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MODERATION POLICY:
Moderation Policy for misc.writing.moderated
[n.b. misc.writing.moderated has recently been restructured and resurrected.
The moderation policy is somewhat different than it had been due to changes
in the underlying moderation software. A revised moderation policy paper will
appear when the dust settles.]
Introduction
Misc.writing.moderated is moderated, which means that all articles submitted
to the group pass through a review process before being posted. Currently,
moderation is performed primarily by software, though some articles are
forwarded to human moderators for review.
The charter, which defines what topics are appropriate for discussion in
this newsgroup, is posted to misc.writing.moderated once per week.
1. Structure of the Moderation Board
Misc.writing.moderated is moderated by a Moderation Board, which consists of
a Head Moderator and several Associate Moderators. The number of Associate
Moderators will be set by the Board, but the Board will make a good-faith
effort to maintain a membership of at least three Associate Moderators.
Only members of the Moderation Board have the power to approve posts.
The Board may, at its discretion, elect a reasonable number of Backup
Moderators to serve in the case of temporary absence of a Moderator.
The Head Moderator maintains this Moderation Policy.
The Head Moderator shall only cast a vote when any Board vote results in a
tie.
1.1 Board Membership
The Board controls its own membership. It shall admit new members with a
simple majority vote, or remove members by a 2/3 vote. Board members
(excepting the founding Board members) must come from the active posters of
misc.writing.moderated, and volunteers for a vacant Moderatorship should be
solicited from misc.writing.moderated posters by the Board via a post tagged
[ADMIN]. Backup Moderators vote as Associate Moderators when electing Board
members.
New Board members may be elected when any of the following occur:
- Retirement of a Moderator;
- Death of a Moderator;
- Neglect of moderation duties by a Moderator for 30 consecutive days
without prior announcement;
- Expansion of the size of the Board;
- Expulsion of a Moderator.
The Board shall elect a new Head Moderator by a simple majority vote if the
position becomes vacant; the Head Moderator or the Board shall appoint a
Moderator to fill in for the Head Moderator during short periods of absence.
The Head Moderator must be elected from the present membership of the Board.
1.2 Expulsion of a Moderator
The expulsion of a Moderator may be called for by the readership of
misc.writing.moderated, including members of the Board. Valid reasons for
calling for the expulsion of a Moderator include intolerance, unfairness,
negligence, and lack of impartiality. Such a request should be made via
e-mail directly to the Board at mwm-request@panix.com.
On receipt of such a request an article will be posted to the newsgroup
titled "[ADMIN] Call for Removal of " announcing the start
of a discussion period not less than 15 days. This discussion shall be
public and take place only on the associated public mailing list
. Discussion on the newsgroup itself will be
grounds for a poster being placed on the watchlist. During this discussion
all active Moderators should monitor the mailing list.
At the end of the public discussion phase the Moderators shall consider the
views of the readership via the Moderators' mailing list. At the end of
this consideration period, not less than seven days or more than fourteen
days, the Head Moderator shall call for a vote. A 2/3 vote of the Board is
required to remove a Moderator. The Board's decision shall be posted to the
newsgroup in an article titled "[ADMIN] Removal Vote Result of {Moderator's
name}" stating whether the call for removal has been successful or not.
Each Moderator's vote shall be listed. The reader who called for removal
shall also be informed via e-mail of the result.
For purposes of removal, the Head Moderator is treated like any other
Moderator. If the Head Moderator is subject to a recall vote, the Moderator
with the next highest seniority shall temporarily assume the recall duties
of the Head Moderator.
Only one Moderator may be subject to recall at any one time.
The Board reserves the right to summarily dismiss frivolous recalls, to
forestall disruption of the group's functioning by malicious trolls issuing
one call for removal after another.
1.3 The Technical Administrator
As technical expertise is required for continued functioning of the
moderation software, misc.writing.moderated calls upon the skills of a
Technical Administrator. The Technical Administrator is charged with
installing and maintaining the moderation software (including any ancillary
software like procmail recipes), with making the moderation code publicly
available to all who wish to inspect it, with ownership (either actual or
delegated to a trusted third party) of the group submissions address, and
with communicating about technical problems with Moderators and
participants. The Technical Administrator has no hand-moderation duties,
and is not a voting member of the Board. A new Technical Administrator can
only be selected by an outgoing Technical Administrator, or, if the previous
Technical Administrator has abandoned the group, by a request to the Usenet
Moderators' mailing list at .
1.4 Pathological Cases
Since most of this Moderation Policy hinges on there being at least two
Associate Moderators and a Head Moderator, we address the following
pathological cases:
a. The case where there is only one Associate Moderator and a Head
Moderator: In this case, the Head Moderator votes as a regular Board
member. As Board votes may result in a tie in this situation, ties shall be
decided as follows: When voting on a proposed change in Moderation Policy,
the proposed change will be rejected. When voting to elect a new Moderator,
the Moderator will be elected. When voting to remove a Moderator, the
Moderator will not be removed.
b. The case where there is only one Moderator: In this case, numerous
segments of this Moderation Policy become inoperable. The lone Moderator
should ensure that the group continues to function in as normal a manner as
possible while attempting to re-staff the Board.
c. The case where there are no Moderators: In this case, prior to leaving
his or her moderation duties, the final outgoing Moderator should ensure that
the following occur:
(1.) The Watch List should be emptied.
(2.) The moderation software should be set to pass all posts that would
otherwise require hand-moderation.
If the final outgoing Moderator fails in those tasks, the Technical
Administrator should see to them.
Posters to misc.writing.moderated are then charged with selecting new
Moderators, possibly with the help of the Technical Administrator.
2. Moderation Process
All articles to the group may be processed through moderation software which
takes one of the following actions on each article, in order of technical
precedence:
- Reject it outright if it meets certain criteria (see 6. Current Grounds
for Auto-Rejection);
- Forward it to a Board member if it meets certain other criteria (see 7.
Current Grounds for Human Moderation); or
- Post it immediately.
As misc.writing.moderated is moderated strictly by content, the author's
identity should not be considered when determining if an article meets the
requirements of the group's charter. A Moderator may place certain
individuals or sites that repeatedly post off-charter material on a "Watch
List," which will cause their articles to be forwarded to a human Moderator
for review (see 10. The Watch List). A Moderator may also declare certain
off-charter discussion threads to be "closed," so that no more articles in
that thread are to be posted. There is no avenue of appeal for the closure
of a thread.
Any Moderator unable to judge an article in a fair and unbiased way should
pass that article to the next Moderator in the queue.
An article approved for posting by a human Moderator may not be modified,
except that an "approved" header must be inserted, and a generic header or
footer may be appended.
Rejected articles are, if possible, be returned to their sender with a note
of explanation. In cases of extreme abuse, the Technical Administrator may
configure the moderation software to automatically discard all postings from
a sender without attempting to return them (see 6.1 Extreme Abuse).
Rejected articles may be appealed to an appeals address. The appeals
address appears in all rejection notices.
If an article is posted immediately, the moderation software must insert an
"approved" header, and may append a generic footer.
See also section 8, Current Grounds for Rejection by Human Moderators, and
section 11, Rejection and Appeals.
3. Retromoderation
An article is normally subject to rejection only when it is submitted.
Canceling an article after it has been posted ("retromoderation") will not
be used for general content control. Cancellations are permitted only
under the following special circumstances:
- When performed or requested by the original poster or by the poster's
Internet Service Provider;
- When performed by the Technical Administrator or a Moderator to cancel
articles with forged approvals;
- When performed by reputable third-party cancelers (as determined by the
Technical Administrator), to cancel articles that are widely considered to
be undesirable in most of Usenet, e.g. binaries and excessively multiposted
articles ("spam").
4. New Users / Approved Users
The moderation software maintains a list of "approved" e-mail addresses,
articles from which are posted by the software without human moderation.
When a poster not on the approved list submits an article, the moderation
software will:
- Email the poster a welcome message that summarizes the charter of
misc.writing.moderated and gives a certain keyword.
- If the article's subject contains the keyword, post the article
immediately and add the poster to the "approved" list.
- If the article's subject does not contain the keyword, filter the article
out and return it, with a message explaining a simple way to add the
keyword and repost the article.
- Strip all occurrences of the keyword from posted article subjects.
The list of email addresses is to be used only for approving posts to
misc.writing.moderated. It must not be sold, given away, or used as a
mailing list. It starts empty, and is added to only as above. New posters
are advised that their address has been added. List entries may be
aged out after a term determined by the space available on the moderating
host, to be not less than one year. Posters may request removal of their
address from the "approved" list if they no longer wish to post to the
group, or have changed accounts. While posting with "munged" addresses is
not encouraged, posters using such addresses can have themselves added to
the "approved" list by following the instructions in the FAQ (since the
moderation software will not be able to send any instructions to a munged
address, onus is on the poster to seek out the instructions pre-posting).
If one cannot post through one's ISP or newsfeed, one can send a post directly
to mwm@panix.com.
The FAQ is made available as a frequently posted article, and also via an
autoreplier at the moderating host. The welcome message is also available
by autoreplier.
An "approved" user who repeatedly posts off-charter material may be placed
on the Watch List. See Section 10.
5. Statement of Respect
Misc.writing.moderated is a newsgroup for writers. The Moderators will
consider all posters to be colleagues or peers, and will strive to treat all
posters with unfailing courtesy and respect. Additionally, as writers, we
should be bound to respect the words of others. Intolerance, unfairness,
negligence, or lack of impartiality by a Moderator toward a poster are
grounds for calling for that Moderator's removal from the Board (see 1.2
Expulsion of a Moderator).
6. Current Grounds for Auto-Rejection
The moderation software is currently returning the following kinds of
articles to their senders, without posting them. All returned articles must
have generic text appended or prepended containing a pointer to the group's
FAQ, and the appeals process:
- Crossposted articles, except: RFDs, CFVs, and related administrative
postings (as approved by the moderators of news.announce.newgroups) with
followups set to news.groups and/or misc.writing.moderated, articles in
response to such postings if only crossposted between news.groups and
misc.writing.moderated, and FAQs and similar informational postings (as
approved by the moderators of news.answers).
- Binaries. (Note that this excepts cryptographic authentication such as
PGP.)
- Articles with an empty or missing Subject header.
- Articles submitted via email with a missing Newsgroups header.
6.1 Extreme Abuse
While the Moderators will make every attempt to work through moderation
issues with individual posters, it is important that the Moderators have a
mechanism to defend the functioning of the newsgroup. To this end, the
Moderators are empowered to configure software to auto-reject all articles
>from any poster who is perceived as attacking the functioning of the group.
This is an extreme step, and should only be taken under the following
exceptional circumstances:
- When there is clear evidence that a spew, flood, mailbombing or other such
attack is occurring. In this case, action should be taken as quickly as
possible to eliminate the threat to the group.
- When a poster has forge-cancelled on-charter posts without permission. In
this case, action should be taken as quickly as possible to eliminate the
threat to the group, and improperly cancelled posts will be reposted.
- When a poster has shown oft-repeated and exceptionally stubborn
unwillingness to abide by the charter of the newsgroup. Such a poster can
only be relegated to auto-reject status by a unanimous vote of the Board.
Posts auto-rejected for extreme abuse are returned to their sender.
A poster can be removed from the auto-reject list by a majority vote of the
Board after a minimum of three months.
7. Current Grounds for Human Moderation
The moderation software is currently forwarding the following types of
articles to human Moderators for review. Since most Moderators actually
have lives outside of Usenet, there may be a delay of 24 hours or more
before such articles are either posted
or returned to their senders.
- Articles from certain addresses that have posted one or more off-charter
articles in the past (see 10. The Watch List).
8. Current Grounds for Rejection by Human Moderators
Moderators should bear in mind that the purpose of moderation is to maintain
focussed discussion in an atmosphere of mutual respect. When approving an
article, therefore, a Moderator must determine how closely the article
adheres to the charter of misc.writing.moderated. The criterion that should
be applied uniformly to all articles is: Would a reasonable person agree
that this article conforms substantially to the charter for the newsgroup?
Grudges, personal dislikes, and any other forms of disagreement that a
Moderator might have with a newsgroup participant are specifically not to be
used to decide the approval status of a post. Each article must be judged
on its own, and prior posting history is not to be brought to bear in the
decision.
An article rejected by a human Moderator is returned (subject to the
limitations in 9. Discarded Articles and 6.1 Extreme Abuse) with a footer or
header detailing the specific reason(s) for rejection, and the name of the
Moderator responsible for rejecting the post.
9. Discarded Articles
There are certain circumstances under which the moderation software (or a
human Moderator) may discard an article without returning it to its sender.
The following types of articles may currently be discarded without
attempting to return them to their sender:
- Articles with faked addresses (for which returns would simply "bounce", or
worse, be delivered to innocent people whose addresses happen to match a
faked address), in cases where there are several rejections per day and in
which there is a pattern that establishes a single real source for the
rejected articles.
- Articles that appear to be attacking the functioning of the group (see 6.1
Extreme Abuse).
10. The Watch List
The Watch List is a list of e-mail addresses, postings from which are
automatically forwarded to a member of the Moderation Board for review.
An address that has been a source of one or more off-charter articles may be
placed on the Watch List by any Moderator, who must also notify the rest of
the Board, and attempt to notify the person at that address.
At the discretion of the Moderator who decides to place an address on the
Watch List, one of the following options may be used for attempting to
notify the poster:
- The person may be given a private warning that further off-charter
postings will place his/her address on the Watch List. This should be the
normal response.
- The address may be placed on the Watch List immediately, and the person
notified of this action privately and without delay.
An address will be removed from the Watch List by a majority vote of the
Moderation Board, either when the person at that address has posted
appropriately to the newsgroup for a period of at least seven full calendar
days, or when no posts from that address have been received for a period of
at least six months.
11. Rejection and Appeals
The moderation software tries to return any rejected article to the sender
via email, subject to the limitations in section 9. Discarded Articles.
The email shall include the reason for the rejection, an address where the
rejection can be appealed, and a pointer to the FAQ. The current appeals
address is: .
Some rejection messages "bounce" because of invalid e-mail addresses. A
Moderator will examine these bounces and make a good-faith effort to fix bad
addresses and re-send such rejection notices.
Articles whose rejections are appealed will be considered by all members of
the Board. If any member of the Board, including the Head Moderator, finds
that the article conforms substantially to the charter, then the article
will be posted. If there are fewer than three Associate Moderators, then
Backup Moderators will also consider the appeal.
There is no further avenue of appeal for rejected articles.
12. Adjunct Venues
All participants in misc.writing.moderated are requested to refrain from
taking their moderation grievances to other newsgroups. Appeals,
complaints, and general dissatisfaction with the policies or behaviors of
the Moderators or those moderated should be discussed through channels
appropriate to misc.writing.moderated, to wit:
- Grievances or questions can be sent directly to the Moderation Board at
.
- General complaints, dissatisfaction, and grousing about Moderators or the
Moderation Policy can be aired on the public, unmoderated mailing list
. That list is open to all and is read by at
least one member of the Board at all times.
13. Changes to This Policy
The Moderation Policy shall be reviewed for possible changes, and input for
changes to the Policy shall be sought from the readership of the group
annually. Changes to the Moderation Policy may be made by a simple majority
vote of the Board. Any proposed changes should be discussed via the
associated mailing list .
14. Moderator Contacts
Send mail related to the moderation of the group to .
The Moderation Board in charge of moderation for misc.writing.moderated is
made up of:
John V Ashby
David M Harris
Paul Harwood
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