Charter for news.announce.important

Moderated Group news.announce.important
CHARTER:
The news.announce.important newsgroup is intended to be a VERY LOW
VOLUME newsgroup for general announcements that are so important that
nearly everyone on Usenet should read them. While announcements about
Usenet, UUCPnet, or the Internet are certainly within the scope of the
newsgroup, in rare cases, announcements about other topics that are of
great interest to the readers of the newsgroup may be accepted.
news.announce.important exists for the benefit of its readers, not for
the benefit of the author of an announcement. No announcement will be
accepted unless reading the announcement will be of primary benefit to
the reader. In particular, this means that commercial advertisements,
announcements of new programs, and other announcements whose primary
purpose is to benefit the poster will be rejected.
Postings to this newsgroup must conform to these rules. Exceptions to
the rules are at the sole discretion of the moderator.
(1) Announcements must be short. The target length is 20 lines,
so that the posting plus headers fits in a single display screen. All
extra text, such as .signature files, should be trimmed before
submission. Long announcements (especially those over 60 lines) will
generally be refused, although if they are posted elsewhere, a short
pointer article giving the newsgroup, date, and Message-ID of the full
article might be accepted if it meets all other criteria.
(2) News.announce.important is a worldwide newsgroup. Postings
must be of worldwide interest. There is no way to make a local posting
in this newsgroup: find a local announcement or general newsgroup for
local postings.
(3) Cross-posting is generally disallowed. If the announcement is
to be accepted for news.announce.important, it should stand alone. The
quarterly posting of this charter, crossposted to news.answers, is an
exception to this rule.
(4) All articles must be approved by the moderator before posting.
In some cases, the moderator may ask the advice of a panel of other
moderators, but the final decision rests with the moderator.
(5) Only articles of general interest to most of those using
newsgroups are acceptable. Specialized articles should be posted to an
appropriate special interest newsgroup.
(6) Discussions in this newsgroup are not permitted. Second and
subsequent submissions on the same subject will be rejected. If a
discussion is anticipated, include a Followup-To: header line to another
appropriate newsgroup. (It is suggested that the same message or a
pointer to the message in news.announce.important be separately posted
to that other newsgroup.) If a Followup-To: header line is not provided
and the original submitter has not provided a valid E-mail address,
feedback to the posting will likely be lost.
(7) Postings must be of primary benefit to the readers, not to the
poster.
(8) All postings must be in English. At the moderators' discretion,
however, the English content may be followed in the same posting by
content expressed in another language with the same meaning and sense
as the English content.
Examples of acceptable and unacceptable postings:
"A new type of message will be posted to Usenet that will break any
software older than 3 years, effective in 2 months. Please upgrade
your software by then or disconnect the machine from the net". This
would likely be approved.
"The Internet is running out of IP addresses, please conserve your
addresses and give any you are not using back to the NIC." This
would likely be approved.
"Please do not send any more cards to Craig Shergold, he got into the
Guinness Book of Records years ago and no longer needs them, the cards
are causing problems in the Post Office." This would likely be
approved.
"We have a new wonderful spiffy product for sale." This would likely
be rejected as being commercial.
"Call for Papers for the Computers in Astrology Conference". This
would likely be rejected as not of general interest; it should instead
be submitted to news.announce.conferences.
"The Australian Internet is in trouble - write your legislator". This
would likely be rejected as of only regional interest; it should
instead be submitted to a regional newsgroup.
"Dinette Set for Sale in Denver". This would likely be rejected as it
violates most of the policies.
"The Former Soviet Union is announcing the sale of mining and mineral
rights at bargain prices." This would likely be rejected as being
too commercial.
"There will be a showing of the movie 'The Graduate' at the Student
Union at 7 PM Saturday night." This would likely be rejected as of
only local interest.
This charter will be posted to news.announce.important quarterly.
MODERATION POLICY:
The moderators shall operate in a manner that enforces the charter.
MODERATOR INFO:
All moderators are selected from the membership of the Usenet Big-8
Management Board. The members of the Board are listed at
<https://www.big-8.org/wiki/Board_members>. The Board may be reached
via e-mail at <board@big-8.org>.
(Adapted from the original News.Announce.Important Policy, last modified
September 28, 1993, by the previous moderator, Mark Horton.)