From tale@uunet.uu.net Wed Aug 14 10:35:04 1996
Path: uunet!in3.uu.net!bounce-back
From: tale@uunet.uu.net (David C Lawrence)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.paganism
Subject: cmsg newgroup soc.religion.paganism moderated
Control: newgroup soc.religion.paganism moderated
Approved: newgroups-request@uunet.uu.net
Message-ID: <840033006.22652@uunet.uu.net>
Date: Wed, 14 Aug 1996 14:30:06 GMT
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Xref: uunet control.newgroup:16102

soc.religion.paganism is a moderated newsgroup which passed its vote for
creation by 429:61 as reported in news.announce.newgroups on 9 Aug 1996.

Group submission address:  srpbot@brewich.com
Moderator contact address: srp-admin@brewich.com (Donal)

For your newsgroups file:
soc.religion.paganism	Networking for Pagans. (Moderated)

The charter, culled from the vote result announcement:

Soc.religion.paganism will be a place for Pagans from around the
world to meet and discuss topics of interest to Pagans, and for
those interested in Paganism to learn more about it from those
involved in the many religions collectively known as Paganism.

No attempt will be made here to define Paganism, nor will posts be
approved or rejected based on any one person's concepts or
traditions.  The Pagan community covers a wide range of specific and
non-specific religions and lifestyles, and all will be respected and
given space.

What will not be tolerated are posts promoting, arguing or comparing
Judaism, Christianity, Islam and Satanism that do not have
demonstrable relevance to Paganism. If the readers of
soc.religion.paganism wanted to read about these topics they would
go read them in the appropriate newsgroups. As many Pagans come to
Paganism from Christianity, endless posts about the topic of their
former religion are no more welcome than persistent postings of bar
drink recipes would be to alt.recovery.aa.  Christians and other
non-Pagans are welcome to post, but they should keep to the topic of
the newsgroup.

Postings should abide by common rules of tolerance and openness.
The rules of netiquette should be observed at all times.  Irrelevant
profanity should be avoided but will be tolerated.  Anonymous
postings will be allowed.

The remainder of the Charter details the moderation procedures.

The moderation of soc.religion.paganism will be accomplished by
combining an automated Perl script, or modbot, with monitoring by an
odd-numbered panel of live moderators, referred to hereafter
collectively as The ModKin.  Although the focal point of the
moderation is the modbot and its owner, the Modkin and the modbot
owner will share all duties equally except for those maintenance
functions that must be performed by the modbot owner.  All effort
will be made to treat the modbot owner as just another modkin.

When a modkin leaves (or is removed) the position will be filled by
a simple majority vote of the members of approve_user (see the next
paragraph for a definition of the voting process to be used).
Additional modkin may be added by the same process taking care to
always maintain an odd number of modkin.  The Modkin will decide
when it is time to add more modkin, or to decrease their number by
attrition or vote, by a simple "show of hands" on the Modkin mailing
list.  A modkin may ask for a "leave of absence" of no more than
four weeks and will be temporarily removed from the post approval
queue.  A longer absence will be taken as a resignation and the
modkin must be replaced. If more than one position is being filled
the winners will be chosen from the most votes received to the
least.  A modkin may be removed by a simple majority vote of the
members in approve_user, but a modkin must post the Topic For
Discussion (TFD).  A modkin who survives an attempted removal vote
will have a 90-day period during which no removal action may be
proposed against that modkin.  Any needed change to the modbot
criteria or this Charter must be prepared by the Modkin and approved
by a 2/3 majority of the voting members of approve_user.

All votes will be prefaced by a discussion period of no less than 21
days following the posting of the TFD. The subject of this post must
be prefaced with "[TFD]" and should be written by the person(s) who
are raising the issue and sent via email to the modbot owner. The
modbot owner will post all TFD's. The author of a TFD may request
that it be withdrawn up to but not after a CFV has been issued. The
Call For Votes will also be posted by the modbot owner when s/he
determines discussion has ebbed, and prefaced with "[CFV]". The
voting period will be 30 days and all persons listed in approve_user
when the vote started are eligible to vote. To be valid at least 100
members, or 25% of the members in approve_user, whichever is
smaller, must respond. After an invalidated vote the topic may be
raised for discussion again after a 90-day waiting period,
restarting the whole process, or dropped at the request of the
original proponent. The results of the vote will be announced by the
vote-bot owner. The basic collection and tallying of votes will be
performed by a vote-bot, probably but not necessarily run on the
same system as the modbot, such as eVote.

The modbot will process all incoming posts and compare the headers
against these files in the order they appear here: approve_user,
approve_thread, valid_groups, deny_thread, and deny_user.

The From: line is checked against the approve_user file and, if
found, is automatically approved by the modbot. This file takes
precedence over all others. A User who is in approve_user can post
anything they want to, even spam. A user that abuses this right will
get an email warning from the Modkin and, if s/he does not correct
their behavior, will be removed from approve_user following a simple
majority vote of the Modkin. Any modkin can, with a modbot command,
add a user to approve_user but only the modbot owner can remove a
user from approve_user following a "show of hands" vote on the
Modkin mailing list.  The message ID will be added to approve_thread
to ensure that replies are always visible.

If the Reference: field is in the approve_thread file then the post
is ok, even if it is spam. This will be used to make sure that
replies to crossposts originating from this group will make it back
in.  A date check will be used to retire very old threads from this
file so it does not grow enormous.

Any post that includes more than spam_limit (a configured limit that
will be set and modified upon a "show of hands" vote among the
Modkin) number of newsgroups that are not in the valid_groups file
will be automatically recognized as spam. This means that the post
can be cross-posted to any number of newsgroups that are contained
in valid_groups but not more than spam_limit groups that are not.
The method for handling spam will be to edit the Newsgroups: line,
removing soc.religion.paganism, and then resubmitting the post to
the nearest news server. The contents of the valid_groups file will
be determined by the modbot owner with input from the Modkin and
users, and will be included in the soc.religion.paganism moderation
FAQ.

The two deny files will reject a post whose Subject:, Reference: or
From: line matches a pattern in these files, resulting in an email
notification to the author with the reason the post was rejected.
This will be used to prevent the appearance of such eternal threads
as M*KE M*N*Y F*ST. A personal email address will only stay in the
deny_user file for a period of 30 days.

Any post that does not meet the criteria for the four modbot files
will be forwarded to one of The ModKin, chosen at random from the
modkin file, for approval or rejection.  The moderator can then
approve, reject or ask the modbot to give it to another modkin.
Modbot commands will also allow the moderator to send a FAQ and add
a user to approve_user, among other things.  The modbot will also
post the FAQ on a regular schedule.

A post may be rejected for any of the following reasons:

Off Topic - something so wildly off topic that any sane person would
object to its inclusion.  This includes discussions of Christianity
or Satanism that do not show relevance to Paganism.

Binaries - This is NOT a binary newsgroup and binaries will not be
permitted. IF a file is available a pointer to the anonymous ftp
site it is on should be posted so those who want it can go get it.

Troll - any post for the sole purpose of attracting flames, usually
made as a form of newsgroup attack or abuse. E.g. "Animal Sacrifice"
is NOT a troll, although it will draw flames; "Human Sacrifice"
would depend on the historical content of the post; "Witches
Sacrifice Babies" is a troll (as well as a damned lie).

Spam - The modbot should catch all of these but there are always
possible combinations we haven't thought of.  Endless repetitions of
the same post (usually caused by damaged servers or software) should
also be removed as spam.

Unrelated Commercial - A sales pitch that is not relevant to Pagans.
All advertisements that ARE allowed must preface the subject with
[AD]: so that those who wish to may filter them out.

Proselytizing - Non-Pagan proselytizing is strictly forbidden. If
any Pagans ever try it we will probably all fall out of our chairs
laughing.

Intolerance - Rants like "My X is right and your Y is EEE-VULL."
Such intolerance can come from inside our community as well as from
without but it has no place here. No one way is all right and no way
is all wrong.

Bible Quotes - It is debatable whether quoting Bible verses falls
under "Intolerance" or "Off Topic" or "Proselytizing" but they are
not welcome unless part of a valid Pagan discussion.

Anything not in this list should be approved, but the ModKin may use
their own best judgment.  When reviewing a newbie or clueless post,
the modkin should consider the following:

"If you put two 'single-clued' people together they will
collectively have two clues to rub together thus enhancing each of
their experiences in a way not possible before.  This is a good
definition of growth.  It also works if you rub one of your clues
against their single clue." -Ironshadow, from a post in alt.pagan

There are a couple of post categories that, while not being criteria
for rejection, should still be listed here and defined.

Newbie - These basic first-time questions should be FAQ'd and then
posted. Often more than the poster can learn from the public answers
to these questions and the old topics they revivify. The subject
line of these posts should be modified by the modkin that reviews it
to preface it with "[FAQ'd]" to indicate to all that this post has
already been responded to with a copy of the soc.religion.paganism
FAQ.

Fluff - Not a rejection criteria so long as the subject is prefaced
with "[FLUFF]" so that those who wish to avoid it may more easily
killfile it. The modkin reviewing the post may add the "[FLUFF]" tag
before approving it without the author's prior permission.

Administrative - These are messages from the Modkin or the modbot
regarding newsgroup operations (such as the daily rejected posts
summary report) and will be prefaced with "[Admin]".

The modbot will produce and post a daily summary of all rejected
postings by author, subject, message id, who rejected it and the
reason for doing so.  Anyone can request a rejected post, via email,
from the modbot by referring to a message number from the daily
summary.  This will provide a check on The ModKin, allowing anyone
to keep tabs on how The ModKin are using the power of their
position.

Anyone can also request a FAQ or similar document directly from the
modbot. The mechanism for doing this will be posted to the group on
a regular basis.

One last note. It would be a good practice to preface posts that are
about a specific path or tradition with a tag indicating this. For
instance, a post about the Wiccan Rede might have the subject
"[WICCA] Is the Rede an absolute rule or a guide?" while a post
about Asatru might be titled "[ASATRU] The price of wisdom."  A list
of recommended tags will be compiled by the Modkin and included in
the Moderation FAQ under "Posting Guidelines".  This is not an
enforced rule, only a recommendation to help us all get the most out
of our newsgroup.

From tale@uunet.uu.net Wed Aug 21 10:35:03 1996
Path: uunet!in3.uu.net!bounce-back
From: tale@uunet.uu.net (David C Lawrence)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.paganism
Subject: cmsg newgroup soc.religion.paganism moderated
Control: newgroup soc.religion.paganism moderated
Approved: newgroups-request@uunet.uu.net
Message-ID: <840637808.19982@uunet.uu.net>
Date: Wed, 21 Aug 1996 14:30:08 GMT
Lines: 227
X-Info: ftp://ftp.uu.net/networking/news/misc/pgpcontrol/README.html
	ftp://ftp.uu.net/networking/news/misc/pgpcontrol/README
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Xref: uunet control.newgroup:16329

soc.religion.paganism is a moderated newsgroup which passed its vote for
creation by 429:61 as reported in news.announce.newgroups on 9 Aug 1996.

Group submission address:  srpbot@brewich.com
Moderator contact address: srp-admin@brewich.com (Donal)

For your newsgroups file:
soc.religion.paganism	Networking for Pagans. (Moderated)

The charter, culled from the vote result announcement:

Soc.religion.paganism will be a place for Pagans from around the
world to meet and discuss topics of interest to Pagans, and for
those interested in Paganism to learn more about it from those
involved in the many religions collectively known as Paganism.

No attempt will be made here to define Paganism, nor will posts be
approved or rejected based on any one person's concepts or
traditions.  The Pagan community covers a wide range of specific and
non-specific religions and lifestyles, and all will be respected and
given space.

What will not be tolerated are posts promoting, arguing or comparing
Judaism, Christianity, Islam and Satanism that do not have
demonstrable relevance to Paganism. If the readers of
soc.religion.paganism wanted to read about these topics they would
go read them in the appropriate newsgroups. As many Pagans come to
Paganism from Christianity, endless posts about the topic of their
former religion are no more welcome than persistent postings of bar
drink recipes would be to alt.recovery.aa.  Christians and other
non-Pagans are welcome to post, but they should keep to the topic of
the newsgroup.

Postings should abide by common rules of tolerance and openness.
The rules of netiquette should be observed at all times.  Irrelevant
profanity should be avoided but will be tolerated.  Anonymous
postings will be allowed.

The remainder of the Charter details the moderation procedures.

The moderation of soc.religion.paganism will be accomplished by
combining an automated Perl script, or modbot, with monitoring by an
odd-numbered panel of live moderators, referred to hereafter
collectively as The ModKin.  Although the focal point of the
moderation is the modbot and its owner, the Modkin and the modbot
owner will share all duties equally except for those maintenance
functions that must be performed by the modbot owner.  All effort
will be made to treat the modbot owner as just another modkin.

When a modkin leaves (or is removed) the position will be filled by
a simple majority vote of the members of approve_user (see the next
paragraph for a definition of the voting process to be used).
Additional modkin may be added by the same process taking care to
always maintain an odd number of modkin.  The Modkin will decide
when it is time to add more modkin, or to decrease their number by
attrition or vote, by a simple "show of hands" on the Modkin mailing
list.  A modkin may ask for a "leave of absence" of no more than
four weeks and will be temporarily removed from the post approval
queue.  A longer absence will be taken as a resignation and the
modkin must be replaced. If more than one position is being filled
the winners will be chosen from the most votes received to the
least.  A modkin may be removed by a simple majority vote of the
members in approve_user, but a modkin must post the Topic For
Discussion (TFD).  A modkin who survives an attempted removal vote
will have a 90-day period during which no removal action may be
proposed against that modkin.  Any needed change to the modbot
criteria or this Charter must be prepared by the Modkin and approved
by a 2/3 majority of the voting members of approve_user.

All votes will be prefaced by a discussion period of no less than 21
days following the posting of the TFD. The subject of this post must
be prefaced with "[TFD]" and should be written by the person(s) who
are raising the issue and sent via email to the modbot owner. The
modbot owner will post all TFD's. The author of a TFD may request
that it be withdrawn up to but not after a CFV has been issued. The
Call For Votes will also be posted by the modbot owner when s/he
determines discussion has ebbed, and prefaced with "[CFV]". The
voting period will be 30 days and all persons listed in approve_user
when the vote started are eligible to vote. To be valid at least 100
members, or 25% of the members in approve_user, whichever is
smaller, must respond. After an invalidated vote the topic may be
raised for discussion again after a 90-day waiting period,
restarting the whole process, or dropped at the request of the
original proponent. The results of the vote will be announced by the
vote-bot owner. The basic collection and tallying of votes will be
performed by a vote-bot, probably but not necessarily run on the
same system as the modbot, such as eVote.

The modbot will process all incoming posts and compare the headers
against these files in the order they appear here: approve_user,
approve_thread, valid_groups, deny_thread, and deny_user.

The From: line is checked against the approve_user file and, if
found, is automatically approved by the modbot. This file takes
precedence over all others. A User who is in approve_user can post
anything they want to, even spam. A user that abuses this right will
get an email warning from the Modkin and, if s/he does not correct
their behavior, will be removed from approve_user following a simple
majority vote of the Modkin. Any modkin can, with a modbot command,
add a user to approve_user but only the modbot owner can remove a
user from approve_user following a "show of hands" vote on the
Modkin mailing list.  The message ID will be added to approve_thread
to ensure that replies are always visible.

If the Reference: field is in the approve_thread file then the post
is ok, even if it is spam. This will be used to make sure that
replies to crossposts originating from this group will make it back
in.  A date check will be used to retire very old threads from this
file so it does not grow enormous.

Any post that includes more than spam_limit (a configured limit that
will be set and modified upon a "show of hands" vote among the
Modkin) number of newsgroups that are not in the valid_groups file
will be automatically recognized as spam. This means that the post
can be cross-posted to any number of newsgroups that are contained
in valid_groups but not more than spam_limit groups that are not.
The method for handling spam will be to edit the Newsgroups: line,
removing soc.religion.paganism, and then resubmitting the post to
the nearest news server. The contents of the valid_groups file will
be determined by the modbot owner with input from the Modkin and
users, and will be included in the soc.religion.paganism moderation
FAQ.

The two deny files will reject a post whose Subject:, Reference: or
From: line matches a pattern in these files, resulting in an email
notification to the author with the reason the post was rejected.
This will be used to prevent the appearance of such eternal threads
as M*KE M*N*Y F*ST. A personal email address will only stay in the
deny_user file for a period of 30 days.

Any post that does not meet the criteria for the four modbot files
will be forwarded to one of The ModKin, chosen at random from the
modkin file, for approval or rejection.  The moderator can then
approve, reject or ask the modbot to give it to another modkin.
Modbot commands will also allow the moderator to send a FAQ and add
a user to approve_user, among other things.  The modbot will also
post the FAQ on a regular schedule.

A post may be rejected for any of the following reasons:

Off Topic - something so wildly off topic that any sane person would
object to its inclusion.  This includes discussions of Christianity
or Satanism that do not show relevance to Paganism.

Binaries - This is NOT a binary newsgroup and binaries will not be
permitted. IF a file is available a pointer to the anonymous ftp
site it is on should be posted so those who want it can go get it.

Troll - any post for the sole purpose of attracting flames, usually
made as a form of newsgroup attack or abuse. E.g. "Animal Sacrifice"
is NOT a troll, although it will draw flames; "Human Sacrifice"
would depend on the historical content of the post; "Witches
Sacrifice Babies" is a troll (as well as a damned lie).

Spam - The modbot should catch all of these but there are always
possible combinations we haven't thought of.  Endless repetitions of
the same post (usually caused by damaged servers or software) should
also be removed as spam.

Unrelated Commercial - A sales pitch that is not relevant to Pagans.
All advertisements that ARE allowed must preface the subject with
[AD]: so that those who wish to may filter them out.

Proselytizing - Non-Pagan proselytizing is strictly forbidden. If
any Pagans ever try it we will probably all fall out of our chairs
laughing.

Intolerance - Rants like "My X is right and your Y is EEE-VULL."
Such intolerance can come from inside our community as well as from
without but it has no place here. No one way is all right and no way
is all wrong.

Bible Quotes - It is debatable whether quoting Bible verses falls
under "Intolerance" or "Off Topic" or "Proselytizing" but they are
not welcome unless part of a valid Pagan discussion.

Anything not in this list should be approved, but the ModKin may use
their own best judgment.  When reviewing a newbie or clueless post,
the modkin should consider the following:

"If you put two 'single-clued' people together they will
collectively have two clues to rub together thus enhancing each of
their experiences in a way not possible before.  This is a good
definition of growth.  It also works if you rub one of your clues
against their single clue." -Ironshadow, from a post in alt.pagan

There are a couple of post categories that, while not being criteria
for rejection, should still be listed here and defined.

Newbie - These basic first-time questions should be FAQ'd and then
posted. Often more than the poster can learn from the public answers
to these questions and the old topics they revivify. The subject
line of these posts should be modified by the modkin that reviews it
to preface it with "[FAQ'd]" to indicate to all that this post has
already been responded to with a copy of the soc.religion.paganism
FAQ.

Fluff - Not a rejection criteria so long as the subject is prefaced
with "[FLUFF]" so that those who wish to avoid it may more easily
killfile it. The modkin reviewing the post may add the "[FLUFF]" tag
before approving it without the author's prior permission.

Administrative - These are messages from the Modkin or the modbot
regarding newsgroup operations (such as the daily rejected posts
summary report) and will be prefaced with "[Admin]".

The modbot will produce and post a daily summary of all rejected
postings by author, subject, message id, who rejected it and the
reason for doing so.  Anyone can request a rejected post, via email,
from the modbot by referring to a message number from the daily
summary.  This will provide a check on The ModKin, allowing anyone
to keep tabs on how The ModKin are using the power of their
position.

Anyone can also request a FAQ or similar document directly from the
modbot. The mechanism for doing this will be posted to the group on
a regular basis.

One last note. It would be a good practice to preface posts that are
about a specific path or tradition with a tag indicating this. For
instance, a post about the Wiccan Rede might have the subject
"[WICCA] Is the Rede an absolute rule or a guide?" while a post
about Asatru might be titled "[ASATRU] The price of wisdom."  A list
of recommended tags will be compiled by the Modkin and included in
the Moderation FAQ under "Posting Guidelines".  This is not an
enforced rule, only a recommendation to help us all get the most out
of our newsgroup.

From news@usenet.hana.nm.kr Mon Aug 26 01:35:37 1996
X-Orig-Path: news.postech.ac.kr!news.kreonet.re.kr!news.dacom.co.kr!newsfeed.internetmci.com!in3.uu.net!bounce-back
X-Orig-From: tale@uunet.uu.net (David C Lawrence)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.paganism
Subject: cmsg newgroup soc.religion.paganism moderated
Control: newgroup soc.religion.paganism moderated
Message-ID: <hana-840637808.19982@uunet.uu.net>
Path: uunet!in3.uu.net!newsfeed.internetmci.com!news.netone.com!news.sprintlink.net!news-fw-12.sprintlink.net!snunews.snu.ac.kr!usenet.kornet.nm.kr!xpat.com!xpat-control
Date: 25 Aug 1996 16:18:04 KST
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Please send e-mail to jem@xpat.postech.ac.kr if this message leaks
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the leaky message.

Original message:
soc.religion.paganism is a moderated newsgroup which passed its vote for
creation by 429:61 as reported in news.announce.newgroups on 9 Aug 1996.

Group submission address:  srpbot@brewich.com
Moderator contact address: srp-admin@brewich.com (Donal)

For your newsgroups file:
soc.religion.paganism	Networking for Pagans. (Moderated)

The charter, culled from the vote result announcement:

Soc.religion.paganism will be a place for Pagans from around the
world to meet and discuss topics of interest to Pagans, and for
those interested in Paganism to learn more about it from those
involved in the many religions collectively known as Paganism.

No attempt will be made here to define Paganism, nor will posts be
approved or rejected based on any one person's concepts or
traditions.  The Pagan community covers a wide range of specific and
non-specific religions and lifestyles, and all will be respected and
given space.

What will not be tolerated are posts promoting, arguing or comparing
Judaism, Christianity, Islam and Satanism that do not have
demonstrable relevance to Paganism. If the readers of
soc.religion.paganism wanted to read about these topics they would
go read them in the appropriate newsgroups. As many Pagans come to
Paganism from Christianity, endless posts about the topic of their
former religion are no more welcome than persistent postings of bar
drink recipes would be to alt.recovery.aa.  Christians and other
non-Pagans are welcome to post, but they should keep to the topic of
the newsgroup.

Postings should abide by common rules of tolerance and openness.
The rules of netiquette should be observed at all times.  Irrelevant
profanity should be avoided but will be tolerated.  Anonymous
postings will be allowed.

The remainder of the Charter details the moderation procedures.

The moderation of soc.religion.paganism will be accomplished by
combining an automated Perl script, or modbot, with monitoring by an
odd-numbered panel of live moderators, referred to hereafter
collectively as The ModKin.  Although the focal point of the
moderation is the modbot and its owner, the Modkin and the modbot
owner will share all duties equally except for those maintenance
functions that must be performed by the modbot owner.  All effort
will be made to treat the modbot owner as just another modkin.

When a modkin leaves (or is removed) the position will be filled by
a simple majority vote of the members of approve_user (see the next
paragraph for a definition of the voting process to be used).
Additional modkin may be added by the same process taking care to
always maintain an odd number of modkin.  The Modkin will decide
when it is time to add more modkin, or to decrease their number by
attrition or vote, by a simple "show of hands" on the Modkin mailing
list.  A modkin may ask for a "leave of absence" of no more than
four weeks and will be temporarily removed from the post approval
queue.  A longer absence will be taken as a resignation and the
modkin must be replaced. If more than one position is being filled
the winners will be chosen from the most votes received to the
least.  A modkin may be removed by a simple majority vote of the
members in approve_user, but a modkin must post the Topic For
Discussion (TFD).  A modkin who survives an attempted removal vote
will have a 90-day period during which no removal action may be
proposed against that modkin.  Any needed change to the modbot
criteria or this Charter must be prepared by the Modkin and approved
by a 2/3 majority of the voting members of approve_user.

All votes will be prefaced by a discussion period of no less than 21
days following the posting of the TFD. The subject of this post must
be prefaced with "[TFD]" and should be written by the person(s) who
are raising the issue and sent via email to the modbot owner. The
modbot owner will post all TFD's. The author of a TFD may request
that it be withdrawn up to but not after a CFV has been issued. The
Call For Votes will also be posted by the modbot owner when s/he
determines discussion has ebbed, and prefaced with "[CFV]". The
voting period will be 30 days and all persons listed in approve_user
when the vote started are eligible to vote. To be valid at least 100
members, or 250f the members in approve_user, whichever is
smaller, must respond. After an invalidated vote the topic may be
raised for discussion again after a 90-day waiting period,
restarting the whole process, or dropped at the request of the
original proponent. The results of the vote will be announced by the
vote-bot owner. The basic collection and tallying of votes will be
performed by a vote-bot, probably but not necessarily run on the
same system as the modbot, such as eVote.

The modbot will process all incoming posts and compare the headers
against these files in the order they appear here: approve_user,
approve_thread, valid_groups, deny_thread, and deny_user.

The From: line is checked against the approve_user file and, if
found, is automatically approved by the modbot. This file takes
precedence over all others. A User who is in approve_user can post
anything they want to, even spam. A user that abuses this right will
get an email warning from the Modkin and, if s/he does not correct
their behavior, will be removed from approve_user following a simple
majority vote of the Modkin. Any modkin can, with a modbot command,
add a user to approve_user but only the modbot owner can remove a
user from approve_user following a "show of hands" vote on the
Modkin mailing list.  The message ID will be added to approve_thread
to ensure that replies are always visible.

If the Reference: field is in the approve_thread file then the post
is ok, even if it is spam. This will be used to make sure that
replies to crossposts originating from this group will make it back
in.  A date check will be used to retire very old threads from this
file so it does not grow enormous.

Any post that includes more than spam_limit (a configured limit that
will be set and modified upon a "show of hands" vote among the
Modkin) number of newsgroups that are not in the valid_groups file
will be automatically recognized as spam. This means that the post
can be cross-posted to any number of newsgroups that are contained
in valid_groups but not more than spam_limit groups that are not.
The method for handling spam will be to edit the Newsgroups: line,
removing soc.religion.paganism, and then resubmitting the post to
the nearest news server. The contents of the valid_groups file will
be determined by the modbot owner with input from the Modkin and
users, and will be included in the soc.religion.paganism moderation
FAQ.

The two deny files will reject a post whose Subject:, Reference: or
From: line matches a pattern in these files, resulting in an email
notification to the author with the reason the post was rejected.
This will be used to prevent the appearance of such eternal threads
as M*KE M*N*Y F*ST. A personal email address will only stay in the
deny_user file for a period of 30 days.

Any post that does not meet the criteria for the four modbot files
will be forwarded to one of The ModKin, chosen at random from the
modkin file, for approval or rejection.  The moderator can then
approve, reject or ask the modbot to give it to another modkin.
Modbot commands will also allow the moderator to send a FAQ and add
a user to approve_user, among other things.  The modbot will also
post the FAQ on a regular schedule.

A post may be rejected for any of the following reasons:

Off Topic - something so wildly off topic that any sane person would
object to its inclusion.  This includes discussions of Christianity
or Satanism that do not show relevance to Paganism.

Binaries - This is NOT a binary newsgroup and binaries will not be
permitted. IF a file is available a pointer to the anonymous ftp
site it is on should be posted so those who want it can go get it.

Troll - any post for the sole purpose of attracting flames, usually
made as a form of newsgroup attack or abuse. E.g. "Animal Sacrifice"
is NOT a troll, although it will draw flames; "Human Sacrifice"
would depend on the historical content of the post; "Witches
Sacrifice Babies" is a troll (as well as a damned lie).

Spam - The modbot should catch all of these but there are always
possible combinations we haven't thought of.  Endless repetitions of
the same post (usually caused by damaged servers or software) should
also be removed as spam.

Unrelated Commercial - A sales pitch that is not relevant to Pagans.
All advertisements that ARE allowed must preface the subject with
[AD]: so that those who wish to may filter them out.

Proselytizing - Non-Pagan proselytizing is strictly forbidden. If
any Pagans ever try it we will probably all fall out of our chairs
laughing.

Intolerance - Rants like "My X is right and your Y is EEE-VULL."
Such intolerance can come from inside our community as well as from
without but it has no place here. No one way is all right and no way
is all wrong.

Bible Quotes - It is debatable whether quoting Bible verses falls
under "Intolerance" or "Off Topic" or "Proselytizing" but they are
not welcome unless part of a valid Pagan discussion.

Anything not in this list should be approved, but the ModKin may use
their own best judgment.  When reviewing a newbie or clueless post,
the modkin should consider the following:

"If you put two 'single-clued' people together they will
collectively have two clues to rub together thus enhancing each of
their experiences in a way not possible before.  This is a good
definition of growth.  It also works if you rub one of your clues
against their single clue." -Ironshadow, from a post in alt.pagan

There are a couple of post categories that, while not being criteria
for rejection, should still be listed here and defined.

Newbie - These basic first-time questions should be FAQ'd and then
posted. Often more than the poster can learn from the public answers
to these questions and the old topics they revivify. The subject
line of these posts should be modified by the modkin that reviews it
to preface it with "[FAQ'd]" to indicate to all that this post has
already been responded to with a copy of the soc.religion.paganism
FAQ.

Fluff - Not a rejection criteria so long as the subject is prefaced
with "[FLUFF]" so that those who wish to avoid it may more easily
killfile it. The modkin reviewing the post may add the "[FLUFF]" tag
before approving it without the author's prior permission.

Administrative - These are messages from the Modkin or the modbot
regarding newsgroup operations (such as the daily rejected posts
summary report) and will be prefaced with "[Admin]".

The modbot will produce and post a daily summary of all rejected
postings by author, subject, message id, who rejected it and the
reason for doing so.  Anyone can request a rejected post, via email,
from the modbot by referring to a message number from the daily
summary.  This will provide a check on The ModKin, allowing anyone
to keep tabs on how The ModKin are using the power of their
position.

Anyone can also request a FAQ or similar document directly from the
modbot. The mechanism for doing this will be posted to the group on
a regular basis.

One last note. It would be a good practice to preface posts that are
about a specific path or tradition with a tag indicating this. For
instance, a post about the Wiccan Rede might have the subject
"[WICCA] Is the Rede an absolute rule or a guide?" while a post
about Asatru might be titled "[ASATRU] The price of wisdom."  A list
of recommended tags will be compiled by the Modkin and included in
the Moderation FAQ under "Posting Guidelines".  This is not an
enforced rule, only a recommendation to help us all get the most out
of our newsgroup.



From tale@uunet.uu.net Sat Sep 14 10:35:03 1996
Path: uunet!bounce-back
From: tale@uunet.uu.net (David C Lawrence)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.paganism
Subject: cmsg newgroup soc.religion.paganism moderated
Control: newgroup soc.religion.paganism moderated
Approved: newgroups-request@uunet.uu.net
Message-ID: <842711403.20923@uunet.uu.net>
Date: Sat, 14 Sep 1996 14:30:03 GMT
Lines: 227
X-Info: ftp://ftp.uu.net/networking/news/misc/pgpcontrol/README.html
	ftp://ftp.uu.net/networking/news/misc/pgpcontrol/README
X-PGP-Sig: 2.7 Subject,Control,Message-ID,Date,From,Sender
	iQCVAgUBMjrBbMJdOtO4janBAQF3zQQAoPxG7fv8vYKZ6iw0iPD+xpor4dFusBeV
	vmFwxN9HUhCchJ95E4y0QKdp8qzFzWHvTf0LXA8YAewuiGRp/wHjdbIiM8JIlEX0
	K/ZjSLXo+aT1Xh1KS5usc+pfH6YVDhK2VDkK06IPM339ie7o3HBsOD9F9Bcxjg7H
	PoiEY7oqEeU=
	=fBQV
Xref: uunet control.newgroup:16892

soc.religion.paganism is a moderated newsgroup which passed its vote for
creation by 429:61 as reported in news.announce.newgroups on 9 Aug 1996.

Group submission address:  srpbot@brewich.com
Moderator contact address: srp-admin@brewich.com (Donal)

For your newsgroups file:
soc.religion.paganism	Networking for Pagans. (Moderated)

The charter, culled from the vote result announcement:

Soc.religion.paganism will be a place for Pagans from around the
world to meet and discuss topics of interest to Pagans, and for
those interested in Paganism to learn more about it from those
involved in the many religions collectively known as Paganism.

No attempt will be made here to define Paganism, nor will posts be
approved or rejected based on any one person's concepts or
traditions.  The Pagan community covers a wide range of specific and
non-specific religions and lifestyles, and all will be respected and
given space.

What will not be tolerated are posts promoting, arguing or comparing
Judaism, Christianity, Islam and Satanism that do not have
demonstrable relevance to Paganism. If the readers of
soc.religion.paganism wanted to read about these topics they would
go read them in the appropriate newsgroups. As many Pagans come to
Paganism from Christianity, endless posts about the topic of their
former religion are no more welcome than persistent postings of bar
drink recipes would be to alt.recovery.aa.  Christians and other
non-Pagans are welcome to post, but they should keep to the topic of
the newsgroup.

Postings should abide by common rules of tolerance and openness.
The rules of netiquette should be observed at all times.  Irrelevant
profanity should be avoided but will be tolerated.  Anonymous
postings will be allowed.

The remainder of the Charter details the moderation procedures.

The moderation of soc.religion.paganism will be accomplished by
combining an automated Perl script, or modbot, with monitoring by an
odd-numbered panel of live moderators, referred to hereafter
collectively as The ModKin.  Although the focal point of the
moderation is the modbot and its owner, the Modkin and the modbot
owner will share all duties equally except for those maintenance
functions that must be performed by the modbot owner.  All effort
will be made to treat the modbot owner as just another modkin.

When a modkin leaves (or is removed) the position will be filled by
a simple majority vote of the members of approve_user (see the next
paragraph for a definition of the voting process to be used).
Additional modkin may be added by the same process taking care to
always maintain an odd number of modkin.  The Modkin will decide
when it is time to add more modkin, or to decrease their number by
attrition or vote, by a simple "show of hands" on the Modkin mailing
list.  A modkin may ask for a "leave of absence" of no more than
four weeks and will be temporarily removed from the post approval
queue.  A longer absence will be taken as a resignation and the
modkin must be replaced. If more than one position is being filled
the winners will be chosen from the most votes received to the
least.  A modkin may be removed by a simple majority vote of the
members in approve_user, but a modkin must post the Topic For
Discussion (TFD).  A modkin who survives an attempted removal vote
will have a 90-day period during which no removal action may be
proposed against that modkin.  Any needed change to the modbot
criteria or this Charter must be prepared by the Modkin and approved
by a 2/3 majority of the voting members of approve_user.

All votes will be prefaced by a discussion period of no less than 21
days following the posting of the TFD. The subject of this post must
be prefaced with "[TFD]" and should be written by the person(s) who
are raising the issue and sent via email to the modbot owner. The
modbot owner will post all TFD's. The author of a TFD may request
that it be withdrawn up to but not after a CFV has been issued. The
Call For Votes will also be posted by the modbot owner when s/he
determines discussion has ebbed, and prefaced with "[CFV]". The
voting period will be 30 days and all persons listed in approve_user
when the vote started are eligible to vote. To be valid at least 100
members, or 25% of the members in approve_user, whichever is
smaller, must respond. After an invalidated vote the topic may be
raised for discussion again after a 90-day waiting period,
restarting the whole process, or dropped at the request of the
original proponent. The results of the vote will be announced by the
vote-bot owner. The basic collection and tallying of votes will be
performed by a vote-bot, probably but not necessarily run on the
same system as the modbot, such as eVote.

The modbot will process all incoming posts and compare the headers
against these files in the order they appear here: approve_user,
approve_thread, valid_groups, deny_thread, and deny_user.

The From: line is checked against the approve_user file and, if
found, is automatically approved by the modbot. This file takes
precedence over all others. A User who is in approve_user can post
anything they want to, even spam. A user that abuses this right will
get an email warning from the Modkin and, if s/he does not correct
their behavior, will be removed from approve_user following a simple
majority vote of the Modkin. Any modkin can, with a modbot command,
add a user to approve_user but only the modbot owner can remove a
user from approve_user following a "show of hands" vote on the
Modkin mailing list.  The message ID will be added to approve_thread
to ensure that replies are always visible.

If the Reference: field is in the approve_thread file then the post
is ok, even if it is spam. This will be used to make sure that
replies to crossposts originating from this group will make it back
in.  A date check will be used to retire very old threads from this
file so it does not grow enormous.

Any post that includes more than spam_limit (a configured limit that
will be set and modified upon a "show of hands" vote among the
Modkin) number of newsgroups that are not in the valid_groups file
will be automatically recognized as spam. This means that the post
can be cross-posted to any number of newsgroups that are contained
in valid_groups but not more than spam_limit groups that are not.
The method for handling spam will be to edit the Newsgroups: line,
removing soc.religion.paganism, and then resubmitting the post to
the nearest news server. The contents of the valid_groups file will
be determined by the modbot owner with input from the Modkin and
users, and will be included in the soc.religion.paganism moderation
FAQ.

The two deny files will reject a post whose Subject:, Reference: or
From: line matches a pattern in these files, resulting in an email
notification to the author with the reason the post was rejected.
This will be used to prevent the appearance of such eternal threads
as M*KE M*N*Y F*ST. A personal email address will only stay in the
deny_user file for a period of 30 days.

Any post that does not meet the criteria for the four modbot files
will be forwarded to one of The ModKin, chosen at random from the
modkin file, for approval or rejection.  The moderator can then
approve, reject or ask the modbot to give it to another modkin.
Modbot commands will also allow the moderator to send a FAQ and add
a user to approve_user, among other things.  The modbot will also
post the FAQ on a regular schedule.

A post may be rejected for any of the following reasons:

Off Topic - something so wildly off topic that any sane person would
object to its inclusion.  This includes discussions of Christianity
or Satanism that do not show relevance to Paganism.

Binaries - This is NOT a binary newsgroup and binaries will not be
permitted. IF a file is available a pointer to the anonymous ftp
site it is on should be posted so those who want it can go get it.

Troll - any post for the sole purpose of attracting flames, usually
made as a form of newsgroup attack or abuse. E.g. "Animal Sacrifice"
is NOT a troll, although it will draw flames; "Human Sacrifice"
would depend on the historical content of the post; "Witches
Sacrifice Babies" is a troll (as well as a damned lie).

Spam - The modbot should catch all of these but there are always
possible combinations we haven't thought of.  Endless repetitions of
the same post (usually caused by damaged servers or software) should
also be removed as spam.

Unrelated Commercial - A sales pitch that is not relevant to Pagans.
All advertisements that ARE allowed must preface the subject with
[AD]: so that those who wish to may filter them out.

Proselytizing - Non-Pagan proselytizing is strictly forbidden. If
any Pagans ever try it we will probably all fall out of our chairs
laughing.

Intolerance - Rants like "My X is right and your Y is EEE-VULL."
Such intolerance can come from inside our community as well as from
without but it has no place here. No one way is all right and no way
is all wrong.

Bible Quotes - It is debatable whether quoting Bible verses falls
under "Intolerance" or "Off Topic" or "Proselytizing" but they are
not welcome unless part of a valid Pagan discussion.

Anything not in this list should be approved, but the ModKin may use
their own best judgment.  When reviewing a newbie or clueless post,
the modkin should consider the following:

"If you put two 'single-clued' people together they will
collectively have two clues to rub together thus enhancing each of
their experiences in a way not possible before.  This is a good
definition of growth.  It also works if you rub one of your clues
against their single clue." -Ironshadow, from a post in alt.pagan

There are a couple of post categories that, while not being criteria
for rejection, should still be listed here and defined.

Newbie - These basic first-time questions should be FAQ'd and then
posted. Often more than the poster can learn from the public answers
to these questions and the old topics they revivify. The subject
line of these posts should be modified by the modkin that reviews it
to preface it with "[FAQ'd]" to indicate to all that this post has
already been responded to with a copy of the soc.religion.paganism
FAQ.

Fluff - Not a rejection criteria so long as the subject is prefaced
with "[FLUFF]" so that those who wish to avoid it may more easily
killfile it. The modkin reviewing the post may add the "[FLUFF]" tag
before approving it without the author's prior permission.

Administrative - These are messages from the Modkin or the modbot
regarding newsgroup operations (such as the daily rejected posts
summary report) and will be prefaced with "[Admin]".

The modbot will produce and post a daily summary of all rejected
postings by author, subject, message id, who rejected it and the
reason for doing so.  Anyone can request a rejected post, via email,
from the modbot by referring to a message number from the daily
summary.  This will provide a check on The ModKin, allowing anyone
to keep tabs on how The ModKin are using the power of their
position.

Anyone can also request a FAQ or similar document directly from the
modbot. The mechanism for doing this will be posted to the group on
a regular basis.

One last note. It would be a good practice to preface posts that are
about a specific path or tradition with a tag indicating this. For
instance, a post about the Wiccan Rede might have the subject
"[WICCA] Is the Rede an absolute rule or a guide?" while a post
about Asatru might be titled "[ASATRU] The price of wisdom."  A list
of recommended tags will be compiled by the Modkin and included in
the Moderation FAQ under "Posting Guidelines".  This is not an
enforced rule, only a recommendation to help us all get the most out
of our newsgroup.

