[FAQ] Charter for rec.autos.sport.nascar.moderated

[FAQ] Charter for rec.autos.sport.nascar.moderated

On August 13, 1998 a second nascar-related USENET newsgroup (this group)
was voted into existence:

rec.autos.sport.nascar.moderated, or "rasnm".

The charter for this USENET newsgroup was stated in the CFV as follows:

============================================================================

CHARTER: rec.autos.sport.nascar.moderated

The unmoderated newsgroup rec.autos.sport.nascar has always been fairly
relaxed about what is on-topic. The moderated newsgroup will be the same
way. Basically anything related to NASCAR or stock car racing will be
considered on-topic.

Posts about other types of motorsports (Indycar, F1, etc.) should be
directed to the appropriate newsgroup, unless they are comparing stockcar
racing to the other motorsport. For example, a comparison of the point
systems of F1 and Winston Cup, and how using the F1 system would change the
Winston Cup championship standings, is on-topic.

The goal of rec.autos.sport.nascar.moderated (r.a.s.n.m) is to provide its
participants with a degree of free expression approaching that found in
unmoderated groups while maintaining an environment free of the spam,
commercial and money-making posts, personal harassment, vulgarity and
blatantly off topic material found in most unmoderated forums.

The philosophy of r.a.s.n.m is that responsible people should be trusted to
post like responsible adults. Therefore, the moderation effort will focus
primarily on dealing with problems as they occur, not on screening every
post. All posters will be initially trusted with auto-approve status, which
will enable their subsequent articles to be posted immediately to the
newsgroup without the involvement of a human moderator. They will retain
auto-approve status unless they demonstrate cause for its revocation.

Newsgroup readers are warned that since this is a discussion group about
racing, people here will want to talk about racing, even during the
televised races. If you want your tape-delayed viewing to be unspoiled by
knowing who won, crashed, etc., it is best to keep yourself away from all
sources of racing information, including newsgroups, cable TV, racing radio
shows, newspapers, coworkers, etc. It is considered polite to include the
word SPOILER in the subject of posts about races less than 48 hours old,
leaving discussion of the details out of the header, but this WILL NOT be
enforced.

Appropriate posts will meet one of the following criteria:

1. It would effectively start a new discussion. Examples:

What is the current points system?
How do provisionals work?
How did Ricky Craven get an 8th provisional?
Discussions of actual Race or Qualifying action.
Questions about the mechanics of race cars and engines.

2. It adds content to an existing discussion. Examples:

Points breakdown itself.
Actual NASCAR policy on provisionals.
Web site addresses of teams, drivers, or Fan Clubs.
Answers to questions posed by others.
Clarification of questions previously asked.

3. It is informative to the r.a.s.n.m community. Examples:

Announcements of r.a.s.n reunions.
Announcements of upcoming TV schedules for racing.
Testing times.
Announcements of NASCAR events or schedules.
Announcements of driver appearances.

While examples are given wherever possible, it is impossible to anticipate
every attempt at finding a loophole. Therefore, the spirit of all the rules
should be followed as opposed to looking for leaks and loopholes. For
example, strange spellings or formats of profanity would still be
considered profanity. Posters will be treated like responsible adults and
expected to act accordingly.

The following are unacceptable:

1) Bashing
2) Flames
3) Trolls
4) Commercial and Money-Making Posts
5) Profanity/Racial Slurs
6) Crossposts
7) Binaries
8) Posts without a respondable email address
9) Quotes of more than a few lines of copyrighted material

1) Bashing - defined as posts or portions of posts that verbally attack
others in an insulting or malicious manner to an extent that would
reasonably be considered libelous or slanderous. In other words: "Do not
post anything that would make the driver or team you support cringe or be
embarrassed to have you as a fan." This does NOT mean that negative
comments will be moderated out. The expression of negative opinions is a
legitimate part of any discussion and the right to express them in a
non-malicious fashion shall not be abridged.

2) Flames - defined as inflammatory posts or portions of posts whose
primary purpose is to induce an intense emotional response.

3) Trolls - Trolls are defined as posts that do not have substance to their
content, primarily meant to incite disruptive threads or distract posters
from the main intent of the newsgroup.

4) Commercial and Money-Making Posts are defined as posts whose primary
purpose is to solicit a benefit for the poster. This would include, but is
not limited to, advertisements of businesses, direct advertisements of
goods and/or services for sale, posts advertising the availability of goods
and/or services for sale through another medium, promotion of business
opportunities, money-making schemes, and chain letters.

Simply listing a business name, address, phone number, URL, etc. in one's
signature is not considered commercial use of the newsgroup. However,
signatures that are in fact advertisements, or which solicit readers to
patronize a for-profit venture or visit a commercial web site fall under
the definition of commercial or money-making posts. Posts bearing such
signatures are subject to rejection as such.

Posts promoting newsgroup related activities are not considered commercial
or money-making posts since there is no financial benefit to any of the
individuals involved. These activities would include but are not limited to
the RASN Sponsorship Fund, raffles, and RASN reunions.

Posts advising the group of charitable racing-related events or offering
NASCAR event or NASCAR/stockcar race tickets at or below face value are
also permitted.

5) Profanity/Racial Slurs - Posters should view r.a.s.n.m as polite mixed
company and watch their language accordingly. Only a short list of words
will be disallowed. Nevertheless, posters to RASNM are advised and
encouraged to use the same standards that apply in the Sunday comics.
Specifically, changing all letters in profanity to special characters like
!@#$% . However, when quoting material such as scanner bites, interviews
etc.., the first letter of the word may be left in place so that readers
can deduce what was actually said.

6) Crossposts - defined as posts also directed to any other newsgroup.
Exceptions to this limit are made for Usenet Administrative purposes (as
from news.announce.newgroups) and for posts from rec.autos.sport.info.

7) Binaries - Binary posts are defined as posts that include UUencoded,
MIME-encoded, or any other form of binary message in the body or signature
other than Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) signatures. This includes, but is not
limited to, pictures, audio files, executables, and HTML. Binaries should
be posted to an appropriate binaries newsgroup or a web page. A brief
informative notice should then be sent to the newsgroup. The FAQ for this
group will list any web sites that have volunteered to have binaries posted
from r.a.s.n.m readers, and how to get the binary posted.

8) Email Addresses - Since an author's first post to r.a.s.n.m generates an
auto-response detailing the registration procedure, it is strongly
recommended that at least the first submission to the group carry a valid
return e-mail address. This will avoid a delay in the registration process
that would result if the auto-response bounces. A person may register to
post under a "munged" address to defeat spambots, but the altered address
must be readily decipherable into the poster's valid address by a human.
This does not cut off the use of pseudonymous remailers or munged headers,
both of which are allowable.

9) Copyrighted material - Quoting a line or two of copyrighted material is
not against the law. However, quoting entire articles is a copyright
violation (unless the poster has permission from the copyright holder). If
articles are available on the web, a short summary of the article with a
URL is the accepted method of posting. Proper credit must be given to all
copyrighted material.

The following are discouraged, but will not be rejected outright.

1) Posts in languages other than English
2) Signatures over 6 lines
3) Posts with difficult to read formatting
4) Posts only containing questions answered completely in the FAQ

1) Non-English - At this time, 100% of the readers of the group know
English, with English being the only language of most readers. Therefore,
English is strongly recommended as the posting language of choice for
r.a.s.n.m. Posts in languages other than English will be examined for
approval if any of the moderators can read the language in question. There
is no guarantee of approval for posts in any language other than English.

2) Signatures - USENET netiquette limits signatures to four lines. For
r.a.s.n.m, posters are encouraged to keep their signatures to six lines or
less. PGP signature data and additional lines automatically added by
services such as hotmail and Deja News are not included in the count, but
all other text, including boxes around the signature, is included.

3) Readability - USENET Netiquette says that for everyone's enjoyment, all
posts should have right margins in the 60-70 range. The range from 60-70 is
for unquoted text. Quoted text may continue to expand to the right. Also,
over 2/3 text quoted from previous posters is strongly discouraged. If a
poster regularly fails to meet these simple rules, a moderator will contact
the person to find out if they can fix the problem.

4) FAQ - Posters asking questions that are covered completely in the FAQ
will be sent a copy of the FAQ and the post will be accepted. Other posters
are encouraged to welcome the user, respond to the post, or remain silent.

Moderation overview:
Moderation procedure - To reduce their workload and expedite the posting of
articles to the group, the moderation team will employ automated moderation
software (robo-moderation). As much of the work as possible will be turned
over to the moderation software. This software will scan each incoming
article, then either post it directly to the group without human review,
return it to the author with an appropriate explanation, or forward it to a
human moderator. Posts will either be accepted in whole, or rejected. The
moderators will NEVER modify them at all.

All rejected posts will be returned to the originating email address with
an explanation for the rejection and instructions for appealing the
rejection. The moderators cannot be held accountable for internet failures
or undeliverable email.

Auto-rejection: binaries, crossposts, profanity, racial slurs, and articles
from authors on the auto-reject list will be automatically rejected. The
moderation team will maintain a list of words that will cause a post to be
automatically rejected. In the spirit of allowing as much free expression
as possible, the list will be as short as possible while still insuring a
civil environment within the group.

Auto-kickout: There will be another short list of potentially offensive
words that will cause a post to be kicked out for human moderation. These
lists can be modified as needed by a simple majority vote of the
moderators. Posters may explicitly request human moderation of an article
by placing the special phrase MOD-HUMAN in the subject line. This may be
desirable if the author feels there may be something in the article that
would cause the moderation software to automatically reject it. The
moderators can also add this tag to a thread.

Auto-approve: Provided an article does not trigger an auto-rejection or
auto-kickout, articles from authors on the auto-approve list will be posted
directly to the group without human review.

Moderation sequence: All incoming articles will be moderated according to
the following sequence with steps 1-4 being performed by the moderation
software.

1. Is the author a first time poster?
Yes - Initiate the registration process (see below)
No - Continue

2. Is there an auto-kickout?
Yes - Forward the article to a human moderator (goto step 5)
No - Continue

3. Are there grounds for auto-rejection?
Yes - Return the article to the author with an explanation for the
rejection.
No - Continue

4. Is the author on the auto-approve list?
Yes - Post the article to the newsgroup
No - Forward the article to a human moderator (goto step 5)

5. Does the article meet the charter guidelines?
Yes - Post the article to the newsgroup
No - Return the article to the author with an explanation for the
rejection.

r.a.s.n.m registration: When the moderation software detects an article
from a first time poster, an auto-response containing the charter, FAQ and
instructions for completing the registration are returned to the author.
The article is forwarded to a human moderator. Should the auto-response
bounce back to a moderator and a valid reply-to address for the author
cannot be determined, the registration cannot be completed and the initial
article will not be posted. If the moderator can determine a valid address,
they will forward the registration information to the author's valid
address.

When the author acknowledges by return e-mail that he/she has read the
material and agrees to abide by the charter, he/she is placed on the auto-
approve list. If the initial article is on charter, it is posted at that
time.

Human moderation: Individual moderators will have the authority to reject
articles that are clearly off-charter (commercial or money-making posts,
etc.), and to accept articles that are clearly on-charter. Should there be
any question about an article being reviewed, it will be forwarded to
another moderator for a second opinion. If the first two moderators to
review an article agree, it will be accepted or rejected accordingly. If
the first two moderators to review an article disagree, the article will be
forwarded to a third moderator for a deciding vote.

Moderators will execute the above procedure as rapidly as possible in order
to minimize the delay in getting human moderated articles posted.

Key to the moderation philosophy, articles will not be rejected because of
the author's opinion or position on an issue, nor will any human moderated
post be rejected because of the author of the post. Moderator's opinions
will be expressed only within their own posts, not within their moderation
activities. Anyone who is willing to follow the Charter guidelines is
welcome to post to r.a.s.n.m, and their posts will be accepted unedited if
they have followed the Charter criteria. Posts will never be edited by
moderators.

If a moderator discovers off-charter material posted in the group, he/she
has three options:

1) Ignore it if it isn't blatant
2) Send an e-mail reminder of charter guidelines to the poster
3) Temporary removal of the poster's auto-post status

How the off-charter post is handled will be determined by what response the
situation warrants, but the moderator should use restraint whenever
possible and use removal of auto-post status only as a last resort. In the
event that the moderator feels the situation is severe enough to warrant
temporarily suspending the author's auto-approve privilege, the moderator
must immediately notify the other moderators and forward a copy of the post
to the rest of the moderation team. The mo