CFV: comp.object.moderated moderated

[David Bostwick <bostwick@cas.chemistry.gatech.edu>]

                     FIRST CALL FOR VOTES (of 2)
                moderated group comp.object.moderated

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Newsgroups line:
comp.object.moderated	A moderated forum for Object-oriented issues. (Moderated)

Votes must be received by 23:59:59 UTC, 18 Nov 1998.

This vote is being conducted by a neutral third party.  Questions
about the proposed group should be directed to the proponent.

Proponent: Tim Ottinger <ottinger@oma.com>

Votetaker: David Bostwick <bostwick@cas.chemistry.gatech.edu>

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, and a large number of which are
easily characterized as "flames" or "trolls".

For those who would like to have a greater signal-to-noise ratio
than is afforded in comp.object, we wish to create a second,
separate newsgroup which is moderated to reduce the occurrance
of spam, flames, trolls, and off-topic posts. In this way, the
newsgroup will cater to professionals with less time for scanning the
news, and those who wish to avoid flames.

The moderators of comp.object.moderated were elected by a
public, majority vote on comp.object and have produced a
policy which they feel will encourage OO discussions and
attract new readers and expert participants.

Comp.object will not be moderated, though. It will remain as an
alternative. On comp.object, one may have discussions on more
tangential topics. Comp.object.moderated merely provides the
readership with a well-focused, flame-free, spam-free choice.

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, to correct incomplete or
incorrect references, or to recommend changing thread titles when
topics drift from their original focus.

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>
Administrative contact address: comp.object.maintainer@oma.com
Article submission address: com.submit@oma.com

END MODERATOR INFO.

DISTRIBUTION:

Pointers directing readers to this CFV will be posted in these groups:

comp.object.logic
comp.lang.c++
comp.lang.clos
comp.lang.forth
comp.lang.java
comp.lang.objective-c
comp.lang.python
comp.std.c++

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This CFV was created with uvpq 1.0 (Aug 27 1997).
PQ datestamp: 980322

-- 
Voting address    : bostwick@cas.chemistry.gatech.edu