soc.culture.japan.moderated (scjm) was created on June of 1996 in response to what many people felt was a deterioration of soc.culture.japan (scj). This page is intended to provide basic information about scjm.

Documents

First Request for Discussion (January 18, 1996)
Second Request for Discussion (March 26, 1996)
First Call for Votes (May 15, 1996)
Second Call for Votes (May 28, 1996)
Result (June 14, 1996)

Initial Proposal

scjm was first proposed on December of 1995 in response to what many people felt was a deterioration of scj. At the time, scj saw several people actively trying to offend others to incite flames. In addition, scj suffered from an influx of flame baits and threads unrelated to the intended topics of scj, many of which came in the form of crosspostings. scjm was intended to eliminate these problems to provide people with a clean environment to discuss topics related to Japan.

The inital proposal involved the following:

  1. Creation of a new newsgroup, to be called soc.culture.japan.moderated.
  2. Elimination of all crosspostings in the new newsgroup.
  3. Moderation automated by scripts.

For the most part, the response was positive, although the thread did eventually deteriorate into another flame war over unrelated topics. It should be noted that during this discussion period, Tomoyuki Tanaka nominated himself to be a moderator.

Request for Discussion (1)

The first Request for Discussion (RFD) was posted on January 18, 1996. Several points were raised.

  1. Why allow crossposts from scj?
  2. Can scjm accept crossposts from fj.life.in-japan?
  3. Can scjm accept crossposts from soc.culture.asian.american?
  4. Why ban crossposts at all?
  5. Limiting crosspostings would be hazardous to scj.
  6. Why are all the moderators men?

The responses were as follows:

  1. scjm would allow crossposts from scj since the intended topics of the two groups are identical. By allowing crossposts, people would be given the choice of posting one copy of an article to both groups, or posting seperate copies to each. It would also make it easier to synchronize discussions taking place in the two newsgroups.
  2. To make as little exceptions to the rule as possible, crossposts to groups other than scj would not be allowed.
  3. No, since the stated topics of scjm and scaa are different.
  4. Much of the noise on scj were the result of crossposts. The elimination of crossposts would go a long way in reducing the noise.
  5. scj will remain as is. scjm will be a new newsgroup.
  6. Moderators are all men because there were no female volunteers.

Request for Discussion (2)

The second Request for Discussion (RFD) was posted on March 26, 1996. The second RFD was posted because the proponents of scjm missed the deadline for submitting the Call for Votes (CFV). A couple more points were brought up.

  1. Can scjm accept crossposts from sci.lang.japan?
  2. Why not create a mailing list instead of a new newsgroup?

The response:

  1. Posts from sci.lang.japan probably wouldn't belong in scjm, since both scj and scjm are for discussing everything Japanese except the language, and sci.lang.japan is for discussing the Japanese language.
  2. Mailing lists offer little protection against spammers. Articles cannot be canceled. It would also be difficult to stop flame wars on mailings lists. And with the expected traffic, a mailing list would generate too much volume.

Call for Votes

The first Call for Votes (CFV) was posted on May 15, 1996. At this point, two additional moderators were added. The second Call for Votes (CFV) was posted on May 28,

Result

Result of the vote was posted on June 14, 1996. soc.culture.japan.moderated passed with 200 yes votes, 26 no votes, and 10 invalid votes.