From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,HEADER_SPAM autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: fac41,5a3fded16a481755,start X-Google-Attributes: gidfac41,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,5a3fded16a481755,start X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Thread: 1108a1,5a3fded16a481755,start X-Google-Attributes: gid1108a1,public X-Google-Thread: f9437,5a3fded16a481755,start X-Google-Attributes: gidf9437,public X-Google-Thread: 10a146,5a3fded16a481755,start X-Google-Attributes: gid10a146,public X-Google-Thread: f753e,5a3fded16a481755,start X-Google-Attributes: gidf753e,public X-Google-Thread: 100be6,5a3fded16a481755,start X-Google-Attributes: gid100be6,public X-Google-Thread: 114809,5a3fded16a481755,start X-Google-Attributes: gid114809,public From: "Tim Ottinger" Subject: RFD: comp.object.moderated moderated Date: 1998/08/27 Message-ID: <904176047.28200@isc.org> X-Deja-AN: 385097461 Archive-Name: comp.object.moderated Followup-To: news.groups Newsgroups: news.announce.newgroups,news.groups,comp.object,comp.lang.eiffel,comp.lang.smalltalk,comp.lang.java.programmer,comp.lang.ada,comp.object.corba,comp.software-eng,comp.lang.c++.moderated Date: 1998-08-27T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: 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 Moderator: Patrick Doyle Moderator: Martijn Meijering Moderator: John Goodsen Moderator: Rolf Katzenberger Moderator: Yonat Sharon 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