FIRST CALL FOR VOTES (of 2) moderated group soc.culture.russian.moderated Newsgroups line: soc.culture.russian.moderated Moderated discussion of Russian culture.. (Moder ated) Votes must be received by 23:59:59 UTC, 22 Mar 1996. This vote is being conducted by a neutral third party. Questions about the proposed group should be directed to the proponent. Proponent: Peter Vorobieff Proponent: Igor Chudov Mentor: Chris Stone Votetaker: Bill Aten RATIONALE: soc.culture.russian.moderated At the moment, the daily traffic in soc.culture.russian is about 200 posts. Of this number, less than 50% bear any relevance to topics of Russian culture outlined in the charter. The rest are mostly widely crossposted flames, trolls and attempts at character assassination. This mess not only distracts the readers from the on-topic threads, but has scared away many of the contributors to the newsgroup. In the environment where the names of the malicious trolls and flame threads constantly mutate, killfiles have limited usability; and for users whose news software does not support killfiles the group is effectively rendered unreadable. To help those who have no taste for non-stop flamage, we have proposed soc.culture.russian.moderated. In no way should our proposal be considered an attempt to moderate or replace soc.culture.russian, whose status will not change with the creation of soc.culture.russian.moderated. CHARTER: soc.culture.russian.moderated Soc.culture.russian.moderated is a moderated newsgroup for the free exchange of information and opinions on Russian culture, language, history, economics, science, and other topics related to Russia. Posts of the following types shall be off-topic in soc.culture.russian.moderated: 1. Discussion of the alleged massacre of Turks by Armenians in the beginning of the twentieth century; the massacre of Armenians in 1915; contemporary Turkish politics, except insofar as it relates to Russia. 2. Claims that Nazi crimes in 1933-1945 never happened. 3. All national, religious, political and racial hatemongering (represented by the typical cliche "All [...] are [cowards|idiots|traitors|...]). 4. Unwanted and unsolicited commercial advertisements. 5. Crossposts hitting more than five newsgroups. 6. Harassing posts (of the typical form "[...] is a [Nazi|pedophile|forger|...]. Complain about [his|her|its] evil ways to [ISP|employer|Unesco|Cthulhu|Usenet Cabal|...]." 7. Binary files (programs, images, etc.), regardless of the form of encoding The proponent recognizes the distinction between patriotism and jingoistic hatemongering. Further, the distinction between good-natured jokes and harassment is necessarily subjective. The moderators will use their best judgement to extend unbiased and thorough consideration to submissions. Topics pertaining to non-Russian republics of the former Soviet Union should be discussed in other newsgroups such as soc.culture.baltic, soc.culture.rep-of-georgia, and so forth. Discussions pertaining to entities within the Russian Federation such as Tatarstan, Saha, Komi, and so forth will be considered on-topic. Discussion of the relations *between* Russia and the former republics are welcome on soc.culture.russian.moderated insofar as it remains relevant to Russia. Cultural meta-discussions are welcome on soc.culture.russian.moderated as long as they bear relevance to Russia, Russians and Russian language or are of general cultural interest, while not being directly related to any particular national culture. The primary languages in the newsgroup are English and Russian (in Latin transliteration and in KOI-8 [RFC-1489] Cyrillic). MODERATION POLICY Soc.culture.russian.moderated shall employ a combination of human and robomoderation. 1. The robomoderator first will screen every article submitted to soc.culture.russian.moderated. It will unequivocally reject any article that falls into one or more of the following categories: A. Articles crossposted to four or more newsgroups other than soc.culture.russian.moderated; B. Articles consisting of more than 20 quoted lines and containing less than 1/4 of original text; C. Articles longer than 400 lines; D. Encoded binary files. Certain other articles may be rejected automatically -- or forwarded to the human moderators for review -- as explained in sections 2-5 below. 2. From time to time, threads that originally pertained to Russia may wander off-topic. When the panel of human moderators sees such off-topic threads developing on soc.culture.russian.moderated, it shall configure the robomoderator to forward any submissions containing the "subject" line in question to the human moderation panel for review. The moderation panel shall take this action by simple majority vote. After the moderation panel has rejected ten articles in a given thread (the articles from entities under temporary ban, as described in the next section, do not count), the robomoderator may automatically reject further contributions to that thread. 3. From time to time, certain individuals may habitually violate the group charter. The robomoderator shall forward submissions from such individuals to the human moderation panel for review. The moderation panel shall so configure the robomoderator by majority vote. If the human moderation panel rejects five consecutive submissions or five submissions within a week from a given author, that author may be temporarily banned from the group. The robomoderator shall reject postings from banned authors for a period not to exceed one month. No individual shall be banned without the consent of three-quarters (3/4) of the moderation panel. 4. The robomoderator shall scan each submission for certain keywords, forwarding any submissions containing these keywords to the panel of human moderators for review. Some keywords present in the text of messages may indicate off-topic posts. "MAKE MONEY FAST" or "My name is Dave Rhodes" are likely to appear in a spam. Likewise, the phrase "criminal Armenian" raises suspicion that the submission is Serdar Argic propaganda. Other racial epithets, slurs and profane terms shall also be included on the list of keywords. Automatic rejection of submissions containing keywords has been considered and rejected, since some people have composed witty spoofs of Serdar Argic's writing and other parodies. Keywords shall be determined by a simple majority of the moderators. 5. The robomoderator shall maintain a database of known soc.culture.russian.moderated readers. When an individual first attempts to post to the group, the robomoderator will screen that individual's submission, rejecting it only if it fails to meet the criteria in section 1 above. The robomoderator will then forward the new poster's submission to the panel of human moderators, who will review it for compliance with the group charter. New posters will be added to the newsgroup database after the moderation panel approves their first post. The robomoderator will also send first-time posters a copy of the group charter. 6. Individuals in the database of known readers may post freely to the group, subject to the conditions in sections 1-4 above. If need arises, the robomoderator may perform PGP verification of the identity of the known reader and, if the reader requests so, automatically reject all the submissions from the reader without a valid PGP signature. 7. The robomoderator or the human moderator, when rejecting a submission, shall send the submission's author a copy of the moderation policy statement and the explanation why the submission was not posted. 8. The panel of human moderators shall maintain a log of its activities. This log shall be posted once every two months, thus making the moderators accountable to the readership. The robomoderation algorithm shall be publicly posted at the same time. 9. The moderation panel may cancel articles that have been posted to soc.culture.russian.moderated due to forgery, errors in the moderation script, and so forth. The number of active moderators in the moderation panel shall initially be seven. Additional moderators may be recruited from the readership as demand warrants. If a moderator wants to retire from the moderation panel, he or she must make a public statement at least one month prior to retirement so that a replacement moderator may be found. Anyone may volunteer to join the moderation panel with the consent of a five-sevenths (5/7) supermajority of the current moderators. Moderators also may be removed by a 5/7 supermajority of the moderation panel. Of course, moderators may resign of their own volition at any time. Archived logs of moderation decisions, the list of active subscribers, the Charter, the moderation procedure description and other documents relevant to soc.culture.moderated are to be openly displayed on a specifically designated World-Wide Web page - soc.culture.russian.moderated home page. Subscribers to soc.culture.russian.moderated can appeal the rejection of the articles they submit by sending e-mail to the address specifically designated for this purpose at the computer(s) running the moderating software. The appeal must clearly explain why the author deems the moderation panel decision to reject his or her article to be in disagreement with the Charter. The same e-mail address is to be used for questions and complaints regarding the moderation policy. All appeals must be answered by members of the moderation board within a 10-day period. Articles rejected after the appeal (not exceeding the limit of twenty kilobytes per week per user) are to be displayed for a week on soc.culture.russian.moderated home page. AMENDING THIS CHARTER For the readers of soc.culture.russian.moderated to change or amend this Charter, moderation policy, or membership of the moderation panel, a formal RFD followed by a CFV must be posted to soc.culture.russian and news.groups. The procedure must follow the standard guidelines for the newsgroup status change as described in news.groups FAQ. END CHARTER. MODERATOR INFO: soc.culture.russian.moderated Moderator: Igor Chudov Moderator: Eduard Ponarin Moderator: Sergei Senin Moderator: Vladimir Smirnov Moderator: Larisa Streeter Moderator: Eugene Zherebilov Moderator: Constatin Zhikharev Administrative contact address: scrm-board@algebra.com Article submission address: scrm@algebra.com The following individuals shall serve as moderators: Igor Chudov : Igor Chudov is a programmer. He graduated from Moscow University. As a voluntary service to the Russian-speaking Internet community, Igor maintains the SOC.CULTURE.SOVIET/RUSSIAN White Pages - an interactive list of links related to Russian and Soviet culture, art and humor. Igor also will write the robomoderation program for soc.culture.russian.moderated. Eduard Ponarin : Eduard is a graduate student of sociology at the University of Michigan, soon to receive his doctorate. He received his first degree (in psychology) from Leningrad University, served as an officer in the Soviet Army and worked as a lecturer for Leningrad Institute of Culture. Readers of many Usenet newsgroups enjoy his articles on the history of Russia and Eastern Europe. Sergei Senin : Sergei is doing research in microwave telecommunications and signal processing at the University of Portsmouth. He maintains an extensive Web page of Russian and Russia-related resources. Sergei is an alumnus of the Moscow Power Engineering Institute, and is also the representative of MPEI in Great Britain. Vladimir Smirnov : Currently a graduate student in the University of Toronto's physics department, Vladimir is known as the author of several short stories in Russian, the maintainer of the Russian Backpacker Homepage and the biggest on-line collection of the poetry of Mikhail Scherbakov. Larisa Streeter : Larisa is an environmental scientist with a major oilfield services company. She received a Master's degree in geological sciences from Brown University, worked as a geologist for a major petroleum company, then received another Master's degree from the University of Texas School of Public Health in Environmental Sciences. Larisa has a strong interest in the history and cultures of Eastern Europe, particularly Ukraine and Russia. Eugene Zherebilov : After graduating from Kiev University with a degree in mathematics, Eugene has worked as a programmer in Kiev and in Boston. On several occasions he has been found guilty of writing poetry -- check http://ice.geology.wisc.edu/~delitsin/LITERATURE/fraer for evidence. Constatin Zhikharev : Constatin Zhikharev was born in Mariupol (Zhdanov), got his Master's degree from Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, and is currently working on his doctorate in mechanical engineering at Lehigh University. He also writes prose and poetry. Some of his Usenet contributions are at http://ice.geology.wisc.edu/~delitsin/LITERATURE/#zhikharev. END MODERATOR INFO. HOW TO VOTE: Extract the ballot from the CFV by deleting everything before and after the "BEGINNING OF BALLOT" and "END OF BALLOT" lines. Don't worry about the spacing of the columns or any quote characters (">") that your reply inserts. PLEASE, do not send the entire CFV back to me as this mail is archived. Mark the ballot and then MAIL it to: Just "replying" to this message should work, but check the "To:" line. In order to properly record your vote, please provide your REAL NAME and indicate your desired vote in the appropriate locations inside the ballot. Examples of how to properly indicate your vote: [ YES ] example.yes.vote [ NO ] example.no.vote [ ABSTAIN ] example.abstention [ CANCEL ] example.cancellation *** PLEASE *** DO NOT alter, modify, or delete any other information in this ballot! If you do, the voting software will probably reject your vote. ===== BEGINNING OF BALLOT: Delete everything BEFORE this line ===== ------------------------------------------------------------------- soc.culture.russian.moderated Ballot (Do not remove this marker!) ------------------------------------------------------------------- Please provide your real name, or your vote may be rejected. Place ONLY your name (ie. do NOT include your e-mail address or any other information; ONLY your name) on the next line beside "Voter name:". Voter name: ------------------------------------------------------------------- Insert YES, NO, ABSTAIN, or CANCEL inside the brackets for each newsgroup listed below (do not delete the newsgroup name): Your Vote Newsgroup --------- --------- [ ] soc.culture.russian.moderated (moderated) ------------------------------------------------------------------- ===== END OF BALLOT: Delete everything AFTER this line ============ IMPORTANT VOTING PROCEDURE NOTES: Standard Guidelines for voting apply. Only one vote per person, no more than one vote per account. 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. Names, addresses, and votes of all voters will be published in the final voting results post. DO NOT redistribute this CFV in any manner whatsoever. 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. Only the votetaker, the news.announce.newgroups moderator, and the proponent (if specifically authorized by the votetaker) are permitted to distribute copies of this CFV. Distribution of pre-marked or otherwise modified copies of this CFV is generally considered voting fraud and should be reported immediately to the votetaker or the UVV . In cases where voting fraud is determined to have occurred, it is standard operating procedure to delete ALL votes submitted by the violator. When in doubt, ask the votetaker. DISTRIBUTION: The only official sources for copies of this CFV are the locations listed below and the votetaker's e-mail CFV server which can be reached at . This CFV has been cross-posted to: news.announce.newgroups, news.groups, k12.lang.russian, soc.culture.russian, soc.culture.soviet, talk.politics.soviet