From: christian@cs.rutgers.edu
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: Policies for soc.religion.christian
Date: 11 Oct 92 03:38:03 GMT

As I understand it, this is a group for discussion of Christianity and
issues related to it.  It is not per se a Christian group.  By that I
mean that contributions from non-Christians or those that other
Christians would regard as "heretical" are welcome.  However they
should be relevant to Christianity.  A number of Christian believe
I should enforce some doctrinal standards.  There are three reasons
why I do not:

  - Tradition.  This group was created by a vote, and many of the
	people voting for it would not have consented to a moderatorial
	policy that judged postings based on their theological views.

  - Usenet and University policy.  Usenet uses lots of resources 
	of various universities and governmental agencies.  It would
	be inappropriate to use these resources for an activity that
	discriminates against posters based on their religious views.

  - Which standards?  This group is used by Christians from all
	the major traditions, including "liberal", "conservative",
	Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox.  It's difficult to
	imagine doctrinal standards that would not exclude some
	of those groups.  We might be better off with separate
	newsgroups for each, but so far most proposals to create
	specialized newsgroups have failed.  (It's been tried
	for Catholics and Mormons.)

I take a wide definition of Christianity.  For the purposes of this
group it includes Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, Quakers, Christian
Science, etc.  (This doesn't necessarily represent a personal
endorsement of these groups.)

The purpose of moderation is primarily to increase the "signal to
noise ratio" of the group.  Most postings (about 83% at last count,
though that's going down slightly over time) are accepted.  Those that
are rejected generally fall into one of the following categories:

  - personal attack, or postings that are likely to generate
	discussions that are primarily ad hominem
  - postings that are primarily attacks on another group,
	indicating no interest in understanding them
  - redundant postings.  This means that if I got lots of responses
	saying the same thing, I may choose just some of them.  It
	also means that when a discussion seems to have gotten to
	the point where the same thing is being said over and over,
	I will sometimes close it off.
  - postings in areas that have recently been discussed, and which
	I do not want to restart discussions on.  There are certain
	controversial issues, such as homosexuality, which could
	dominate the group if allowed to do so.  Thus I only 
	allow them to be discussed periodically, once every 6 mo. to a
	year.
  - postings irrelevant to the subject matter
  - postings that do not make sense on their own (see below)
  - postings falling into certain specific categories for which
	there are specialized groups.  This includes

	  talk.origins - discussions of evolution and related issues,
		in their scientific aspects.   The theological implications 
		of creation and exegetical issues involving the creation 
		account are fair game.
	  sci.med.aids - discussions of the medical and social aspects of
		AIDS
	  talk.abortion - all aspects of abortion

I almost always send mail when I reject a posting.  This means that if
you don't see either the posting or a reject notice, some
communications failure has probably happened.

The most difficult judgement to make is "postings that do not make
sense on their own".  There is a tendency in Usenet groups for
postings to include other postings, sometimes nested several levels
deep.  These discussions very quickly become impossible for anyone
other than the participants to make sense of.  This may require some
thought.  It's generally a bad idea to start out with someone else's
posting and just insert random comments.  It's better to start with a
blank screen and try to come up with something that makes sense on its
own.  Our news software rejects postings that are more than 50%
included material.

I have a general goal of keeping postings to 20-30 per night.  That's
all I can reasonably moderate, and a number of readers have indicated
it's all they can read.  So far I haven't had to reject any postings
that I think are of wide interest in order to keep to this.  The
primary thing I do to keep down volume is shut down discussions when
they've gotten to the point of repetition.  There is a tendency for
rejection rates to rise over time, to keep within this goal.

I may make some edits to postings.  These changes fall into one
of the following categories:

   - where a posting includes a previous posting, I may abbreviate
	the included material, or replace it with a summary.  I may
	also supply additional background about the context of the
	discussion if it seems to be necessary.  Doing this
	intelligently takes time, so I make no guarantees that
	I'll do this for you.  I'm just as likely to send the
	posting back to you and ask you to abbreviate the quotations.

   - I sometimes correct obvious spelling and grammatical errors.
	In fact I do this very seldom, but sometimes it is obvious
	that English is not an author's native language, and I take
	pity on them.

   - I will sometimes add my own comments.  I normally
	do this when there's a fairly obvious response, in an attempt
	to avoid getting 50 identical responses.  I will also sometimes
	suggest fruitful issues that I'd like responders to think about,
	if it seems likely that when left on its own a posting would
	tend to generate mostly flames.  These comments are always
	in brackets and signed with my initials [like this --clh]

I do not modify postings in other ways.  A few times in the past I
have gotten postings that were mostly fine but had one paragraph that
was offensive or otherwise unacceptable.  Removing one portion of a
posting -- even when I included an explanation of what I did and why
-- has always resulted in bad feelings.

My own views should not affect the way I do moderation.  However in
the interests of openness, I will tell you what they are.  I am an
Elder in the Presbyterian Church (USA).  My theology is very strongly
influenced by Calvin, although I do not follow him to the extent of
double predestination.  (I have characterized my theology in that area
as supralapsarian Arminianism.)  I do not believe in the inerrancy of
Scripture, but I am at the conservative end of those who do not.  I am
a Vulcan.  This is visible both in my philosophy and my temperament.
Infinite diversity in infinite combinations is central to my view of
the way God works.  This commitment is very useful for a moderator.

---------------------------

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