this phrase) when I was starting out on-line back in the
early 90's. I could be impatient, even somewhat judgemental. However,
I don't believe that I ever lapsed into ad-hominem attacks or
name-calling. I prefer to argue against ideas and not personalities. I
feel that I have since mellowed and matured with age and experience.
I admit that I am not one of the most prolific posters among
participants on rec.radio.amateur.*. I have posted a small, but steady,
amount of articles to Usenet over many years, preferring to read widely
but post judiciously, and only when I feel that I have something
worthwhile to say. I would argue that someone who is sincerely
interested in the newsgroups and their topics, but self-disciplined and
detached enough to not get frequently dragged into run-on arguments and
attacks, would be a desirable candidate for a moderator. Furthermore, I
have previous experience serving as a co- or guest moderator for other
Usenet newsgroups, including rec.radio.info and *.answers.
>How may spefic concerns concerning undersible nautre of a Particular
>porposed modrator be raised given the fact that Nuture of the
>alegation is by it nature not conducive to esp civil disucssion?
>wht are the stanrds going to accept or rejuect post of materail related
>to concenrs over allegation concerning the charter of the poster
>themselves?
>how is the modertoring process to work if that is currently Known? if
>not when is this to become avable?
If I understand your questions correctly, you are asking how the
mechanics of moderating the proposed newsgroup will work, including the
implementation of any editorial policies to accept or reject article
submissions, as well as the handling of any appeals of moderator
decisions.
I feel that the best answer to your questions would be a demonstration
of a working example of a STUMP moderation system, which we have set up
and configured at Panix. It assumes a proposed newsgroup name of
rec.radio.amateur.moderated (subject to change, of course) and has a
target posting newsgroup of misc.test.moderated. Submissions may be
sent to:
and our team of proposed moderators will be happy to process them as if
they were actual postings to a real newsgroup, consistent with our
proposed moderation policies.
- --
Paul W. Schleck
psch...@novia.net
http://www.novia.net/~pschleck/
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Paul W. Schleck
Hash: SHA1
In <eo9850$380$1...@theodyn.ncf.ca> et...@freenet.carleton.ca (Michael Black) writes:
[...]
>Any criticism of "biased moderators" could be dismissed if other people
>actually volunteered to be moderators. But a reality is that it's
>hard work being a moderator, and few will be willing to take on
>the task.
I still feel that it is a requirement of any moderator to be unbiased
and fair, regardless of who is available to moderate a newsgroup, or how
hard the moderation work will be. I pledge to be fair and unbiased, and
offer up my past posting history to Usenet over many years as a
demonstration proof of the sincerity of my intentions.
Yes, moderation can be a lot of work, and a sometimes thankless task.
However, the use of automation, a moderation team, and an appeals
process with a special team of recused individuals, will save us from
unnecessary labor and aggravation. STUMP will pre-filter our
submissions, including highlighting "watch" words that might indicate
problems, and leave us with articles that can either be approved at the
push of a button, or rejected with a form letter and any short
diagnostic comments the reviewing moderator may offer in order to
provide constructive advice regarding how a rejected article could be
fixed for eventual resubmission and approval.
We would welcome additional volunteers for the moderation team. We
would also welcome the opportunity to demonstrate how we intend to
moderate our proposed newsgroup by inviting anyone to submit articles to
our configured STUMP moderation system at:
[...]
- --
Paul W. Schleck
psch...@novia.net
http://www.novia.net/~pschleck/
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Paul W. Schleck
Hash: SHA1
>Thanks,
>-= Bob =-
We should bring in some of the other newsgroups in the
rec.radio.amateur.* hierarchy, starting with the 2nd RFD. This should
include at least the ones where there has been some recent discussion
about the need for moderation, which would be rec.radio.amateur.antenna
and rec.radio.amateur.dx.
The two main alternatives so far, based on discussion here, seem to be:
1. Make rec.radio.amateur.moderated an all-encompassing moderated amateur
radio discussion newsgroup.
2. Keep the topics focused on misc and policy, and come up with a
better name for our proposed misc+policy moderated amateur radio
discussion newsgroup.
Alternative #2 then branches out to two possible outcomes:
2.a. Create additional moderated newsgroups for other topics, like
.antenna and .dx, now or in the future.
2.b. No one steps forward to create additional moderated newsgroups,
and the other topics continue unmoderated.
Alternative #1 does not rule out the creation of additional moderated
newsgroups in the future, though there is the valid point that
alternative #2 fixes the name-space problem immediately for future
growth, and would not have to be revisited.
Alternative #2 requires a suitable name. The name of
rec.radio.amateur.misc+policy.moderated was suggested by Kathy Morgan
above.
Some minor concerns (not fatal) would be:
- Long newsgroup names start to become unwieldy, which increases the
odds of spelling errors for subscribers.
- In particular, the E-mail submission addresses should be a-priori
derivable from the newsgroup names, for mnemonic and standardization
purposes. Not sure if this is a formal standard, or just a good idea
(i.e., the submission address is the newsgroup name with periods
replaced with dashes and the administrative contact address adds
"-request" to that). For our newsgroup, that would be:
rec-radio-amateur-m...@panix.com
and:
rec-radio-amateur-misc+...@panix.com
I believe that the "+" character is valid for E-mail addresses. I know
that there is at least one existing newsgroup with a "+" character in
its name (rec.antiques.radio+phono). I would hope at this point that
there is a reasonable length limit for E-mail addresses and Sendmail
aliases (the latter one above is 47 characters long). Panix uses
Sendmail and a version of FreeBSD. I can also ask the Panix
administrators whether these aliases would work with their E-mail
configuration.
Abbreviations can be used, of course, like:
rra...@panix.com
rram+pm...@panix.com
but they are not as obviously a-priori derivable and mnemonic.
Suggestions are welcome.
One argument in favor of alternative #1 is:
- It may not be realistic to expect that, even if strongly desired,
additional moderated newsgroups for other topics are going to emerge
anytime soon, or at all.
I know that I personally do not intend to serve as a moderator or
proponent for additional moderated newsgroups beyond .misc and .policy.
I may serve as a consultant, however.
This proposal took about 4 years to put together, mostly from just
trying to find interested volunteers after much searching and asking.
Recruitment of a team was not accomplished by posting open invitations
(though we did attempt this several times, and continue to do so here
now). Rather, good candidates had to be sought out, and personally
invited. The acceptance rate for our invitations was about 1 in 4.
Setting up and configuring moderation software, policy documents, and
writing the RFD took the last 6 months. Our shell account at Panix will
cost a non-trivial amount of money, that fortunately our moderation team
was willing to split 4 or more ways.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining about all of this, nor am I
suggesting that our level of hard work and investment should by itself
be an argument that our proposal should be accepted. Rather, I'm just
describing the challenges that we encountered trying to organize a
moderated newsgroup, challenges that other potential teams will
certainly have to confront and overcome.
It's been my experience that individuals will usually only act if there
is a concrete proposal that only requires incremental additional support
(rather than a required massive effort to organize something from
scratch). I would hope that at least some of our 4-year effort is
directly reusable in terms of lessons-learned, software choices,
newsgroup documents, etc., saving potential future moderated newsgroup
organizers a significant amount of time and effort. The readers of a
given newsgroup may also act if some proposal is on the table that will
leave them behind. Faced with the prospect of an all-encompassing
moderated discussion newsgroup being created for the rec.radio.amateur.*
hierarchy, this might encourage something more serious than blue-sky,
"There oughta be a moderated newsgroup for ..." comments in the other
rec.radio.amateur.* newsgroups, including .antenna and .dx. Often such
blue-sky dreams ultimately come to naught.
So, I would agree that we should bring those newsgroups in, formally on
the second RFD, and get some feedback. More importantly, we should also
try to separate mere opinions from realistic plans/intentions to add
additional moderated discussion newsgroups for rec.radio.amateur.*.
Alternatively, it may be the case that those newsgroups' readership may
not favor such new moderated newsgroups, and either defer to ours, or
retain their topic discussions in the present unmoderated newsgroups.
- --
Paul W. Schleck
psch...@novia.net
http://www.novia.net/~pschleck/
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KH6HZ
> The two main alternatives so far, based on discussion here, seem to be:
>
> 1. Make rec.radio.amateur.moderated an all-encompassing moderated amateur
> radio discussion newsgroup.
If the name of the proposed group becomes a significant issue, then I would
highly encourage you to go this route.
There is no reason why the moderated newsgroup could (and should) not
include all-encompassing discussions involving ham radio topics.
If at some point the number of postings in a particular topical area become
excessive, then those discussions could be carved off into their own
moderated newsgroup, such as rec.radio.amateur.moderated.dx
> rec-radio-amateur-m...@panix.com
With all due respect to Kathy Morgan, who I believe proposed the misc+policy
name, I think it is a very poor naming convention.
73
KH6HZ
Jim Riley
"general" doesn't have some specific meaning with regard to amateur
radio (eg rec.aviation.general might be considered as a reference to
general aviation, rather than aviation in general).
At one time, the behavior of news software was that a reply to a
message in foo.bar.general was to have the follow-up appear in a
newsgroup foo.bar.followup. For this reason, ".general" was not used
as part of Big 8 newsgroup names. This ultra-conservative policy was
finally broken with soc.sexuality.general.
"misc." is an abbreviation for miscellaneous, which simply means mixed
without any particular categorization (eg miscellaneous chocolates).
In newsgroup names, ".misc" has often been interpreted as meaning
"miscellaneous other", as everything that is not covered by the more
specific groups.
--
Jim Riley
Kathy Morgan
> I believe that the "+" character is valid for E-mail addresses. I know
> that there is at least one existing newsgroup with a "+" character in
> its name (rec.antiques.radio+phono).
That depends on the mail server. Some accept "+" addresses, some accept
"-" addresses, and some accept neither. :-( Another group that includes
"+" is soc.support.aids-hiv+ which has both characters. It doesn't
really matter, though, because the submission address doesn't have to
match the newsgroup name, and those two examples prove that the
characters will work in a newsgroup name.
> Abbreviations can be used, of course, like:
>
> rra...@panix.com
> rram+pm...@panix.com
>
> but they are not as obviously a-priori derivable and mnemonic.
For moderated groups, articles can be posted or emailed to the canonical
address (eg, rec-radio-amateur-p...@moderators.isc.org
or news-group...@moderators.isc.org -- the canonical address is
always @moderators.isc.org) and the moderation relays will forward them
to the submission address, which could be rra...@panix.com)
However, I do agree with you and Jeremy that including ".moderated" in
the name makes it too unwieldy and it would be better just to drop it.
> So, I would agree that we should bring those newsgroups in, formally on
> the second RFD, and get some feedback.
If you want, you could start that now by posting pointers in the other
groups to the existing RFD, and then post new pointers once a new RFD is
posted.
--
Kathy - If you're reading this in your web browser from Google or
similar forum, NNTP "newsreaders" are a better way to access the
content. <http://www.aptalaska.net/~kmorgan/how-it-works.html>
Links to NNTP newsreaders at <http://www.newsreaders.com/>
Tim Skirvin
> rec.radio.amateur.general is also a possibility.
If we're going that direction, why not just rec.radio.amateur
(Moderated)? Just throwing it out there...
Steve Bonine
> If we're going that direction, why not just rec.radio.amateur
> (Moderated)? Just throwing it out there...
My initial reaction to this idea was negative, but after reflection I
rather like it.
In 1993, the group rec.radio.amateur was split.
ftp://ftp.isc.org/usenet/news.announce.newgroups/rec/rec.radio.amateur-reorg
I support this name if the group accepts articles on all topics related
to amateur radio, thus serving as a moderated alternative to the
existing groups in the hierarchy.
Thomas Lee
<kmo...@spamcop.net> writes
>If you want to provide a moderated forum for only .misc and .policy
>discussion, a better name might be
>rec.radio.amateur.policy+misc.moderated
or why not propose rec.radio.amateur.policy.moderated _and_
rec.radio.amateur.misc.moderated?
--
Thomas Lee - t...@psp.co.uk
A member of, but not speaking for, The Big-8 Management Board
Paul W. Schleck
Hash: SHA1
In <50tfu6F...@mid.individual.net> Jim Riley <jim...@pipeline.com> writes:
>rec.radio.amateur.general is also a possibility. This assumes that
>"general" doesn't have some specific meaning with regard to amateur
>radio (eg rec.aviation.general might be considered as a reference to
>general aviation, rather than aviation in general).
Unfortunately, it does have special, possibly confusing, meaning.
"General" is also the name of an amateur radio license, representing a
middle-grade license class in terms of examination requirements and
operating privileges.
If we created "rec.radio.amateur.general", then some users might suspect
(or expect) that we will also create "rec.radio.amateur.extra".
[...]
- --
Paul W. Schleck
psch...@novia.net
http://www.novia.net/~pschleck/
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Paul W. Schleck
Hash: SHA1
In <1hrw87n.qfsn48g57bpbN%kmo...@spamcop.net> kmo...@spamcop.net (Kathy Morgan) writes:
[...]
>However, I do agree with you and Jeremy that including ".moderated" in
>the name makes it too unwieldy and it would be better just to drop it.
Actually, I was arguing against the "misc+policy" part. It could make
the name too unwieldy, and possibly add problematic special characters.
I still favor the inclusion of "moderated" on the end, as there are many
current amateur radio newsgroups, and this RFD may create, or set into
motion future RFD's to create, other moderated amateur radio newsgroups.
>> So, I would agree that we should bring those newsgroups in, formally on
>> the second RFD, and get some feedback.
>If you want, you could start that now by posting pointers in the other
>groups to the existing RFD, and then post new pointers once a new RFD is
>posted.
We'll probably have a second RFD to post relatively soon, and I'd prefer
to bring those newsgroups into the discussion in an orderly manner, with
a pointer to a good summary of the discussion so far. I'd like the
readers of those newsgroups to not feel too much like they are joining a
conversation in progress. They are, of course, but I'd like to minimize
their potential confusion. I'll consult with our assigned Usenet Groups
Mentor regarding the timing of the second RFD.
- --
Paul W. Schleck
psch...@novia.net
http://www.novia.net/~pschleck/
Finger psch...@novia.net for PGP Public Key
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Michael Black
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> Hash: SHA1
>
> In <50tfu6F...@mid.individual.net> Jim Riley <jim...@pipeline.com> writes:
>
>>rec.radio.amateur.general is also a possibility. This assumes that
>>"general" doesn't have some specific meaning with regard to amateur
>>radio (eg rec.aviation.general might be considered as a reference to
>>general aviation, rather than aviation in general).
>
> Unfortunately, it does have special, possibly confusing, meaning.
> "General" is also the name of an amateur radio license, representing a
> middle-grade license class in terms of examination requirements and
> operating privileges.
>
> If we created "rec.radio.amateur.general", then some users might suspect
> (or expect) that we will also create "rec.radio.amateur.extra".
>
Let's not forget that these newsgroups, despite their pretty much
common language of English, are not intended to be US-specific.
WIthout giving it a lot of thought, the only country that comes
to mind that has a general class license (or did have one) is
the US. There's certainly never been a general class license here
in Canada, and I suspect the further away from North AMerica the
less likely you'd find such a title on a license class.
And of course, one of the problems with .policy is that unlike the
specific themes of the other sub-groups, that are international
in flavor (even if they may be very US-centric in posters), even
on a good day policy is pretty much the domain of US posters. The
rest of the world isn't consumed with the rules in the US about
amateur radio.
Yes, I realize that what is discussed reflects who is posting, but
on some level it might be more appropriate to move discussion of
policy out of the hierarchy if all that's being discussed is US
amateur radio policy.
Antennas are antennas no matter where you are (though there may
be specific problems specific to some location), and building equipment
is building equipment no matter where you are. Talking about the radio
equipment might differ a bit, due to locally made radios, but that isn't
really the case, unlike decades ago.
Yet, the notion of policy in a presumably world-wide newsgroup makes it
a US newsgroup far more than a newsgroup about building amateur radio
equipment where the posters are mostly in the US. Because then it's
not just the US posters dominating the newsgroup, it's US policy that
dominates the newsgroup.
And I realize now, that has a lot to do with my puzzlement over the
existence of a .policy newsgroup.
Michael
Nate Bargmann
> And of course, one of the problems with .policy is that unlike the
> specific themes of the other sub-groups, that are international in
> flavor (even if they may be very US-centric in posters), even on a good
> day policy is pretty much the domain of US posters. The rest of the
> world isn't consumed with the rules in the US about amateur radio.
And the rest of the world simply isn't as consumed about rules as US hams
seem to be. Considering that, perhaps rec.radio.amateur.misc.moderated is
sufficient as a name for the proposed group?
> And I realize now, that has a lot to do with my puzzlement over the
> existence of a .policy newsgroup.
A US-centric error from times past, I suppose, or it has been hijacked
into a US-centric group. More than likely if there were a us. hierarchy,
something like us.radio.amateur.policy would be more appropriate if it
were available.
- Nate >>
--
"The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds,
the pessimist fears this is true."
Rick S
On Mon, 15 Jan 2007 10:56:28 CST, Michael Black <et...@freenet.carleton.ca> wrote:
> "Paul W. Schleck" (psch...@novia.net) writes:
> >
> > If we created "rec.radio.amateur.general", then some users might suspect
> > (or expect) that we will also create "rec.radio.amateur.extra".
> >
> Only in the US.
>
> Let's not forget that these newsgroups, despite their pretty much
> common language of English, are not intended to be US-specific.
I disagree. Due to the way in which Usenet evolved, its original
newsgroups were pretty much exclusively US groups. When non-US groups
were added, they usually used names which reflected their country of
origin.
Some quick examples (this is not an exhaustive list):
aus.radio.amateur
aus.radio.amateur.digital
aus.radio.amateur.flame
aus.radio.amateur.misc
aus.radio.amateur.wicen
aus.radio.amsat
bih.rec.radio.amater
es.rec.radio.amateur
ethiopia.english.radio.amateur
ethiopia.english.radio.amatmuz
fr.rec.amateur.radio
fr.rec.radio.amateur
fr.rec.radio.amateur.fr
in.ham-radio
it.hobby.radioamatori
it.hobby.radioamatori.moderato
japan.ham-radio
japan.ham-radio.dxcc
pl.rec.radio.amatorskie
pl.rec.radio.amatorskim
se.hobby.amatorradio
tw.bbs.rec.radio.amateur
uk.amateur.radio
uk.radio.amateur
uk.radio.swap
yu.radio.amater.packet
The list is much longer, but you can see that newsgroup names reflect
the country of origin, with the de facto default being that a radio
newsgroup otherwise refers to the interests of (primarily) US residents.
Therefore, I don't see any burning ambiguity in the current names,
although they could be prefixed with "us" at some time in the future to
become fully compatible with international naming conventions.
Kathy Morgan
> Therefore, I don't see any burning ambiguity in the current names,
> although they could be prefixed with "us" at some time in the future to
> become fully compatible with international naming conventions.
There is a us.* hierarchy already, so creating a us.rec.radio.* series
of groups would have to go through whatever the current us.* group
creation policies might be.
Since there would likely be confusion with the general class of license
if the group were named rec.radio.amateur.general, I think using
something along the lines of r.r.a.misc (moderated),
r.r.a.misc.moderated, r.r.a.misc+policy, or even r.r.a.moderated would
be better.
--
Kathy - Member of B8MB but speaking for myself
Jim Riley
<n0nb.DO....@ME.networksplus.net> wrote:
>On Mon, 15 Jan 2007 10:56:28 -0600, Michael Black wrote:
>
>> And of course, one of the problems with .policy is that unlike the
>> specific themes of the other sub-groups, that are international in
>> flavor (even if they may be very US-centric in posters), even on a good
>> day policy is pretty much the domain of US posters. The rest of the
>> world isn't consumed with the rules in the US about amateur radio.
>
>And the rest of the world simply isn't as consumed about rules as US hams
>seem to be. Considering that, perhaps rec.radio.amateur.misc.moderated is
>sufficient as a name for the proposed group?
Originally there were net.ham-radio and net.ham-radio.packet. As part
of the Great Renaming, they were renamed to rec.ham-radio and
rec.ham-radio.packet. In 1989, rec.ham-radio.swap was created.
In 1990-91, rec.ham-radio was renamed to rec.radio.amateur.misc,
rec.ham-radio.packet was renamed to rec.radio.amateur.packet. In
addition rec.radio.amateur.policy was created. At the same time,
rec.ham-radio.swap was renamed to rec.radio.swap and rec.radio.cb was
created.
Sometime earlier, rec.radio.shortwave had been created, so the
re-organization was to conform the group to a broader naming
structure.
It appears that there was also an attempt to move noisy or unwanted
discussion out. rec.radio.cb was created so that CB'ers could have a
place of their own.
There were a variety of names suggested for rec.radio.amateur.policy
(including .legal, .rules, .regs, and .no-code), but it appears that
the organizing theme for the group was tedious, repetitive,
flame-ridden that most participants didn't want to wade through.
The 1993, reorganization split off the {.antenna, .equipment,
.homebrew, and .space) groups and renamed rec.radio.amateur.packet to
rec.radio.amateur.digital.misc with a broadened charter. There were
several other groups that were proposed but whose creation was not
approved.
The final two groups, rec.radio.amateur.dx and
rec.radio.amateur.boatanchors were created as individual proposals in
1996.
Given the original purpose of rec.radio.amateur.policy, I don't think
it makes sense to include it in the name of the moderated group. The
use of rec.radio.amateur.general may confuse people, and
rec.radio.amateur.misc.moderated is unwieldy.
So this gets back to rec.radio.amateur.moderated. I don't see why it
couldn't be used to *discuss* all aspects of amateur radio.
If there are more specific unmoderated groups, the poster could choose
whether to post to the moderated general group or the unmoderated
specific group. Perhaps tagging might be used for this purpose, to
create virtual groups within the moderated group.
Articles that aren't really for discussion (ads, some DX posting(?),
and announcements) could be rejected, and "policy" discussion could
also be tagged (and also more closely) monitored to keep it from
becoming too repetitive.
--
Jim Riley
Paul W. Schleck, K3FU
moderated group rec.radio.amateur.moderated
This is a formal Request For Discussion (RFD) for the creation of the
moderated Usenet newsgroup, rec.radio.amateur.moderated.
NEWSGROUPS LINE: rec.radio.amateur.moderated
rec.radio.amateur.moderated Amateur radio practices, rules, etc. (Moderated)
RATIONALE: rec.radio.amateur.moderated
rec.radio.amateur.moderated is a moderated alternative to the existing
rec.radio.amateur.misc and rec.radio.amateur.policy newsgroups. The
rec.radio.amateur.misc newsgroup is chartered to discuss amateur ("ham")
radio practices, contents, events, rules, etc., including anything
related to amateur radio not specifically covered by another
rec.radio.amateur.* newsgroup. The rec.radio.amateur.policy newsgroup
is chartered to discuss ham radio rules, regulations, and policy. Over
the past several years, the traffic on both groups has become largely
flame wars, spam, and personal ad-hominem discussions of past, present,
and future violations and violators, having little or no bearing on
amateur radio. Polite requests by serious group posters to the
offenders to refrain from such behavior have not resulted in elimination
of such behavior and has in fact resulted in another series of flame
wars. As a result, many knowledgeable and concerned posters in both
groups have ceased being active therein.
Prior to the deterioration of rec.radio.amateur.misc and
rec.radio.amateur.policy, both groups had active discussion of their
chartered topics. It is expected that offering a moderated group will
persuade those who formerly participated to resume their participation
in rational, focussed, and informed discussion. Proper moderation will
enable serious postings to the group to remain on topic while not
limiting who can voice opinions or what opinions can be voiced.
Combining the topics of the unmoderated rec.radio.amateur.misc and
rec.radio.amateur.policy newsgroups into a single moderated newsgroup is
offered as the most practical solution for both the moderators and the
participants at this time. Followup discussion in response to the 1st
RFD indicated that there was significant and strongly-held opinions in
favor of either opening up the proposed newsgroup to all amateur radio
topics, or changing the name to reflect a misc+policy scope only. In
addition to the rec.radio.amateur.misc, and rec.radio.amateur.policy
newsgroups, there has also been recent discussion about moderation in
rec.radio.amateur.antenna and rec.radio.amateur.dx. As a result,
pointers to this 2nd RFD will be posted to those additional newsgroups.
In particular, some consensus about alternatives is being actively
solicited at this time. The main alternatives are:
1. Make rec.radio.amateur.moderated an all-encompassing moderated amateur
radio discussion newsgroup.
2. Keep the topics focused on misc and policy, and come up with a
better name for our proposed misc+policy moderated amateur radio
discussion newsgroup.
Alternative #2 then branches out to two possible outcomes:
2.a. Create additional moderated newsgroups for other topics, like
.antenna and .dx, now or in the future.
2.b. No one steps forward to create additional moderated newsgroups,
and the other topics continue unmoderated.
Alternative #1 does not rule out the creation of additional moderated
newsgroups in the future, though there is the valid point that
alternative #2 fixes the name-space problem immediately for future
growth, and would not have to be revisited.
Alternative #2 requires a suitable name. The name of
rec.radio.amateur.misc+policy.moderated was suggested by Kathy Morgan.
One argument in favor of alternative #1 is:
- It may not be realistic to expect that, even if strongly desired,
additional moderated newsgroups for other topics are going to emerge
anytime soon, or at all.
Our moderation team does not intend to moderate more than 1 or 2
discussion newsgroups. We also do not feel that, as a whole, we are
deep enough experts in the somewhat advanced-level topics of antennas
and dx to effectively vet appropriate articles for those topics.
In followup discussion for this 2nd RFD, we would like to try and
separate mere opinions from realistic plans/intentions to add additional
moderated discussion newsgroups for rec.radio.amateur.*. Alternatively,
it may be the case that those newsgroups' readership may not favor such
new moderated newsgroups, and either defer to ours, or retain their
topic discussions in the existing unmoderated newsgroups.
CHARTER:
rec.radio.amateur.moderated is for the discussion of amateur ("ham")
radio, also known as the Amateur Radio Service, as defined in Federal
Communications Commission Regulations and U.S. Law (47 CFR Part 97), and
in similar laws and regulations in other countries, based on
international treaty. It is not limited to the rules of any one country
or time period. Possible topics include past, present, and future
operating practices; events; contests; past, present, and
potential-future rules; power limitations; authorized frequencies;
allowed modes and band plans (or other gentlemen's agreements) that
govern how we are to operate; what constitutes the acceptable operation
of amateur stations.
The newsgroup is intended to be international in scope, not just for
amateurs in the United States. It is, however, intended as an
English-language forum, by custom and practice. As with General
Aviation and other internationally-scoped endeavors, the Amateur Radio
Service has a strong custom of the use of English and the Latin
alphabet. Discussion of amateur radio in languages other than English
also occurs in many country- and region-specific hierarchies, many of
which have specific amateur radio newsgroups, including:
de.* (Germany)
dk.* (Denmark)
es.* (Spain)
fr.* (France)
nl.* (Netherlands)
pl.* (Poland)
pt.* (Portugal)
relcom.* (Russia)
This newsgroup is only intended to supplement, not supersede, any other
amateur radio newsgroups.
General communications law or government policy of various government
agencies is also on-topic, as long as the discussion relates to amateur
radio. Examples would be emergency communications, local antenna
restrictions, and property deed restrictions applying to operation of
amateur radio stations.
Discussion of other type of radio, such as Citizens Band, Broadcast,
other Personal Radio Services, Commercial or Private Land Mobile, and
Marine or Aviation services are off-topic, except when *directly*
related to amateur radio. Similarly, discussion of methods violating
applicable communication law and regulations concerning radio equipment or
operations are off-topic.
The following are prohibited:
* Personal advertisements (submitters of such articles will be
referred to rec.radio.swap, instead).
* Commercial advertisements and money-making schemes.
* Chain letters.
* Posts in HTML.
* EMP spam.
* Binaries, apart from PGP signatures, X-Face headers, and other
ancillary article meta-data.
* Forgery of valid e-mail addresses.
* Excessive morphing/nym-shifting.
* Copyright violations. Pointers to news articles, blogs, etc. on
this topic are welcome but are required to comply with fair use
standards.
* Personal attacks and flames, as defined by the moderation team.
* Advertising items and/or services for sale.
* Links to "objectionable" web content, including pornographic sites,
sites encouraging illegal activities, or sites deemed unacceptable
by the moderation team. The moderation team will cursorily check
the contents of specific links to confirm on-topic content, but
acceptance for posting does not imply endorsement or approval of
the entire present or future contents of that web site.
* Discussion of moderation decisions. See below for information on
appealing moderator action.
LINKS:
Amateur Radio Newsgroups in Total Meltdown (QRZ)
http://www.qrz.com/ib-bin/ikonboard.cgi?s=ff745d20e58c50c63315835c3cefd8d9;act=ST;f=7;t=119282
Amateur Radio Newsgroups: Total Meltdown (eHam)
http://www.eham.net/articles/13581
Secure, Team-Based Usenet Moderation Program (STUMP)
http://www.algebra.com/~ichudov/stump/
MODERATION POLICY: rec.radio.amateur.moderated
A moderation robot will scan all submitted posts. Each post will be
either automatically approved, rejected, or sent to the moderators for
manual review. The moderator 'bot will enforce the following guidelines:
* Crossposting is generally not allowed, with the general exception of
crossposts of bulletins, FAQ's, and other informational articles to
rec.radio.info, rec.answers, and news.answers. Infrequent
administrative crossposts may occasionally be allowed at the sole
discretion of the moderator.
* Postings must be in plain text. In particular no HTML or mixed text
and HTML posts will be allowed. Messages that are
multipart/alternative will be automatically filtered to pass just
the text/plain version to the newsgroup.
* No binary postings of any sort will be accepted. Exceptions will be
made for cryptographic signatures and such.
* Messages must not have a 'Followup-To' header that points out of
rec.radio.amateur.moderated (other than to "poster").
* Messages must not continue a thread that has been "closed" by the
moderators.
Individual posters may be temporarily banned for consistently violating
the group charter. Posters who feel that their posts have been unfairly
rejected or banned, either for specific content or by a specific
moderator, may appeal the decision. They may do so by contacting the
Appeals Board, consisting of a rotating group of 2 or more moderators,
at the Administrative Contact address below. The Board will discuss and
vote on the appeal and respond within 14 days if the appeal is
successful. The Board will also reply within 14 days to unsuccessful
submitters of any appeal that is on-topic, reasoned, civilly stated, and
is not substantially an attempt to revisit the subject matter and
arguments of a previous unsuccessful appeal.
Multiple temporary bans, attempting to circumvent the ban, or abuse of the
appeal system may result in a permanent ban.
MODERATOR INFO: rec.radio.amateur.moderated
Moderator: Paul W. Schleck, K3FU <psch...@novia.net>
Moderator: Bob Diepenbrock, KC4UAI <bob_...@yahoo.com>
Moderator: Jack Cook, VK2CJC <vk2...@bigpond.com>
Moderator: Jim Hampton, AA2QA <aa...@frontiernet.net>
Moderator: Ace Ratliff, WH2T <a...@wh2t.com>
Moderator: Jeff Angus, WA6FWI <jan...@socal.rr.com>
Moderator: Hans Brakob, K0HB <k0...@arrl.net>
In addition, the rec.radio.amateur.moderated Moderation Team will
utilize the expertise of the following consultants:
Consultant: Cecil A. Moore, W5DXP <Cecil....@ieee.org>
Consultant: Phil Kane, K2ASP <k2...@arrl.net>
Consultant: Brian Short, K7ON <k7...@cox.net>
The moderators are seeking additional candidates for the moderation team
in order to ensure minimal posting delays and to avoid any appearance of
bias. We would especially like to find moderators in other time zones,
countries/continents, etc.
Article Submissions: rec-radio-ama...@panix.com
Administrative Contact: rec-radio-amateur...@panix.com
PROCEDURE:
For more information on the newsgroup creation process, please see:
http://www.big-8.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=policies:creation
Those who wish to influence the development of this RFD and its final
resolution should subscribe to news.groups.proposals and participate in the
relevant threads in that newsgroup. This is both a courtesy to groups in
which discussion of creating a new group is off-topic as well as the best
method of making sure that one's comments or criticisms are heard.
All discussion of active proposals should be posted to news.groups.proposals.
To this end, the 'Followup-To' header of this RFD has been set to this group.
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.
We urge those who would like to read or post in the proposed newsgroup
to make a comment to that effect in this thread; we ask proponents to
keep a list of such positive posts with the relevant message ID
(e.g., Barney Fife, <4JGdnb60fsMzHA7Z...@sysmatrix.net>).
Such lists of positive feedback for the proposal may constitute good
evidence that the group will be well-used if it is created.
DISTRIBUTION:
This document has been posted to the following newsgroups:
news.announce.newgroups
news.groups.proposals
rec.radio.info
rec.radio.amateur.misc
rec.radio.amateur.policy
The proponent will also post pointers to:
rec.radio.amateur.antenna
rec.radio.amateur.dx
http://www.qrz.com/
PROPONENT:
"Paul W. Schleck, K3FU" <psch...@novia.net>
CHANGE HISTORY:
2007-01-10 1st RFD
2007-01-25 2nd RFD
John
news:nan.20070125162526$4a...@killfile.org:
> REQUEST FOR DISCUSSION (RFD)
> moderated group rec.radio.amateur.moderated
>
> This is a formal Request For Discussion (RFD) for the creation of the
> moderated Usenet newsgroup, rec.radio.amateur.moderated.
>
>
> NEWSGROUPS LINE: rec.radio.amateur.moderated
>
> rec.radio.amateur.moderated Amateur radio practices, rules, etc.
> (Moderated)
>
>
> RATIONALE: rec.radio.amateur.moderated
>
> rec.radio.amateur.moderated is a moderated alternative to the existing
> rec.radio.amateur.misc and rec.radio.amateur.policy newsgroups. The
> rec.radio.amateur.misc newsgroup is chartered to discuss amateur
> ("ham") radio practices, contents, events, rules, etc., including
> anything related to amateur radio not specifically covered by another
> rec.radio.amateur.* newsgroup. The rec.radio.amateur.policy newsgroup
> is chartered to discuss ham radio rules, regulations, and policy.
> Over the past several years, the traffic on both groups has become
> largely flame wars, spam, and personal ad-hominem discussions of past,
> present, and future violations and violators, having little or no
> bearing on amateur radio. Polite requests by serious group posters to
> the offenders to refrain from such behavior have not resulted in
> elimination of such behavior and has in fact resulted in another
> series of flame wars. As a result, many knowledgeable and concerned
> posters in both groups have ceased being active therein.
>
I support the creation of this group as long is it is an all-encompassing
group... covering all types of amateur radio discussion. As the group
does not include the words "policy" or "misc", I assume it covers *all*
aspects of amateur radio operation. I support creation of the group if my
assumption is correct.
Rick S
On Thu, 25 Jan 2007 10:25:26 -0600, Paul W. Schleck, K3FU wrote:
> In particular, some consensus about alternatives is being actively
> solicited at this time. The main alternatives are:
>
> 1. Make rec.radio.amateur.moderated an all-encompassing moderated amateur
> radio discussion newsgroup.
>
> 2. Keep the topics focused on misc and policy, and come up with a
> better name for our proposed misc+policy moderated amateur radio
> discussion newsgroup.
In view of the comments which followed the quoted text (basically, that
your volunteers are not interested in moderating more than two groups,
and are not expert enough to moderate some others), I would like to voice
support for alternative two above. From the discussion held earlier, it
seems clear that the "+" character in the name will not cause technical
problems for the group's users and moderators. The scope of the
proposed group becomes immediately obvious if it is named
rec.radio.amateur.misc+policy
as suggested previously, although the longer name
rec.radio.amateur.misc+policy.moderated
completely describes the scope and the intent of the group. If we are
going to be pedantic about the name, then the longer name is completely
unambiguous and should be considered seriously.
Whatever name is chosen, my thanks to Paul and his volunteers for the
effort they have put into the establishment of what is a sorely needed
alternative to the current problem groups.
KH6HZ
Since the name of the group seems to be a point of contention with some of
the Big 8 Board Members, I request that you modify the charter of the group
to allow discussion of any amateur radio topic, not specifically those which
would otherwise be located in .misc and .policy.
My fear is in the present form, the newsgroup would fail a vote for its
creation, and it is clear to anyone reading rram/p that this moderated forum
is sorely needed.
The additional "burden" of making the group all-encompassing for those
wishing to participate should be minimal.
Richard Clark
<psch...@novia.net> wrote:
>This is a Request for Discussion (RFD) to create a new moderated
>discussion newsgroup for amateur radio on Usenet. It has been relayed
>to rec.radio.amateur.antenna and rec.radio.amateur.dx as announced in
>the RFD. Please consider contributing your opinions regarding this
>newsgroup to news.groups.proposals, where followups to this message have
>been set.
Hi Paul,
I consider the following an artificial solution:
>The main alternatives are:
>
>1. Make rec.radio.amateur.moderated an all-encompassing moderated amateur
> radio discussion newsgroup.
>
>2. Keep the topics focused on misc and policy, and come up with a
> better name for our proposed misc+policy moderated amateur radio
> discussion newsgroup.
3. Instruct participants in the use of web tools so that they can
filter out abusive topics or abusive users. Very simple with today's
readers.
Solution 3 can be immediately implemented and requires no further
fragmentation of the news feed. Solution 3 is also democratic
compared to the possibility of the abuse by autocracy.
73's
Richard Clark, KB7QHC
Steve Bonine
> 1. Make rec.radio.amateur.moderated an all-encompassing moderated amateur
> radio discussion newsgroup.
This is the alternative that I support.
> Our moderation team does not intend to moderate more than 1 or 2
> discussion newsgroups. We also do not feel that, as a whole, we are
> deep enough experts in the somewhat advanced-level topics of antennas
> and dx to effectively vet appropriate articles for those topics.
Moderators are not editors. The moderation team should not feel a
responsibility to vet articles, other than removing flames and insuring
that they are reasonably on topic. I have confidence that you can
accomplish that for the entire spectrum of ham-radio-related topics.
> In followup discussion for this 2nd RFD, we would like to try and
> separate mere opinions from realistic plans/intentions to add additional
> moderated discussion newsgroups for rec.radio.amateur.*. Alternatively,
> it may be the case that those newsgroups' readership may not favor such
> new moderated newsgroups, and either defer to ours, or retain their
> topic discussions in the existing unmoderated newsgroups.
I would rather observe the level of traffic in a moderated inclusive
newsgroup before considering adding additional groups. I am not sure
that there is sufficient amateur-radio-related traffic to justify more
than one moderated group.
> General communications law or government policy of various government
> agencies is also on-topic, as long as the discussion relates to amateur
> radio. Examples would be emergency communications, local antenna
> restrictions, and property deed restrictions applying to operation of
> amateur radio stations.
You've provided an illustration of why the group should encompass all of
the radio hobby. If I want to discuss antennas for city lots, do I do
it in the .antennas group because the topic is antenna design, or in the
policy group because the topic is local antenna restrictions?
> * Crossposting is generally not allowed, with the general exception of
> crossposts of bulletins, FAQ's, and other informational articles to
> rec.radio.info, rec.answers, and news.answers. Infrequent
> administrative crossposts may occasionally be allowed at the sole
> discretion of the moderator.
I support the crossposting restrictions but this is another reason to
widen the scope of the group. If a topic spans both policy and another
topic (like the example above) it seems reasonable to crosspost it to
both affected groups. This is prohibited. If the proposed group was
more general in topic there would be no need to crosspost.
73, Steve KB9X
Dr.Ace
"KH6HZ" <kh6...@Tarrl.net> wrote in message
news:DJ7uh.30$uK1...@newsfe23.lga...
Personally speaking, I agree, this sounds good to me.
Ace - WH2T
.
nonoise
> moderator on behalf of the Big-8 Management Board:
>
> http://www.big-8.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=nan:2007-01-25-rec.radio.amateur.moderated-rfd2
>
> This is a Request for Discussion (RFD) to create a new moderated
> discussion newsgroup for amateur radio on Usenet. It has been relayed
> to rec.radio.amateur.antenna and rec.radio.amateur.dx as announced in
> the RFD. Please consider contributing your opinions regarding this
> newsgroup to news.groups.proposals, where followups to this message have
> been set.
I vote "Yes" to a moderated group. The various ham groups have been
plagued by Velveeta and flame wars, and a moderated discussion group
will be a good step in the right direction.
William
--
A little learning is a dang'rous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring;
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.
-- Alexander Pope, Essay on Criticism
MWH
wrote:
> REQUEST FOR DISCUSSION (RFD)
> moderated group rec.radio.amateur.moderated
>
>This is a formal Request For Discussion (RFD) for the creation of the
>moderated Usenet newsgroup, rec.radio.amateur.moderated.
>
>
>NEWSGROUPS LINE: rec.radio.amateur.moderated
>
>rec.radio.amateur.moderated Amateur radio practices, rules, etc. (Moderated)
I agree that this group is needed. I also think that it should be all inclusive
in topics. There may not be enough on topic posts to have more then this one
moderated group.
Michael Hackfeld
KE5CFH
Jim Riley
<psch...@novia.net> wrote:
> REQUEST FOR DISCUSSION (RFD)
> moderated group rec.radio.amateur.moderated
>Combining the topics of the unmoderated rec.radio.amateur.misc and
>rec.radio.amateur.policy newsgroups into a single moderated newsgroup is
>offered as the most practical solution for both the moderators and the
>participants at this time. Followup discussion in response to the 1st
>RFD indicated that there was significant and strongly-held opinions in
>favor of either opening up the proposed newsgroup to all amateur radio
>topics, or changing the name to reflect a misc+policy scope only. In
>addition to the rec.radio.amateur.misc, and rec.radio.amateur.policy
>newsgroups, there has also been recent discussion about moderation in
>rec.radio.amateur.antenna and rec.radio.amateur.dx. As a result,
>pointers to this 2nd RFD will be posted to those additional newsgroups.
>In particular, some consensus about alternatives is being actively
>solicited at this time. The main alternatives are:
>
>1. Make rec.radio.amateur.moderated an all-encompassing moderated amateur
> radio discussion newsgroup.
What if you say something to the effect that the moderators MAY
require more specialized discussion to be tagged:
[ANTENNA], [DX], etc. This could also include specific policy areas,
for example if there is a particular regulation that is especially
controversial and/or likely to lead to a tedious rehash for the 1718th
time.
You are effectively creating virtual subgroups within the single
group. Readers of the group can screen areas that are/are not of
particular interest to them, either automated by their newsreader or a
simple visual scan. Conceivably, certain areas could be routed to
specialist moderators, who might be willing/have time to moderate in
certain areas.
The fact you allowed discussion of antennas, for example, would not
mean that people couldn't continue to use the existing unmoderated
group. If there is a lot more expertise in the unmoderated
specialized group, this could be pointed out in replies. There may be
some annoyance if people post the same question to both an unmoderated
group and the moderated group.
If volume in a specialty area becomes great enough, split off a
rec.radio.amateur.moderated.antenna (or whatever). By then, you'll
know how to get a group created; and it could likely share the same
moderation hardware/software, etc., but could have its own dedicated
human moderators.
Are there subject areas covered by the specialty groups that would
annoy participants in a general group (assuming they weren't
overwhelming in volume)? Articles appropriate for rec.radio.swap are
already covered. Are there some time of reports posted to the DX
group, for example?
--
Jim Riley
Alex Flinsch
>
> 1. Make rec.radio.amateur.moderated an all-encompassing moderated amateur
> radio discussion newsgroup.
>
This would be my preference, and I would support it when it comes to a
vote.
--
Alex/AB2RC
Paul W. Schleck
Hash: SHA1
>Hi Paul,
I believe that Richard is advocating the use of technologies like
newsreader killfiles and similar filters on the unmoderated newsgroups,
rather than seeking to create a moderated newsgroup.
Newsreader killfiles were one suggestion that came up on the "Meltdown"
threads of discussion at the QRZ and eHam blogs that are linked in the
RFD. I offered several rebuttals at the time, which I'll repeat here.
Killfiles have their limitations:
- Killfiles are an individual, not a global, configuration.
Non-trivial amounts of effort are required to "learn" a good
killfile, then maintain it on an ongoing basis. Mine, for nn, has
been tuned over many years, so I'm quite familiar with them. New
users, without a killfile, will see a cesspool on the misc and policy
newsgroups, and may simply not want to bother to participate at all,
let alone try to put together a killfile.
- The usefulness of killfiles is strongly dependent on posters using
meaningful subjects on the Subject: line and consistent names/E-mail
addresses on the From: line. The prevalence of both is rather low on
the misc and policy newsgroups, due to cascaded flame wars and the
use of anonymous, and ever-changing, "sock-puppets."
- Killfiles will not keep you from reading a post from an unkilled user
but in response to a killed user (usually quoting most or all of the
killed user's post).
- Since there are now so many newsreaders and news reading environments
out there, even if someone provided a "reference" or "recommended"
killfile, it would have to be translated for many different
newsreaders, and not every newsreader supports every feature (We went
through this previously with rec.radio.info).
- Not every newsreader or news reading environment supports killfiles.
The rn newsreader, and its variants, was the "reference"
implementation of a newsreader, whose good features should have been
emulated by everything that came afterwards. Now there are so many
different newsreaders that have significant market share that don't
even bother to emulate the good features of rn (*COUGH* Outlook
Express *COUGH*), that it's probably not useful advice for even a
majority of users at this point. Advice to a user to change his
newsreader is often not a welcome, or even practical, suggestion.
Some users even access news solely through a web interface, like
Google Groups, and can't (no accessible news server) or won't (don't
want to install and configure software) switch to a better
newsreader.
- All practical limitations aside, what conclusions can be drawn from
newsgroups for which an ideal killfile would kill virtually 100% of
the postings, as is arguably now the case on the misc and policy
newsgroups?
- A fully portable, easy-to-use, global, automatic, self-maintaining,
and a-priori killfile based on community consensus is also known as a
moderated newsgroup.
In addition to what I posted on the blogs above, another concern emerged
among our team during the planning of this newsgroup. Specifically, the
act of "plonking", or publicly stating that you have someone in a
newsreader killfile, and thus will be ignoring their posts, whether you
really do or not (often not). In addition to this being a rude,
ad-hominem attack against someone, "plonking" is also seen as not
credible, even a cop-out to avoid rebutting someone or respecting their
opinions. Even if everyone could use an effective newsreader killfile,
unmoderated newsgroups might still suffer from an unproductive and
distracting amount of such "plonking."
We intend to filter out "plonking" from our moderated discussion
newsgroup(s), if created.
- --
Paul W. Schleck
psch...@novia.net
http://www.novia.net/~pschleck/
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Rick S
On Fri, 26 Jan 2007 09:53:34 CST, Paul W. Schleck wrote:
>
> Killfiles have their limitations:
>
Indeed they do. This subject has come up repeatedly on Usenet with the
end result that, after decades of promoting it as the ultimate solution,
the killfile argument is moot. As you have correctly stated, one can
use an effective killfile himself, but if the majority of other
newsgroup users are unwilling or unable to switch to a newsreader
capable of using regular expressions and filtering on any header of an
article, those users will eventually stop posting. The killfile user
will then be left with a filtered, but mostly empty, newsgroup.
That is precisely the situation in rrap and rram. I know; I've been
filtering rram/p for months with the slrn news reader and finding only
occasional times when on-topic exchanges were in evidence. Two years
ago, that was not the case at all.
Nate Bargmann
> 1. Make rec.radio.amateur.moderated an all-encompassing moderated
> amateur
> radio discussion newsgroup.
>
> 2. Keep the topics focused on misc and policy, and come up with a
> better name for our proposed misc+policy moderated amateur radio
> discussion newsgroup.
It seems to me that whatever the group is named is how people will assume
its scope of discussion. If named as in option 1, then all amateur radio
topics should be expected. If the moderators wish to limit the range of
discussion, then the name should reflect the new group's limited scope. In
any event, "moderated" should not be omitted. I prefer one
all-encompassing group as named in option 1 and leave the rest of the
hierarchy unmoderated.
Whatever is decided, as a radio amateur I support the creation of a
moderated amateur radio newsgroup.
Sal M. Onella
"Paul W. Schleck, K3FU" <psch...@novia.net> wrote in message
news:45b8f455$0$171$540e...@novia.net...
< snip >
> This is a Request for Discussion (RFD) to create a new moderated
> discussion newsgroup for amateur radio on Usenet.
< snip >
I read the request and I'm not sure how to respond. Yes, I would like to
see a NG that had the politics and flames flushed out of it by a "duty
roster" of moderators. However, I'm bothered that it is proposed to
*supplement*, not *replace* the other newsgroup. How could I be sure that
some (valid) posters weren't behind in the old, abuse-filled group, toughing
it out???
What I'm saying is that I want a clean break. If I have to check *two*
newsgroups as a substitute for previously having had to check one, that's
unfortunately not an improvement.
If my dilemma is too obvious and I shouldn't have bothered stating it, I'm
sorry.
73,
KD6VKW
CB
> What I'm saying is that I want a clean break. If I have to check
> *two* newsgroups as a substitute for previously having had to check
> one, that's unfortunately not an improvement.
Unsubscribe from the old newsgroups. End of problem.
Dee Flint
"Sal M. Onella" <salmo...@food.poisoning.org> wrote in message
news:sSzuh.3482$Lx2...@newsfe14.phx...
Leave the old group for those who want to wallow in the problems.
The simple solution for most of us will be to simply ignore or even delete
the other groups.
Nine Land Ham
a clean break. If I have to check *two*
> > newsgroups as a substitute for previously having had to check one,
that's
> > unfortunately not an improvement.
> >
> > If my dilemma is too obvious and I shouldn't have bothered stating it,
I'm
> > sorry.
> >
> > 73,
> > KD6VKW
>
> Leave the old group for those who want to wallow in the problems.
>
> The simple solution for most of us will be to simply ignore or even delete
> the other groups.
Well said, Dee. And what a simple solution it is.
Cecil Moore
> What I'm saying is that I want a clean break. If I have to check *two*
> newsgroups as a substitute for previously having had to check one, that's
> unfortunately not an improvement.
Ideally, we will wind up with the wheat in one
newsgroup and the chaff in the other. Participants
will use their free will to decide when (if ever)
to make that "clean break".
--
73, Cecil http://www.w5dxp.com
Kathy Morgan
> On Thu, 25 Jan 2007 10:25:26 -0600, Paul W. Schleck, K3FU wrote:
>
> > 1. Make rec.radio.amateur.moderated an all-encompassing moderated
> > amateur
> > radio discussion newsgroup.
> >
> > 2. Keep the topics focused on misc and policy, and come up with a
> > better name for our proposed misc+policy moderated amateur radio
> > discussion newsgroup.
>
> It seems to me that whatever the group is named is how people will assume
> its scope of discussion. If named as in option 1, then all amateur radio
> topics should be expected. If the moderators wish to limit the range of
> discussion, then the name should reflect the new group's limited scope. In
> any event, "moderated" should not be omitted. I prefer one
> all-encompassing group as named in option 1 and leave the rest of the
> hierarchy unmoderated.
rec.radio.amateur.moderated is IMO the correct name for an
all-encompassing moderated ham radio group. I would vote against the
proposal if this name is used with topics restricted just to misc and
policy, because the name would be misleading. (Other members of the
B8MB might disagree and vote in favor, so this need not necessarily be a
show-stopper for the proponent if he is determined on that name but he
should keep in mind that there would be at least one No vote.)
If the topics are restricted just to policy and misc, then I think the
best name suggested so far would be rec.radio.amateur.policy+misc (or
rec.radio.amateur.misc+policy), omitting the ".moderated" because adding
".moderated" makes the name very unwieldy. My original name suggestion
was to have it in there, but I agree with those who suggested it isn't
necessary and makes the name too long.
--
Kathy - member of B8MB but speaking only for myself
Martin X. Moleski, SJ
> ... rec.radio.amateur.moderated is IMO the correct name for an
>all-encompassing moderated ham radio group. ...
Seems that way to me, too.
If I haven't said so before, you may put me down as +0
on this proposal (in general--I'm not attaching this
to one particular name).
+ -- I think a group along these lines should be created
0 -- I won't participate in it myself.
I got a Technician's license just to fly RC. It was
fun studying and taking the test, but I don't see myself
getting any further involved in the hobby.
KC2NEB
--
Member of the Big-8 Management Board (B8MB) -- http://www.big-8.org
Unless otherwise indicated, I speak for myself, not for the Board.
KH6HZ
> rec.radio.amateur.moderated is IMO the correct name for an
> all-encompassing moderated ham radio group. I would vote against
> the proposal if this name is used with topics restricted just to
> misc and policy, because the name would be misleading.
This is why I 100% encourage Paul to modify the charter to include any and
all amateur-radio related discussions, not strictly those limited to misc
and policy.
The additional work required for the moderation group should be minimal,
and, over time, if they find the group is too unweildy, they could subdivide
it at that time into several moderated groups.
73
KH6HZ
Michael Black
> "Kathy Morgan" <kmo...@spamcop.net> wrote:
>
>> rec.radio.amateur.moderated is IMO the correct name for an
>> all-encompassing moderated ham radio group. I would vote against
>> the proposal if this name is used with topics restricted just to
>> misc and policy, because the name would be misleading.
>
> This is why I 100% encourage Paul to modify the charter to include any and
> all amateur-radio related discussions, not strictly those limited to misc
> and policy.
>
That's a reason to modify the name.
What we've seen is an RFD where the name was badly chosen. But then, instead
of dealing with that, the concept has changed to "well maybe we should
make it all encompassing".
IF people want to argue for the latter, then argue away. But don't use
the fact that the proponents didn't think through the name (or maybe
they did and it was deliberate) as an excuse to broaden things. If
there was a perceived need for one moderated newsgroup to cover everything,
then that need would have been there from before there was an RFD for
this moderated version of .policy and .misc
In the beginning, the idea of a moderated version of .misc and .policy maybe
makes sense, since they are in pretty bad shape. Though, after careful
reading since the first RFD, I'm beginning to suspect the problem is less
one-sided than it appeared at first glance. However, like I said, the
junk sometimes overflows into the other sub-groups, and the moderated
newsgroup will still leave that mess (unless as someone suggested, the
moderated newsgroup causes the trouble makers to go away). Note that the
mess as it exists now is not just confined to rec.radio.amateur.* newsgroups,
it overlows into rec.radio.shortwave (which is not about amateur radio) and
rec.radio.cb (obviously not about amateur radio either).
The rest of the hierarchy is in fine shape. It's not the wasteland that
some would suggest. Anyone who thinks the other sub-groups are in bad shape
have a very high level of intolerance. And unlike .misc and .policy the
other sub-groups have the advantage that they are actually about doing
things, instead of sitting around arguing over things that most can't
control.
Numbers are down? Well, that's likely because the same mentality has
been applied. People who can't live without controls. But if those
people have already left, why assume they'd come back? Just as some
of us actually like Usenet, and actually like unmoderated newsgroups,
there are some who simply can't live with Usenet, and they've gone
elsewhere. They are happy there, in the same way that I could never
be happy at their message boards and wherever else they went.
The second RFD has failed again, because as it modifies itself to
being about "maybe we should create a single moderated newsgroup for
everything" they've forgotten the rest of the hierarchy. Yes, there
was a pointer in .antennas and .dx but that still leaves some other
sub-groups that are seen as too much riff-raff to be given any concern.
Yet, the more this becomes "let's create a single moderated newsgroup"
the more it concerns the whole hierarchy, yet the proponents aren't
dealing with that whole hierarchy.
I've read and posted in some of the sub-groups since late 1994 or early
1995. That gives me a pretty big investment in those newsgroups. Not
the silly arguments that have always been there in .policy and .misc
because of the nature of what they are supposed to be about, but actual
discussion and help to people asking questions. That is always far
more crucial to a newsgroup than someone's willingness to make rules
or enforce them.
I'll never move to a moderated newsgroup.
Yet, it is ultimately too easy for the rest of the sub-groups to collapse
as everyone takes the easy route, the fear of the imagined spam and such, and
move to that One Big Moderated newsgroup.
One of the things that used to be the case was that in order to create
a new newsgroup, one had to be convincing that there was a need. I'm
not seeing that in this RFD. I'm seeing a "we need a new newsgroup
because the old one has decayed". That's not the same thing as proving
there will be discussion in this new newsgroup if it is ever created.
The other sub-groups have those discussions, so they are ultimately
far more vital than .misc and .policy They should not be messed with
simply because the people in .misc and .policy can't be civil.
Michael
Tim Skirvin
> What we've seen is an RFD where the name was badly chosen.
This does not match my impression of the process. While the
chosen name may not have been ideal, I don't think that was anything ideal
to choose, and I think that rec.radio.amateur.moderated is as good a name
as anything else. There are shortcomings in all of the suggested names,
but rra.moderated is at least aesthetically pleasing, well-precedented (by
comp.lang.perl.moderated and rec.games.frp.moderated; see Jim Riley's posts),
and expandable in the future (if traffic needs demands it, make
rra.moderated.policy and rra.moderated.dx, etc).
Certainly, at this point I have seen no *clearly* better names come
along. rra.misc+policy.moderated or its derivitives are probably the best
the I've seen, but I don't think that any of those points I listed above
are true, so I'm dubious.
Regardless, we have definitely reached the "tempest in a teacup"
stage regarding the name, as far as I'm concerned. Changing the name
would take a lot of work and offer little gain; I think that they should
stick with what they've got at this point, unless somebody comes along
with a clearly superior name.
> But then, instead of dealing with that, the concept has changed to "well
> maybe we should make it all encompassing".
This has been an interesting exercise in compromise. There is
definitely no way to please all people on this issue, but I am pleased
to see that the proponents and proposed moderators are willing to try to
please and/or serve as many as possible, even at the cost of more work to
themselves; it bodes well for the group.
I have little opinion on whether this group should allow for
discussion of other topics within rec.radio.amateur.*, for what it's
worth.
> One of the things that used to be the case was that in order to create
> a new newsgroup, one had to be convincing that there was a need. I'm
> not seeing that in this RFD.
I have been convinced that there is a need, and that the proposed
group and moderation system appears to meet the need.
- Tim Skirvin (sk...@big-8.org)
--
http://www.big-8.org/ Big-8 Management Board
http://www.killfile.org/~tskirvin/ Skirv's Homepage <FISH>< <*>
William Warren
rec.radio.amateur.moderated.
I don't think that a name change is needed: a "moderated" group is,
ipso facto, limited to topics that the moderators consider acceptable,
and I'd prefer to change the charter so that the moderators have
that leeway.
William
Jim Riley
Black) wrote:
>"KH6HZ" (kh6...@Tarrl.net) writes:
>> "Kathy Morgan" <kmo...@spamcop.net> wrote:
>>
>>> rec.radio.amateur.moderated is IMO the correct name for an
>>> all-encompassing moderated ham radio group. I would vote against
>>> the proposal if this name is used with topics restricted just to
>>> misc and policy, because the name would be misleading.
>>
>> This is why I 100% encourage Paul to modify the charter to include any and
>> all amateur-radio related discussions, not strictly those limited to misc
>> and policy.
>>
>That's no reason to modify the charter.
>
>That's a reason to modify the name.
It is a reason to have the name be consistent with the charter.
This will make it easier for users to figure out where to post, and
make it easier for moderators to moderate.
>What we've seen is an RFD where the name was badly chosen. But then, instead
>of dealing with that, the concept has changed to "well maybe we should
>make it all encompassing".
"misc" is an abbreviation for miscellaneous, which simply means a
mixture. In Usenet group names, it often implies "miscellaneous other
topics". In some cases, where several more specific groups are
created in a sub-hierarchy, it comes to be understood as a "mixture of
leftover topics".
rra.policy was one of the first subgroups to be created. Reading the
RFD when it was created, it appears that the purpose was to move
generally unwanted and repetitive arguments out of the main group (the
only other subgroup at that time was the packet group, which has since
been renamed to rra.digital.misc. At the same time, rec.radio.cb was
created, in order to move other unwanted discussion from the main ham
radio group.
So if you limit the scope of the group to "misc" + "policy", you have
a group that is a "mixture of leftover topics and the repetitive
discussion we pushed out years ago." At least in theory, if another
specific-topic rec.radio.amateur.* group were created, its topic would
become inappropriate for both rec.radio.amateur.misc and the moderated
group that was created as an alternative to rra.misc + rra.policy.
You may place an additional burden on moderators who would have to not
only check whether an article was about amateur radio and met the
other standards of civility that moderation is intended to enforce,
but to check that an article was not more appropriate for some other
group in the sub-hierarchy.
You may have created a boundary line that is hard to enforce, and for
which there may not be an appropriate name.
A name such as rec.radio.amateur.misc+policy is quite unlikely to be
read as "a moderated equivalent of rec.radio.amateur.misc and
rec.radio.amateur.policy", but rather as a group focused on policy and
other issues.
>IF people want to argue for the latter, then argue away. But don't use
>the fact that the proponents didn't think through the name (or maybe
>they did and it was deliberate) as an excuse to broaden things. If
>there was a perceived need for one moderated newsgroup to cover everything,
>then that need would have been there from before there was an RFD for
>this moderated version of .policy and .misc
Newsgroups are created on the basis of utility and interest, not
necessity. A group with the original proposed scope may not have been
useful because of its indefinite coverage.
>In the beginning, the idea of a moderated version of .misc and .policy maybe
>makes sense, since they are in pretty bad shape. Though, after careful
>reading since the first RFD, I'm beginning to suspect the problem is less
>one-sided than it appeared at first glance. However, like I said, the
>junk sometimes overflows into the other sub-groups, and the moderated
>newsgroup will still leave that mess (unless as someone suggested, the
>moderated newsgroup causes the trouble makers to go away). Note that the
>mess as it exists now is not just confined to rec.radio.amateur.* newsgroups,
>it overlows into rec.radio.shortwave (which is not about amateur radio) and
>rec.radio.cb (obviously not about amateur radio either).
>
>The rest of the hierarchy is in fine shape. It's not the wasteland that
>some would suggest. Anyone who thinks the other sub-groups are in bad shape
>have a very high level of intolerance. And unlike .misc and .policy the
>other sub-groups have the advantage that they are actually about doing
>things, instead of sitting around arguing over things that most can't
>control.
I don't think there has been an argument that the rest of the
hierarchy is in bad shape, or that people would stop using the other
unmoderated groups if a moderated group that permitted articles about
their specific sub-topics was created.
>I've read and posted in some of the sub-groups since late 1994 or early
>1995. That gives me a pretty big investment in those newsgroups. Not
>the silly arguments that have always been there in .policy and .misc
>because of the nature of what they are supposed to be about, but actual
>discussion and help to people asking questions. That is always far
>more crucial to a newsgroup than someone's willingness to make rules
>or enforce them.
>
>I'll never move to a moderated newsgroup.
So?
>Yet, it is ultimately too easy for the rest of the sub-groups to collapse
>as everyone takes the easy route, the fear of the imagined spam and such, and
>move to that One Big Moderated newsgroup.
If someone wants to discuss antennas or DX'ing they will likely choose
the more specific group, regardless whether or not it is moderated. If
they choose the moderated group, it will not be "fear of imagined spam
and such." Those who post in the moderated newsgroup, may have more
limited time for participation in Usenet. To the extent they feel
part of a community, they may ask a question about antennas in the one
group they do participate in, rather than subscribing to a a specific
group and trying to make sense of its discussion. If there is greater
expertise in the specific group, someone may well suggest that group,
just as they might refer them to some web page or printed reference.
>One of the things that used to be the case was that in order to create
>a new newsgroup, one had to be convincing that there was a need. I'm
>not seeing that in this RFD. I'm seeing a "we need a new newsgroup
>because the old one has decayed". That's not the same thing as proving
>there will be discussion in this new newsgroup if it is ever created.
The tests have always been interest and utility. Some have
occasionally argued on the basis of necessity - for example the
rationale for the original Babylon 5 group said that net workers were
behooved to support it.
>The other sub-groups have those discussions, so they are ultimately
>far more vital than .misc and .policy They should not be messed with
>simply because the people in .misc and .policy can't be civil.
There would be no change to the unmoderated groups, simply because a
moderator did not reject an article that pertained to the more
specific topic area.
I think you are arguing that the unmoderated specific-topic groups are
filled with intelligent and experienced hams participating in vital
and interesting discussions, and that they will all run to a moderated
group like scared sheep out of an imagined fear of spam.
--
Jim Riley
Paul W. Schleck
Hash: SHA1
rec.radio.amateur.moderated - Straw Poll
This straw poll is based solely upon messages posted in
news.groups.proposals as of 1/29/2007.
SUMMARY:
1. Support initial name, no stated preference for scope: 7
2. Support initial name and all-amateur-radio scope: 5
3. Support misc+policy scope: 6
4. Opposed: 3
1. Support initial name (rec.radio.amateur.moderated), no stated
preference for scope:
Marc, KD5LUR <amarc...@gmail.com:, in article
<1168459690.6...@i39g2000hsf.googlegroups.com> on 1/10/2007
Dee Dee Flint, N8UZE <deefl...@comcast.com>, in article
<1168524474.8...@i56g2000hsf.googlegroups.com> on 1/11/2007
Martin X. Moleski, SJ, KC2NEB <mol...@canisius.edu>, in article
<12qg69t...@news.supernews.com> on 1/12/2007
<sho...@gmail.com>, in article
<1169582077.8...@d71g2000cwa.googlegroups.com> on 1/23/2007
Meat Plow <fr...@databasix.com>, in article
<pan.2007.01.25....@nntp.sun-meatplow.local> on 1/25/2007
MWH <use...@alias.HotPOP.com>, in article
<advir29h2cad5442h...@4ax.com> on 1/25/2007
William <william_war...@speakeasy.net>, in article
<87bqkjy...@billhorne.homelinux.org> on 1/28/2007
2. Support initial name and all-amateur-radio scope:
Steve Bonine, KB9X <s...@pobox.com>, in article
<NcadndFCRchlmCTY...@deskmedia.com> on 1/25/2007
Michael Deignan, KH6HZ <kh6...@Tarrl.net>, in article
<DJ7uh.30$uK1...@newsfe23.lga> on 1/25/2007
John <jlwsecur...@yahoo.com>, in article
<Xns98C38FF77...@207.115.17.102> on 1/25/2007
Alex Flinsch, AB2RC <avfl...@att.net>, in article
<pan.2007.01.26....@att.net> on 1/26/2007
Nate Bargmann <nonb.DO....@ME.networksplus.net>, in article
<DuednRzPza6qXifY...@bluevalley.net> on 1/26/2007
3. Support misc+policy scope (possibly rename):
Rick Stealey, K2XT <rick...@hotmail.com>, in article
<45a51aea....@news.optonline.net> on 1/10/2007
Kathy Morgan <kmo...@spamcop.net>, in article
<1hrrlqi.sj7bqt1qgwxb9N%kmo...@spamcop.net> on 1/11/2007
Jim Riley <jim...@pipeline.com>, in article
<50n91sF...@mid.individual.net> on 1/11/2007
Rich McAllister, K6RFM <r...@pensfa.org>, in article
<87lkk8v...@terra.pensfa.org> on 1/12/2007
Jeremy Nixon <jer...@exit109.com>, in article
<12qhfhf...@corp.supernews.com> on 1/13/2007
Rick S. <rick...@bellsouth.net>, in article
<l7mnc.i...@news.alt.net> on 1/25/2007
4. Opposed:
Mark Morgan, KB9RQZ <kons...@hotmail.com>, in article
<1168494958....@i39g2000hsf.googlegroups.com> on 1/11/2007
Richard Clark, KB7QHC <kb7...@comcast.net>, in article
<li5ir2529ir8rdvie...@4ax.com> on 1/25/2007
Michael Black, VE2BVW <et...@freenet.carleton.ca>, in article
<epgv1m$7l9$1...@theodyn.ncf.ca> on 1/27/2007
- --
Paul W. Schleck
psch...@novia.net
http://www.novia.net/~pschleck/
Finger psch...@novia.net for PGP Public Key
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Jim Riley
<psch...@novia.net> wrote:
> rec.radio.amateur.moderated - Straw Poll
>
>This straw poll is based solely upon messages posted in
>news.groups.proposals as of 1/29/2007.
>
>SUMMARY:
>
>1. Support initial name, no stated preference for scope: 7
>2. Support initial name and all-amateur-radio scope: 5
>3. Support misc+policy scope: 6
>4. Opposed: 3
>1. Support initial name (rec.radio.amateur.moderated), no stated
> preference for scope:
>
>3. Support misc+policy scope (possibly rename):
>Jim Riley <jim...@pipeline.com>, in article
><50n91sF...@mid.individual.net> on 1/11/2007
What I was trying to say in that article was that there are a number
of instances where there is a net.foo.moderated which doesn't
necessarily assume the scope of the entire rec.foo.* hierarchy.
In other articles, I have suggested that a group named
rec.radio.amateur.moderated could have the scope of the entire
hierarchy (minus certain specific exclusions such as swap ads) This
might make it easier to moderate, simply because posters wouldn't have
to think about whether their article was within a more limited scope;
and moderators wouldn't have to check whether the article was not more
appropriate for one of the specific unmoderated groups.
In practice, people will continue to use the groups that meet their
names and interests - using the specific unmoderated groups where they
found value in the information shared, or the group culture.
So classify me as a 1., though I am not likely to use the newsgroup.
--
Jim Riley
Kathy Morgan
> 3. Support misc+policy scope (possibly rename): [...]
>
> Kathy Morgan <kmo...@spamcop.net>, in article
> <1hrrlqi.sj7bqt1qgwxb9N%kmo...@spamcop.net> on 1/11/2007
I should clarify my position for you. I won't use the group, so it
doesn't really matter to me what the scope is or what the name is. What
*does* matter to me, though, is that the name should match the scope.
If you go with rec.radio.amateur.moderated, the scope should be all
topics related to rec.radio.amateur.* which don't already have a
separate moderated group (except ads). If you want to restrict
discussion to just misc and policy, then I feel the name should reflect
that.
--
Kathy - member of the B8MB but speaking only for myself
Thomas Lee
<kmo...@spamcop.net> writes
>rec.radio.amateur.moderated is IMO the correct name for an
>all-encompassing moderated ham radio group. I would vote against the
>proposal if this name is used with topics restricted just to misc and
>policy, because the name would be misleading.
Me too.
>(Other members of the
>B8MB might disagree and vote in favor,
Not me! ;-)
> so this need not necessarily be a
>show-stopper for the proponent if he is determined on that name but he
>should keep in mind that there would be at least one No vote.)
Either keep rec.radio.modearated (and allow any radio related traffic)
or come up with a better name. If the proponent really wants to just
have a moderated .misc and .policy => why not separate
rec.radio.amateur.misc.moderated, and
rec.radio.amateur.policy.moderated?
>If the topics are restricted just to policy and misc, then I think the
>best name suggested so far would be rec.radio.amateur.policy+misc (or
>rec.radio.amateur.misc+policy),
Both pretty horrible names, IMHO.
> omitting the ".moderated" because adding
>".moderated" makes the name very unwieldy. My original name suggestion
>was to have it in there, but I agree with those who suggested it isn't
>necessary and makes the name too long.
Possibly.
--
Thomas Lee - t...@psp.co.uk
A member of, but not speaking for, The Big-8 Management Board