From: greeny@top.cis.syr.edu (J. S. Greenfield)
Subject: Re: soc.feminism editorial policy (was Re: I can't believe it!)
Organization: Syracuse University, CIS Dept.
Date: Fri, 8 Jan 93 13:02:35 EST


Here is a policy posting (including editorial policy) for/from soc.feminism.


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This is an informational post about the newsgroup soc.feminism.
It is posted every 25 days.

Copies of this FAQ may be obtained by anonymous ftp to
pit-manager.mit.edu (18.172.1.27) under
/pub/usenet/news.answers/feminism/info.  Or, send email to
mail-server@pit-manager.mit.edu with the subject line "send
usenet/news.answers/feminism/info", leaving the body of the message
empty.

Summary of changes: Some further elaboration in the guidelines for
submission.  An explanation of the implications of multiple
moderation.


  History of soc.feminism
    
    This group was formed in late 1989.  There was considerable
    debate over the subject matter of the group, who would be allowed
    to post, who would moderate, and what the name of the group would
    be.  There was a large contingent of people who were afraid that
    the purpose of soc.feminism would be to provide a women-only
    feminist-supportive environment, and they ensured that the charter
    of soc.feminism would allow pro-feminist and anti-feminist views,
    and be open to both women and men.  In the end, four moderators
    were selected to moderate the group.
    
    As for the name of the group, it was nearly named talk.feminism,
    but soc.feminism won out.  The decision was somewhat political, as
    it was felt that more sites carried soc. groups than talk. groups.
    
    It turns out that the subject matter of the group has evolved
    toward a basic assumption of the notion that women deserve a basic
    equality with men, with the disagreement focused on how to best
    achieve that, or the prices we pay for a certain route.
    Unfortunately, many of _these_ disagreements overwhelm the group
    at times, and we are working on ways to tone this down without
    invalidating different reader's points of views.  On the other
    hand, it has not been a battleground over whether or not women
    should be considered equal with men, and it is not likely to
    become one.  Women and men both of diverse views have always been
    welcome to post.

    The original proposer of soc.feminism was Patricia Roberts, who
    collected the votes, worked with Greg Woods to set up a program
    allowing multiple moderators and chose the initial moderators.  We
    were the first multiply moderated group: soc.religion.islam and
    rec.arts.sf.reviews have followed suit.  

    The four original moderators of soc.feminism were Cindy Tittle
    [Moore], Miriam H.  Nadel, Jean Marie Diaz and Valerie Maslak.
    Valerie dropped out about a year later when faced with increasing
    net-connection trouble.  Jean Marie Diaz has been inactive since
    the summer of 1991.  Muffy Barkocy became a new moderator in
    December of 1991, and we are keeping our eyes open for at least
    one more (send email to feminism-request@ncar.ucar.edu if
    interested).

  Soc.feminism FAQ's

    Soc.feminism publishes several FAQ's (Frequently Asked Questions)
    on a monthly basis (this posting is one of them).  The others are
    FAQ's on: References (books and articles on feminism, in three
    parts), Terminologies (descriptions of different "kinds" of
    feminism, esp.  as used in this newsgroup), and Resources (a
    compilation of various organizations and groups of, for, and by,
    women).  Two more: a history of feminism and a discussion of
    violence, are in the works.

    To obtain these FAQs, ftp to pit-manager.mit.edu (18.172.1.27) and
    look under /pub/usenet/news.answers/feminism.  If you cannot use
    ftp, send email to the mail server at
    mail-server@pit-manager.mit.edu with no subject line, and any
    combinantion of the lines below (select the ones to get the FAQ's
    you're interested in) in the body of your message.

      send usenet/news.answers/feminism/info
      send usenet/news.answers/feminism/terms
      send usenet/news.answers/feminism/resources
      send usenet/news.answers/feminism/refs1
      send usenet/news.answers/feminism/refs2
      send usenet/news.answers/feminism/refs3

    Note that you must repeat the full path name for each included line.

  Digest
    
    There is a digest version of soc.feminism available.  Write to
    feminism-digest@ncar.ucar.edu for details or to subscribe.  It is
    mailed out about once a week or so depending on volume and
    consists of what has been posted (no editing).  This is NOT
    automated; you are sending email to a person at feminism-digest.
    
  Submissions and Requests addresses
    
    To submit an article to soc.feminism, post as you normally do for
    other, non-moderated groups.  This should work for most people.
    If you have trouble with this, email the article to
    feminism@ncar.ucar.edu.  This will treat it exactly as any other
    article posted to soc.feminism (in fact, this is the address that
    your newsreader should email the intercepted article to).  If you
    have questions about the group, you can send your questions to
    feminism-request@ncar.ucar.edu.  This address will forward your
    mail to all active moderators (moderators take vacations, too).
    Please do not send email specifically to any one moderator unless
    you have been requested to do so, as email addresses may change.
    
  General Guidelines for submission
    
    You should first note that these guidelines are just that.  They
    cannot precisely spell out exactly what will be accepted and what
    will be rejected.  Much can depend on context, for example.  In
    addition, there are always new takes on topics, and a set of
    guidelines could not hope to enumerate them all.  That said, there
    are some specific constraints noted below, and as other problems
    appear, we will add them here.

    Articles must be relevant to feminism.  They may not contain
    ad-hominem attacks or flames.  

    Two topics that are of general feminist interest that are severely
    restricted here are abortion and rape.  This is partly because the
    topics are inherently inflammatory and because there exist
    talk.abortion and talk.rape newsgroups to carry on full-fledged
    debates.  Some discussion *is* allowed, mostly as long as the
    articles are not inflammatory and as long as the primary focus is
    on the topic's relationship with feminism.  Informative articles
    (e.g., about specific groups, or calls for marches, or official
    positions of feminist organizations, etc) are allowed.  You should
    note that while soc.feminism takes no official position on the
    question of rape, the majority of abortion-related articles that
    are approved tend to be pro-choice simply because most of the
    articles submitted are.  This should not be construed to reflect
    the personal opinions of the moderators, or any individual posting
    to soc.feminism.
    
    Every now and then someone posts a question of the form "This is a
    feminist newsgroup, but I never see any women posting to it!"
    This may or may not be accompanied by a plea for men to reduce
    their posting.  In the first place, simple demographics of USENET
    mean that there are overwhelmingly more men than women with access
    to USENET/email.  The existence, however, of some groups that are
    almost totally female or balanced more 50-50, points to other
    problems than simple demographics.  Many women have complained
    that soc.feminism is still "too hostile" for other women; there
    are undoubtedly many others that refrain from posting because of
    the negative aspects of being labelled or considered a feminist.
    If you are a woman and would like to see more women post, the only
    practical action you can take is ... to post.  The last time this
    question was posted (this topic is now rejected), there were
    responses from many of the regular female posters, and a good
    number of lurkers who were motivated to say that they read the
    group even though they didn't post.  We cannot estimate the number
    of lurkers on this group, but it is probably fairly high.  Asking
    men to refrain from posting is simply unfair, especially given
    USENET's public nature.  There are a number of women-only forums,
    pointers to which appear in the Resources FAQ.

    There are many other topics that flare up into prolonged and
    protracted disagreements.  Chief among these are 1) the question
    of gender neutral language, 2) the actual statistics on
    spouse-beating or other crimes in comparing which gender is "worse
    off," 3) the propriety of "women only" events when "men only" are
    always attacked as sexist (including the question of women-only
    colleges).  These topics have come up many times and most regular
    readers would be appreciative if you check and even read some of
    the references given on these topics in the References post before
    jumping in or starting such a topic.  This gives everybody a
    common basis to discuss from.  While these topics are not
    forbidden, they may be stopped at the moderators' discretion when
    circularity starts to occur.

    The notion of "reasonable discussion" has recently come up on this
    group.  The idea is that the discussions should themselves stay
    reasonable, and overly argumentative dialogues, especially those
    that simply dismiss the points raised by the previous article,
    should be excluded as well.  We are still experimenting with this.
    
    There have also been arguments that "irrelevant" discussions are
    still pertinent when it is a discussion of a topic from a feminist
    point of view.  Many times when we say that a topic is "drifting,"
    the contention is that it is still relevant to soc.feminism
    because it is a presentation of a feminist point of view on some
    topic.  We have been experimenting with relaxing this also, but it
    helps to clearly delineate a feminist slant on some topic to get
    it past the moderators.

    The subject of homosexuality is relatively sensitive.  We will not
    post anything we deem homophobic.  Many articles on or about
    lesbianism are considered relevant to feminism because of the
    close association between feminism and lesbianism.  Articles about
    gay males are accepted if there is a clear relevance to feminism
    present.  Here's a check list:
      * Gay rights alone are structurally similar to women's rights,
        black rights, minority rights.  They may be acceptable (as
        would black or minority rights articles) if there are
        parallels drawn with feminism or some other clearly drawn
        link.
      * Because much of the theory of patriarchy revolves around how
        female sexuality is directed and used for the benefit of the
        patriarchy, Lesbianism is a direct challenge to the
        patriarchy.  Therefore most articles on Lesbianism are relevant.
      * Anti-gay rhetoric is not acceptable.  Calm and reasoned
        arguments against homosexuality is not acceptable.
        Soc.feminism is not a forum for whether or not homosexuality
        is "right" or "wrong."

    If the post includes private email, be sure to obtain that
    individual's permission before posting it.  There are no legal
    rules about this (yet), but it is requested as part of general
    net.etiquette for this group.

    If you are posting material that may be copyrighted, please give
    all information about where it comes from.  Partial quotes,
    newspaper articles, book blurbs and the like are generally OK, but
    with full source information, we can decide whether such postings
    potentially infringe copyright law.  We will not post articles
    that violate copyright law: examples include entire newspaper or
    magazine articles, or substantial portions of books.  A review
    that extensively quotes such a source is OK, a commentary on such
    a source without as much quoting is better.

    Posting pointers alone to discussions in other groups is not
    generally allowed.  However, a discussion of such a thread in
    another group is perfectly fine, eg, summarizing the discussion
    and adding your thoughts to it.  Remember that we do not crosspost
    any soc.feminism articles.

    Finally, please edit out all unnecessary quoted text and pay
    attention to your attributions.  We have done some ourselves when
    it seemed necessary, but we do not feel that this should be part
    of our job.  Therefore, your article may be returned with a
    request to streamline it if you do not take care to remove old
    signatures, excess text, unrelated points and the like.

  Multiple Moderation

    This group is moderated by several moderators, each working
    independently.  Submissions are sent to feminism@ncar.ucar.edu,
    where one current moderator is selected, and the article forwarded
    to that moderator only.  This means that there is some variation
    in what is approved or not, since there is inherent individual
    variation between different people.  We do try to minimize this
    variation by consulting with each other on the occassional,
    problematic, article.  However, the whole purpose of multiple
    moderation is to reduce the load on any one individual, therefore
    we do not consult each other over every posting we get.  Please
    keep this in mind if you have a complaint which may be related to
    this.

  Anonymous Posting

    We have posted articles anonymously for contributors before.  In
    general, you must satisfy us that you have a good reason for
    remaining anonymous.  You will not be anonymous to the moderators,
    but your article will be posted without identifying material if we
    consent to posting it anonymously.  For articles that you wish to
    be posted anonymously, you must preface it with your request and
    your reasons for the request.  We will not post it if we think
    that your reasons are insufficient or deceitful; you will be
    informed via email of the decision.  In any case, your identity
    will be kept confidential.

    Mail "handles" are not considered anonymous; anonymity is when
    there is no email address available to reach the person who posted
    the article.  Soc.feminism has no policy regarding the common
    practice of using a fanciful name or nickname instead of the real
    name in the "handle" field.

  Editorial Policy
    
    If the moderator who receives your article thinks that it is
    generally OK if it is somewhat edited, you will get your article
    back with comments.  At this point, you can change it and send it
    back directly to that moderator.  If you feel that changes are
    unreasonable, you can appeal to the feminism-request address.
    Articles that are rejected receive a "rejection notice"; again if
    you think it was unfounded, drop a note to feminism-request.  If
    you sent an article and it has not appeared nor have you received
    email about it, you may wish to enquire via feminism-request.  Do
    keep in mind, though, that articles may sit for a while;
    moderators do not necessarily check their mail over the weekends,
    and that site connectivity may mean that your site will not
    receive your article from the moderator's site within the time you
    expect.  However, email is not perfect and has been known to send
    mail into giant black holes, so bear with us.  

    Minor modifications may be made to articles that have lines that
    are too long, have their attributions mixed up, or quote excessive
    material.  Moderators will occasionally inject their comments,
    usually to the effect of advising people where followups are going
    to, warning of topic drift, or some other explanatory note.  Any
    further modifications are always after consultation with the
    original author as described in the previous paragraph. 

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-- 
J. S. Greenfield                                         greeny@top.cis.syr.edu
(I like to put 'greeny' here, 
but my d*mn system wants a 
*real* name!)                        "What's the difference between an orange?"
Newsgroups: alt.censorship,alt.feminism