Subject: 2nd CFV: soc.culture.japan.moderated moderated From: usenet-votes@mathcs.emory.edu Date: 1996/05/28 Newsgroups: poster LAST CALL FOR VOTES (of 2) moderated group soc.culture.japan.moderated Newsgroups line: soc.culture.japan.moderated Anything Japanese. (Moderated) Votes must be received by 23:59:59 UTC, 5 Jun 1996. This vote is being conducted by a neutral third party. Questions about the proposed group should be directed to the proponent. Proponent: Shimpei Yamashita Proponent: Mike Fester Proponent: Akira Ijuin Votetaker: Jan Isley RATIONALE: soc.culture.japan.moderated soc.culture.japan (scj) presently receives over 200 posts per day. Many of these posts are off-topic, and many more are crossposted flame wars that bring no fruitful discussions and distract the readership as a whole from the threads that do invite good discussion. Newsreaders with good killfile mechanisms can reduce the noise to some extent; however, the speed at which new irrelevant threads are created in recent days can exhaust even the most prolific killfile writers. To help solve this problem, we propose the creation of a new newsgroup soc.culture.japan.moderated (scjm). Note that this is not an attempt to moderate scj; scj will remain active and unmoderated after the creation of scjm. Because of the high traffic expected in the group, a computer program will moderate most of the traffic in scjm. The program will reject all crossposts except to soc.culture.japan and subject all new posters to human approval; we expect that these measures alone will reduce noise significantly. The program may reject forward to the moderators those articles that fall under certain criteria they determine (see MODERATION POLICY). Those wishing to carry on a cross-discussion with other newsgroups are still welcome to do so in soc.culture.japan. CHARTER: soc.culture.japan.moderated soc.culture.japan.moderated is for discussion of Japanese culture. Appropriate topics include, but are not limited to: Living and traveling in Japan; Japanese politics, history, religion, or current events; and Japanese entertainment (such as anime, manga, or pop music). Note: A frequent source of noise in soc.culture.japan is Japan's involvement in World War II and its consequences. This topic is within the scope of scjm, and posts on this topic are welcome; however, posters are encouraged to keep their posts rational and informative. In addition, moderators will reserve the right to ask the posters to post summaries of their opinions on a certain thread, and then cut off the thread for some length of time (on order of two weeks or so). Inappropriate topics include: Topics not involving Japan. Topics involving ethnic Japanese people that have no direct connection to Japan or Japanese culture. (For example, Lance Ito being Japanese American does not make the OJ Simpson trial an appropriate topic.) Commercial, wanted, forsale, or personal ads. Presently ads contribute significantly to the noise in soc.culture.japan. Most of these ads have other, more relevant newsgroups such as misc.marketplace.* and alt.personals, and therefore should not be tolerated even in scj, much less in scjm. We do recognize, however, the utility of posting ads for jobs pertaining to Japan, and will make an exception for a weekly digest of job ads submitted by the readership and compiled by volunteers. All crossposts except to soc.culture.japan. This exception is made to prevent the scjm readership from becoming isolated from the scj readers who elect to stay in the unmoderated forum. Note that such crossposts are subject to the same moderation standards as all other posts to scjm, but anyone whose posts are rejected can repost them in scj alone and continue discussion. Flamebaits, or posts designed specifically to elicit angry responses. We recognize that the distinction between flamebaits and harsh posts is a subjective one. The moderators will use their best judgment to decide whether a flamebait will generate enough noise to warrant being rejected. Moderation Policy: Most of the moderation will be done by a computer software. The functions of the software will be to: 1) reject all crossposts except to soc.culture.japan. (It will have to make an exception for the FAQ, which will be crossposted to soc.culture.japan, news.answers and soc.answers.) 2) apply filters defined by the moderators to the posts to see if they fall under certain categories (defined below). If so, the posts are forwarded to the moderators for review. 3) check the poster name against a list of people who have already posted to groups (and approved by the moderators). If the name is on the list and it did not match the filters, the submission is posted automatically. Submissions by new posters are reviewed by human moderators for approval; this is done to reduce the number of trollers and also to give a chance for everyone interested in scjm to become familiar with the moderation process. (For the latter purpose, a copy of the scj.* FAQ and a scjm FAQ outlining the moderation policy will be mailed to all new posters.) If a post is marked for human approval, it is forwarded to the moderation team for review. We plan to reduce turnaround time by having the moderators log in to a server and approve articles deposited on that server as their schedules allow. The server will also keep a log of each moderators' activities, and post a summary periodically to allow the readership to ensure that the moderators are acting in a fair manner. If the moderators agree that a certain topic has degenerated to the point where further discussion on scjm may be detrimental to the mission of the group, then a filter will be installed on the computer program to allow human moderation of the thread; in extreme cases, the moderators may even elect to reject the thread automatically. Similarly, if a poster repeatedly commits abuse or acts contrary to the charter, his name may be placed in a filter so that all of his posts are subject to human review. In extreme cases, the moderators may ban the poster altogether for a limited time not exceeding two months. All such actions by the moderators must appear in the periodical report mentioned in the previous paragraph. In particular, the list of monitored and banned individuals must be available. There should be at least five moderators at any given time; it should go below that number only if the moderation team feels that no qualified individual has contacted them to volunteer. The team is responsible for picking replacements for any moderators who decide to leave the team. Russ Allbery has graciously volunteered to provide a server from which to perform the moderation duties. END CHARTER. MODERATOR INFO: soc.culture.japan.moderated Moderator: "Shimpei Yamashita" Moderator: "Mike Fester" Moderator: "Akira Ijuin" Moderator: "Chuck Douglas" Moderator: "Jeff Friedl" Moderator: "Scott Reynolds" Administrative contact address: scjmmod@eyrie.org Article submission address: scjm@eyrie.org END MODERATOR INFO. HOW TO VOTE: You should send E-MAIL (posts to a newsgroup are invalid) to: usenet-votes@mathcs.emory.edu Please do not assume that just replying to this message will work. Check the address before you mail your vote. Your mail message should contain one and only one of the following vote statements: I vote YES on soc.culture.japan.moderated I vote NO on soc.culture.japan.moderated You may also vote ABSTAIN or CANCEL but these are not counted as valid votes for the total count. NAMES ARE REQUIRED. If your mail software does not indicate your name, include the following statement and add your name (on the same line). Voter Name: IMPORTANT VOTING PROCEDURE NOTES: Standard Guidelines for voting apply. One person, one vote. Votes must be mailed directly from the voter to the votetaker. Anonymous, forwarded or proxy votes are not valid. Votes mailed by WWW/HTML/CGI forms are considered to be anonymous votes. Vote counting is automated. Failure to follow these directions may mean that your vote does not get counted. If you do not receive an acknowledgment of your vote within three days contact the votetaker about the problem. It's your responsibility to make sure your vote is registered correctly. Duplicate votes are resolved in favor of the most recent valid vote. Addresses and votes of all voters will be published in the final voting results post. The purpose of a Usenet vote is to determine the genuine interest of persons who would read a proposed newsgroup. Soliciting votes from disinterested parties defeats this purpose. Please do not distribute this CFV. If you must, direct people to the official CFV as posted to news.announce.newgroups. Distributing pre-marked or otherwise edited copies of this CFV is generally considered to be vote fraud. When in doubt, please ask the votetaker. -- Jan Isley | Running UseVote 3. votes to: | Powered by FreeBSD