RFD: comp.object.moderated moderated

["Tim Ottinger" <ottinger@oma.com>]

                     REQUEST FOR DISCUSSION (RFD)
                moderated group comp.object.moderated

comp.object.moderated    A moderated forum for Object-oriented issues.

This is a formal Request For Discussion (RFD) for the creation of a
world-wide moderated Usenet newsgroup comp.object.moderated.  This is
not a Call for Votes (CFV); you cannot vote at this time.  Procedural
details are below.

RATIONALE: comp.object.moderated

Object-oriented programming has long ago graduated from a niche study to
an industry force, so the discussion of things object-oriented has
likewise increased in general interest and audience. This surge has
increased the participation in comp.object so that it is difficult for
participants to keep up with the volume.

In addition, the comp.object newsgroup now receives a substantial
number of inappropriate posts, much of which are of little value or
interest to the community at large. The inappropriate postings have
caused many to cease participation due to the decreased signal-to-noise
ratio, and in some cases fear of reprisal.

There is therefore a need to provide a forum for which people with
interest in object-oriented theory and practice can freely and openly
discuss their problems and solutions, keep abreast of developments in
Object-oriented practice, and interact with their peers around the world
in a non-threatening manner without being harrassed by SPAM or articles
of otherwise inappropriate content.

In order to keep discussions centered on the issues of Object-oriented
theory and practice, encourage participation, and thereby better serve
the Object-oriented community in its entirety, a moderated discussion
group is required.

At the same time, there is also a demand for a continuing low-delay
unmoderated forum. Hence, this proposal is for the creation of a new
moderated group coupled with the existing unmoderated group comp.object.


This RFD favors this option because it interferes less with existing
practices and thus will more likely lead to manageable moderation
duties, and it parallels what was done with in the comp.lang.c and
comp.lang.C++, and thus is quite intuitive.


CHARTER: comp.object.moderated

Comp.object.moderated is a moderated news group for discussion of
issues directly related to Object-oriented theory and Object-oriented
practice, and of general interest to the Object-oriented community. Any
such articles are welcome, and are recommendations of alternative
approaches in response to questions directly related to Object-oriented
theory or practice.

Moderation Policy:

I PRINCIPLES

Moderation is desired to attract and maintain participation by old
posters, new posters, and especially expert posters. To do so,
comp.object.moderated provides a non-threatening forum for discussing
Object-oriented practice and theory. To attract and maintain a large
professional readership this policy ensures that the forum is as concise
and useful as it can possibly be.

Here is what this moderation policy is intended to achieve with
respect to each article:

1) ON TOPIC
2) NO FLAMES
3) NO SPAM
4) NO NONSENSE

These goals are characterized as follows:

1) ON TOPIC

(Discussions of) the following subjects are regarded as being on topic
in comp.object.moderated:

a) the syntax and semantics of various Object-oriented languages,
b) Object-oriented tricks and techniques,
c) case studies,
d) issues of software engineering related to Object-oriented,
e) issues of software management related to Object-oriented,
f) issue of design philosophy related to Object-oriented,
g) design patterns related to Object-oriented, etc.
h) Object-oriented analysis techniques.
i) Object-oriented process.
j) Object-oriented tools.
k) Object-oriented Modeling.
l) any and all other discussions relating or pertaining to Object-
oriented techniques.
m) management and policy of the newsgroup.

Articles may be rejected as being off-topic if there are
other, more specific newsgroups to which they belong.

If an article references products like tools, libraries or
platforms, it is still acceptable if the article just mentions
these products as illustrations or examples and abstains from
support questions.


WHEN IN DOUBT

An article shall be accepted, especially for short off-topic
digressions in a thread. In order to keep the noise level low, if such
an article has already been accepted in recent days, the moderator body
may decide to reject the newer one and refer the author to the earlier
one.

2) NO FLAMES

a) No threats or attempts at intimidation are tolerated.  Those drive
away audience. New posters are intimidated by it, and experts don't have
the time or energy to waste on it. Such things are personal, and not of
interest to the general Object-oriented audience.

b) No disrespect towards others is tolerated. When people are unkind,
new people will choose not to participate.  Personal feelings against
one or another are not of interest to the general Object-oriented
audience. People should read all ideas, and choose the ones that work
for them, and a poor idea should be shown to be poor by technical or
practical reasons.

c) No disdainful or belittling articles are tolerated, no matter
whether the contents of the article are otherwise correct or not.

d) Questioning of other people's motives and honesty is explicitly
considered both off-topic and extremely rude, no matter whether the
contents of the article are otherwise correct or not.

d) Any but the most light-hearted attempts at one-upmanship will be
disallowed. Participation in a comp.object.moderated thread is not a
contest with prizes for the winners.

In essence, all attempts to hijack comp.object.moderated to wage a
personal attack would not only be counter-productive, but also
off-topic. When people speak against each other, they've lost focus on
the issues at hand.

WHEN IN DOUBT

An article is rejected. Not a flame shall pass through.

3) NO NONSENSE

a) FAQs aren't nonsense, but the repeated posting and answering of
them is. Nobody wants to read the exact same questions and answers
over and over. It's a burden on the reader that gates his productive use
of the forum.

b) Verbatim or slightly rephrased reposts are nonsense.
c) Trolls are nonsense.
d) Binaries are considered inappropriate in this newsgroup.

In short, comp.object.moderated should be a forum you can read with the
same confidence you have reading a manual or technical journal. It is an
interactive professional forum, not a hobbyist board or a war board. It
belongs to the community of people whose work is the practice and theory
of Object-Orientation, and anything that turns the newsgroup away from
that community, or turns the community away from the newsgroup, is not
welcome.

WHEN IN DOUBT

An article is accepted, general noise level permitting.

4) NO SPAM

The war on SPAM is the war to maintain control of the professional
nature and the signal-to-noise ratio of a newsgroup.

The Jargon File (http://sagan.earthspace.net/jargon) describes
spam in the following terms:
"...To cause a newsgroup to be flooded with irrelevant or
inappropriate messages. [...] To send many identical
or nearly-identical messages separately to a large number
of Usenet newsgroups..."

Whatever a moderator has to do to stop SPAM without rejecting
legitimate posts is good. If stopping spam means blacklisting
spam-posters, then so be it. If it involves building complex filtering
rules, fine. If it is easily handled by rejecting posts, fine again.

WHEN IN DOUBT

An article is rejected.

II MEANS

These goals are to be achieved as follows:

1) Automated format checking

If the posted article is not properly formatted (i.e. the news headers
aren't right -- your news software should take care of this) or if the
article is larger than 50KB, then it will be automatically rejected. The
poster may or may not be notified of this kind of rejection, depending
upon just how bad the headers were. Articles without Date: or Subject:
headers are not properly formatted.

2) Moderator Notes

Moderators may add a note to an article only for the reasons and
according to the policies stated above or to correct incomplete or
incorrect references.

The form of those notes will always be the same. They will composed of
text in square brackets. The last four characters of the text in square
brackets will be -mod. Thus:

[text of the note. -mod].

Moderators will be extremely conservative with their use of notes.
Most articles should not have any notes. Those that do should have
only one, or at the most two. So be judicious.

3) Acceptance and Rejection Procedures

Accepted articles are to be posted immediately.  When an article is
rejected by a moderator, it will be emailed back to the poster. The
subject of the email message will be: "Rejected, violates: [reason
list]." where reason list is a comma separated list of the codes
specified in the acceptance criteria above. e.g.  "Rejected, violates:
[ON TOPIC, NO FLAMES c)]."

The moderator should include moderator notes in the body of the
article that explain why the article was rejected. The format of those
notes should be as specified above, but they can be as brief or wordy as
needed to get the point across. There also may be as many as needed.

4) Moderator Anonymity

Moderators act as a single body. Any rejection should be viewed as a
rejection by the moderators and not by any particular moderator.  As
such, the identity of the rejecting moderator will not be exposed to the
poster whose article was rejected (i.e. the moderator's signature will
be stripped). Any questions that the poster may have can be referred to
the moderator's hotline email address.

5) Appeal Policy

Any poster of a rejected message may appeal that rejection to the
moderators by emailing the article to the moderators' hotline. The
moderators will review the rejection and either post or reject the
article based upon their conclusion.

6) Moderator Posting Policy

Moderators are not allowed to moderate their own articles. No article
written by a moderator will be posted unless one of the other moderators
accepts it.

7) Moderator Body

The number of moderators shall not become less than five, so as to
preserve the integrity of the appeal process.

When there is a shortage of moderators, the remaining moderators
select willing volunteers who are participants in the newsgroup and
whose posting history shows understanding of and respect for the
moderation policy.

H) FAQ

There will be a collection of answers to comp.object.moderated FAQs
which is made publicly and freely available. The moderator body
maintains, extends and publishes this FAQ document and points the
comp.object.moderated readers to it as appropriate. The moderator body
may decide to delegate this work.

END CHARTER.

MODERATOR INFO: comp.object.moderated

Moderator: Patrick Logan <plogan@teleport.com>
Moderator: Patrick Doyle <doylep@ecf.utoronto.ca>
Moderator: Martijn Meijering <mmeijeri@wi.leidenuniv.nl>
Moderator: John Goodsen <jgoodsen@saguarosoft.com>
Moderator: Rolf Katzenberger <rfkat@ibm.net>
Moderator: Yonat Sharon <yonat@usa.net>

END MODERATOR INFO.

PROCEDURE:

This is a request for discussion, not a call for votes.  In this phase
of the process, any potential problems with the proposed newsgroups
should be raised and resolved.  The discussion period will continue for
a minimum of 21 days (starting from when the first RFD for this proposal
is posted to news.announce.newgroups), after which a Call For Votes
(CFV) may be posted by a neutral vote taker if the discussion warrants
it.  Please do not attempt to vote until this happens.

All discussion of this proposal should be posted to news.groups.

This RFD attempts to comply fully with the Usenet newsgroup creation
guidelines outlined in "How to Create a New Usenet Newsgroup" and "How
to Format and Submit a New Group Proposal".  Please refer to these
documents (available in news.announce.newgroups) if you have any
questions about the process.

DISTRIBUTION:

This RFD will be cross-posted to :
   news.announce.newgroups, news.groups,
   comp.lang.ada, comp.lang.c++, comp.lang.c++.moderated,
   comp.std.c++, comp.lang.clos, comp.lang.eiffel,
   comp.lang.java.programmer, comp.lang.python, comp.lang.smalltalk
   comp.object.corba, comp.object.logic, comp.object
   comp.software-eng, comp.lang.objective-c