From: nelson@paradyne.com (Bill Nelson)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: New RFD: Bible Study NewsGroup
Date: 21 Jan 93 08:27:33 GMT
Followup-To: news.groups
Organization: AT&T Paradyne, Largo, Florida

[Note that followups have been directed to news.groups, to which this
is also being posted.  That's the official place to discuss creating
new groups. --clh]

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What follows is a new RFD for the Bible Study newsgroup.  It is a 
concentrated effort on part by a wide range of views.  It addresses many
of the concerns that were raised by the responders to the original RFD
and is submitted for your reading pleasure.

Contributors to this RFD (alphabetically) are as follows:
        Steve Adams        adams@spss.com
        John Ockerbloom    ockerbloom@cs.cmu.edu
        Bill Nelson        nelson@pdn.paradyne.com
        Dave Weinstein     dweinste@carl.org



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

Charter:

The newsgroup, soc.religion.christian.bible-study, is proposed for the 
discussion of the Bible. For the purposes of this group, the definition of 
"the Bible" will be as follows:

        All books considered to be canonical (i.e. in the Bible) by any
        major Jewish or Christian group.  In particular, this includes the
        66 books in the "Authorized" or "King James" version of the Bible,
        which includes the Jewish canon (or Tanakh - determined by the 
        council of Jamnia), plus those books and sections recognized by the 
        Roman Catholic Church at the Council of Trent (also known as the 
        "deuterocanonical books"), plus those additional books recognized
        by the Orthodox Churches.

        This does not include works of the Book of Mormon, _Science and
        Health_, or the Qur'an.  While some groups consider these books
        to also be the word of God, they treat them seperately from "the 
        Bible".

Other works, generally known as apocryphal, such as the Gospel of Thomas, 
the Qumran texts, Nag Hammadi, Enoch, etc..., shed interesting light and 
will be considered to be "on topic" for the purposes of this newsgroup, but 
they will not be allowed to dominate the group since they are not the main 
focus of this newsgroup.  Books which were part of previous canon lists, 
such as the Shepherd of Hermas and the Didache, are welcome topics of 
discussion, as are discussions of canonicity, so long as they do not devolve 
into denominational flame wars.

This is a discussion about the Bible  and it is not limited to any specific 
denominational position. This group 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 attack denominational beliefs (whether directed
          towards an individual or not) will be rejected.  This should 
          NOT be construed to limit discussion to these topics but the 
          writer should exercise great care so as to present the issues as 
          fairly and calmly as possible, without resorting to "all the foos 
          are idiots".

        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. 
          This is not to say that such topics are always out of line, but 
          that the scope of this newsgroup will be limited to biblical 
          issues.

        o Similarly, since the Bible assumes God's existence, postings
          debating this topic will be guided to one of the general 
          religion groups.  (Postings are not required to assume a 
          particular position on God's existence, however.)  Discussions 
          regarding the Trinity and the divinity of Jesus will be allowed, 
          however, as long as they do not degenerate to attacks on personal 
          beliefs.

        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.

        o Posting must include complete sources of information for the 
          convenience of others.  Verse citations must include the bible 
          designation (i.e. NIV, NKJV, NASB, etc...).  Standard abbreviations
          can be found in the FAQ on that subject.  Citations from scholarly
          or devotional works should include the author, title, publisher and
          date of publisher, and page numbers, if possible.  The minimum info
          required is the author and book title.  The moderator may return a
          posting for source citation, if warranted.

    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)


--
Bill Nelson
AT&T Paradyne
Largo, FL (USA)
(813)530-8696