Xref: utzoo news.groups:8323 news.admin:5218 Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ncar!woods From: woods@ncar.ucar.edu (Greg Woods) Newsgroups: news.groups,news.admin Subject: Proposed OFFICIAL Newsgroup Creation/Deletion Guidelines Message-ID: <1634@ncar.ucar.edu> Date: 23 Mar 89 21:57:49 GMT Reply-To: woods@ncar.UCAR.EDU (Greg Woods) Organization: Scientific Computing Division/NCAR, Boulder CO Lines: 126 I have been informed by Spaf that he no longer maintains the official guidelines for creation of newsgroups. I would like to take over that duty (Why me? Because I'm relatively well-known to the net, I'm willing to put in the time required and deal with the inevitable flames that will result, and I volunteered first :-) First a plea: this is probably the most important topic we could possibly discuss in news.groups. I am cross-posting it to news.admin simply because the news administrators are the ones who will have to "enforce" the guidelines so they should be in on this discussion. The plea is, because this topic is so important, let's for once try to concentrate on the issues at hand and avoid personal attacks. I welcome honest criticism of these proposed guidelines. To do my part in keeping down the flames, I will not respond to any article that looks more like a personal attack on me than a criticism of the guidelines, no matter how angry I get or how untrue the statements of a personal nature might be. I encourage everyone else to do the same. Second, a disclaimer: This is only a DRAFT, folks. It isn't carved in stone, nor do I expect it to be accepted without some modifications. What this is is a formal statement of the rules that I see actually being followed on the net. It is true that some of these rules are the subject of controversy. I am trying my best to reflect the net consensus, but, since I am a human being and therefore have personal opinions just like everyone else, I cannot guarantee that this statement of the guidelines is 100% free of my personal biases. In fact, where no clear consensus has been reached it is quite likely that my personal opinions entered into the formal statement. At any rate, here it is. I welcome private or posted comments and will be posting a new updated version that will reflect the consensus of those comments (as best I can) in a week or so. RULES FOR USENET GROUP CREATION AND DELETION (draft) REQUIREMENTS FOR GROUP CREATION: These guidelines should be followed when you think a new newsgroup should be created. Any group creation request which follows these guidelines to a successful result should be honored, and any request which fails to follow these procedures or to obtain a successful result from doing so should be dropped, except under extraordinary circumstances. The reason these are called guidelines and not absolute rules is that it is not possible to predict in advance what "extraordinary circumstances" are or how they might arise. The Discussion 1) A call for discussion on creation of a new newsgroup should be posted to news.groups, and also to any other groups or mailing lists at all related to the proposed topic if desired. The Followup-to: header should be set so that the actual discussion takes place only in news.groups 2) The discussion period should last for at least two weeks (14 days). 3) The name of the proposed group must be agreed upon during the discussion period, which may last up to 30 days if needed. The Vote 1) AFTER the discussion period, if it is determined that a new group is really desired and a name and charter are agreed upon, a call for votes may be posted to news.groups and any other groups or mailing lists that the original call for discussion might have been posted to. The call for votes should include clear instructions for how to cast a vote. It must be as clearly explained and as easy to do to cast a vote for creation as against it, and vice versa. It is explicitly permitted to set up two separate addresses to mail yes and no votes to provided that they are on the same machine, to set up an address different than that the article was posted from to mail votes to, or to just accept replies to the call for votes article, as long as it is clearly and explicitly stated in the call for votes article how to cast a vote. 2) The voting period must last for exactly 30 days, no matter what the preliminary results of the vote are. 3) A couple of repeats of the call for votes may be posted during the vote, provided that they contain similar clear, unbiased instructions for casting a vote as the original, and provided that it is really a repeat of the call for votes on the SAME proposal (see #5 below). 4) ONLY votes MAILED to the vote-taker will count. Votes posted to the net for any reason (including inability to get mail to the vote-taker) and proxy votes (such as having a mailing list maintainer claim a vote for each member of the list) are NOT ALLOWED. 5) Votes may not be transferred to other, similar proposals. A vote shall count only for the EXACT proposal that it is a response to. In particular, a vote for or against a newsgroup under one name shall NOT be counted as a vote for or against a newsgroup with a different name or charter. 6) Votes MUST be explicit; they should be of the form "I vote for the group foo.bar as proposed" or "I vote against the group foo.bar as proposed". The wording doesn't have to be exact, it just needs to be unambiguous. In particular, statements of the form "I would vote for this group if..." should be considered comments only and not counted as votes. The Result 1) At the completion of the 30 day voting period, the vote taker must post the vote tally and the names and/or E-mail addresses of the votes received to news.groups and any other groups or mailing lists to which the original call for votes was posted. 2) AFTER the vote result is posted, there will be a 3 day waiting period during which the net will have a chance to correct any errors in the voter list or the voting procedure. 3) AFTER the waiting period, if 100 more YES/create votes were received than NO/don't create, a newgroup control message may be sent out. If the 100 vote margin is not met, the group should not be created and discussion of it on the net should cease. RULES FOR DELETING A USENET GROUP [Since there has obviously been no consensus ever reached on this, this statement cannot be construed as anything other than my personal opinion] I propose that the procedure be the same as for group creation, with 100 more keep than delete votes required to save the group, with the exception that all calls for votes and discussions MUST be cross-posted to both news.groups and the group in question. This will obviously only work for unmoderated groups; I am open to discussion on procedures for deleting moderated groups, but I would prefer to wait for a final resolution on the rec.humor.funny/Brad Templeton controversy before trying to formalize them, because it will be IMPOSSIBLE to keep the flames down until then.