From: dweinste@hal.gnu.ai.mit.edu (David Weinstein)
Newsgroups: news.groups
Subject: Re: RFD: soc.religion.biblestudy moderated
Summary: A whole new proposed charter
Date: 12 Jan 93 17:28:53 GMT
Organization: Chaos under Glass
NNTP-Posting-Host: hal.gnu.ai.mit.edu

What follows is an entirely new proposed charter for soc.religion.christian.
bible-study, along with a proposal for the moderator...

RFD: Soc.religion.christian.bible-study (moderated)

Charter:

  The proposed newsgroup, soc.religion.christian.bible-study, is proposed
as a newsgroup for discussion of the Christian Bible. The Old Testament,
New Testament, Apocrypha, Pseudepigrapha,  Deuterocanonical, and more
recent finds (e.g. the Nag Hammadi and Qumran documents) are all considered
to be "on topic" for the purposes of this newsgroup. This is a discussion 
about the Christian Bible; it is not limited to Christians or to any specific
or generic Christian viewpoint. It will be moderated.

    The proposed guidelines are as follows:

         o Postings which are blatantly off-topic will be rejected.
           This is construed to mean "How do I get Lemmings to work
           on my WizBangoClone?", but not "How do I get my Bible Search
           Program to work on my MacMCMLXI?"

         o Postings which are overly abusive of another person (whether
           that person is on the net or not) will be returned for 
           rephrasing. This means that "Jason is a mindless twit" will
           be rejected, but "I don't see how Jason can say this after
           agreeing in post <madeup@weirdsite.org> that..." will not.

         o Postings which are better suited for other newsgroups (such
           as the "flame sinks" of talk.abortion and talk.origins or
           the more general groups of soc.religion.christian or 
           talk.religion.misc) will be guided there. This will require
           somewhat of a fine line. For example, discussions of exegetics
           of Genesis will touch on talk.origins territory. So long as
           they stay in the realm of biblical exegetics or study, they
           are germane to soc.religion.christian.bible-study. When they
           stray into issues of dating, or the geological record, they
           may be shunted towards talk.origins. 

         o Discussions which have degenerated into "is so" "is not" chains
           can be cut off or more tightly monitored for signal/noise
           ratios at the moderator's discretion.

    The duties of the moderator are as follows:

         o To enforce the moderation guidelines given above.

         o To maintain FAQ files on common discussion chains. These are
           not designed to "answer" common threads, but merely to provide
           those who join the group and restart a thread to be given
           a recap of the most cogent statements of the various positions
           without flooding the newsgroup.

         o To append to each rejected posting an explanation of why it
           was rejected, and any changes that would need to be made in
           style, or topic, or newsgroup to be more appropriate.

     Guidelines for the removal of a moderator are as follows:

         o An RFD on the removal of the moderator must be posted to 
           news.announce.newgroups, news.groups, and soc.religion.christian.
           bible-study, with the follow-ups sent to news.groups.

         o Should there be a consensus that a vote is appropriate, a
           CFV will be issued by a third party, to last not less than
           two weeks and not more than 30 days. This ballot will include
           the following options:

                       a. Should the moderator be removed? (Y/N)
                       b. The new moderator should be: (names)

           If more than 2/3 of the voters agree that the moderator should
           be removed, and there are no more than 100 no votes, then the
           top name in section b becomes the new moderator. Each ballot
           can contain a vote for one and only one new moderator.

     Proposed initial moderator: Steve Adams (adams@spss.com)

--------

--Dave

-- 
Dave Weinstein
Internet: dweinste@gnu.ai.mit.edu
"Wives have no sympathy for Rugby injuries." -- Dan Smith
Newsgroups: news.groups