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From: woods@ncar.ucar.edu (Greg Woods)
Newsgroups: news.groups,news.admin
Subject: OFFICIAL Guidelines (2nd try)
Message-ID: <2961@ncar.ucar.edu>
Date: 10 Apr 89 00:08:03 GMT
Reply-To: woods@ncar.UCAR.EDU (Greg Woods)
Organization: Scientific Computing Division/NCAR, Boulder CO
Lines: 101


      GUIDELINES FOR USENET GROUP CREATION (2nd draft)

REQUIREMENTS FOR GROUP CREATION:

   These are guidelines that have been generally agreed upon across
USENET as appropriate for following in the creating of new newsgroups in
the "standard" USENET newsgroup heirarchy. They are NOT intended as 
guidelines for setting USENET policy other than group creations, and they
are not intended to apply to "alternate" or local news heirarchies. The 
part of the namespace affected is comp, news, sci, misc, soc, talk, and
rec, which are the most widely-distributed areas of the USENET heirarchy.
   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 and charter of the proposed group and whether it will be moderated
   or unmoderated (and if the former, who the moderator will be) 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 has been determined that a new group is
   really desired, a name and charter are agreed upon, and it has been
   determined whether the group will be moderated and if so who will
   moderate it, 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 at least 30 days, no matter what the
   preliminary results of the vote are. The exact date that the voting period
   will end should be stated in the call for votes. Only votes that arrive
   on the vote-taker's machine prior to this date may be counted.

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). Partial vote
   results should NOT be included; only a statement of the specific new
   group proposal, that a vote is in progress on it, and how to cast a vote.

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) may not be counted.

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,
   a different moderated/unmoderated status or (if moderated) a different
   moderator.

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 E-mail addresses and (if available) names 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 5 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, and if there were no serious objections that might
   invalidate the vote, and if 100 more YES/create votes are 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.

4) A group proposal which fails the vote should not be discussed on the net
   again for at least 6 months.