From babcast@cosmos-monitor.com Tue Jul 21 10:22:45 PDT 2009 Article: 260 of ba.config Path: boredom.ennui.org!news.xcski.com!ncf.ca!news.kjsl.com!news.glorb.com!news2.glorb.com!multikabel.net!newsfeed20.multikabel.net!newsfeed.freenet.de!fu-berlin.de!uni-berlin.de!individual.net!not-for-mail From: Mark Roberts Newsgroups: ba.broadcast,ba.config Subject: [PROPOSAL] Create moderated version of ba.broadcast, ba.broadcast.moderated [LAST CALL FOR COMMENTS] Followup-To: ba.config Date: 18 Jun 2009 02:37:20 GMT Organization: 1.94 meters Lines: 243 Message-ID: <79tnj0F1sg7m1U1@mid.individual.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: individual.net KVpaFfIdI1pNciu/NDxycwuOu9Me1elAyhgOeSZdEnMIxYNqEw Summary: Last call for comments on ba.broadcast.moderated RFD Keywords: newsgroup, moderation, ba.broadcast, RFD Cancel-Lock: sha1:dH5l8YLwwvcrwUtCdb8CLTI85A0= User-Agent: slrn/0.9.9p1 (Linux) Xref: boredom.ennui.org ba.broadcast:122855 ba.config:260 For your newsgroups file: ba.broadcast.moderated Bay Area TV/Radio issues. (Moderated) >From the original 1992 ba.broadcast charter by Eliot Lear : "This group is here for discussions, comments and program reminders about broadcast media in the San Francisco Bay Area, both radio and television. It also includes cable systems and TVRO/BCRO in the SF Bay Area. It does not include scanner, ham radio or other action here in the SF Bay Area; these may be addressed in another newsgroup at another time. Issues of national interest should be posted to one of the groups in rec.arts.tv or rec.radio." Proposed 2009 updates to original ba.broadcast charter for ba.broadcast.moderated: The purpose of the newsgroup is to discuss the practice of broadcasting, including programming, sales and management, engineering, broadcast technology, and emerging trends and technologies in broadcasting and related media. This group is intended as a moderated alternative to the existing newsgroup ba.broadcast. Moderation will be utilized to enforce civil tone and on-topic content, including rejection of inappropriate articles, and closing of existing threads if they become sufficiently uncivil or off-topic. Uncivil tone includes insults, name-calling, and other ad-hominem attacks. Off-topic content includes that not reasonably related to the practice of broadcasting in the Bay Area. For example, articles that discuss how a radio host runs his or her show would be considered on-topic. Articles that are entirely about the contents of radio or TV shows (except in those instances where the subject matter is actually about radio or TV) would be considered off-topic. Such articles should instead be submitted to alternative forums. In addition, the following are prohibited: * Chain letters. * Posts in HTML. * 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. * 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. Summary of Discussion: Discussion in both ba.config and ba.broadcast brought forth the following arguments for and against the creation of ba.broadcast.moderated: FOR: * Absence of personal attacks on individual posters * Posts would be more likely to be on-topic * Fewer off-topic posts (a/k/a "noise") would appear * More professionals working in the business will participate in the moderated newsgroup AGAINST: * Concern that a moderator would use the moderated newsgroup to answer criticism made in the unmoderated newsgroup * Censorship Straw Poll: FOR: Angie Coiro Copie Phil Kane David Kaye Mark Roberts Paul W. Schleck Stratum101 Mike Ward AGAINST: Bozo Colonel Jake Nomen Nescio (footnote #1) Footnote: 1: as expressed in ba.broadcast Implementation and management of this new newsgroup: If approved by the readership, the new newsgroup will be created by a standard, PGP-signed, Usenet newgroup control message sent by the Bay-Area Managed Hierarchy (ba.*) Administrator, Ron Escheverri: http://usenet.trigofacile.com/hierarchies/index.py?see=BA Usenet sites that accept such control messages automatically will create the newsgroup immediately. Readers at other sites are requested to ask their local administrators to create the new newsgroup manually after the newgroup control message is posted. The moderation team will be available to assist with this. In order to minimize duplication of articles, and encourage wider propagation of the new moderated newsgroup, simultaneous crossposting between ba.broadcast and ba.broadcast.moderated will be encouraged. Participation in this simultaneous crossposting scheme is completely voluntary. Posters of initial articles in threads will make the voluntary choice to add ba.broadcast.moderated and one other unmoderated newsgroup to the Newsgroups line when posting. Those following up to these crossposted threads will make a voluntary choice whether to keep ba.broadcast.moderated or any other newsgroup on the Newsgroups line, or remove them. Followups may be directed by default to any subset of the newsgroups on the Newsgroups line (or via E-mail to "poster") by specifying them on an appropriate Followup-To line. In short, the readers will control what they post, where they post it, and what default destinations they want for any followups. This proposed crossposting scheme does not change any of these long-standing features of Usenet and newsreader software. The ba.broadcast.moderated moderation team will use the Secure, Team-Based Usenet Moderation Program (STUMP) to manage the newsgroup: http://www.algebra.com/~ichudov/stump/ To reduce the risks of technical problems and delayed or lost articles during this proposed newsgroup's startup, the moderation team will set up initial moderation services at Public-Access Internet and Unix, New York City (Panix): http://www.panix.com for the cost of $100/year. Panix already hosts several other Usenet newsgroup moderation teams running STUMP. Members of the consultation team below will assist with this initial installation. Services in the Bay area were evaluated, but the team felt that they could not be stood up quickly enough, offer necessary technical features such as installed software tools and web site hosting like Panix, be cost-competitive with Panix, be as reliable as Panix, or offer technical support as responsive as Panix. Starting up at Panix for the first year will give us 12 months of breathing room, and a reliable backup, while we continue to seek out and evaluate Bay-area alternatives for moderation software hosting. Further suggestions about reliable Unix-shell Internet account services in the Bay area that could meet our technical requirements and budget would be welcome. The STUMP robot (or "'bot") 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: * 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 continue a thread that has been "closed" by the moderators. Posts rejected by the bot or by a moderator will be returned to the poster via e-mail. Moderators may at their option include an explanation for rejection of the post. 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 writing the moderation team at the Administrative Contact address below. The moderation team will discuss and vote on the appeal and respond within 14 days if the appeal is successful. The moderation team 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. Initial Moderation Team: Patty Winter Mark Roberts John Higdon Temporary Volunteer Moderators: (These temporary volunteers have agreed to serve for the first 6-12 months of the newsgroup's life, during which time a list of pre-approved or "white-listed" users will be built based on approved submissions, and additional moderators will be recruited from the Bay-Area broadcast community.) Steve Bonine (Moderator of news.groups.proposals) Kathy Morgan (Co-Chair of Big-8 Board) Consultants: Paul W. Schleck Phil Kane Article Submissions: ba-broadcast-moderated@panix.com Administrative Contact: ba-broadcast-moderated-request@panix.com Proponent: Mark Roberts Change History: 2009-05-30 1st RFD 2009-06-10 Posted to ba.broadcast and ba.config 2009-06-13 Reposted to ba.broadcast and ba.config due to an effort by "Colonel Jake", SergeantYork@comcast.net, to cancel the post 2009-06-17 2nd RFD/Last Call for Comments -- Mark Roberts