soc.atheism Posting Guidelines

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Archive-name: soc-atheism-intro.txt
Posting-frequency: weekly
Last-modified: 2003/04/14 18:28:03
Version: 1.12
URL: http://www.gweep.ca/~robomod/soc.atheism/


                       soc.atheism Posting Guidelines
                                      
                    Copyright (c) 2002-3, Brian Edmonds
               $Revision: 1.12 $ $Date: 2003/04/14 18:28:03 $
   
   The latest version of this document can be found at
     * http://www.gweep.ca/~robomod/soc.atheism/
     * post to the newsgroup or mailing list with the following text in
       the subject (without the quotes): "send file: guidelines.txt"
       
   Any inquiries, comments or suggestions should be sent to the group
   moderator at [EMAIL PROTECTED]
     _________________________________________________________________
   
Contents

     * Introduction
     * Charter
          + Miscellaneous Policies
          + Robomoderation
     * How To Submit a Post
     * The Mailing List
     _________________________________________________________________
   
Introduction

   The soc.atheism newsgroup was created in October 1995. The group
   originally had a panel of moderators who oversaw all postings. Over
   time these moderators burned out or moved on to other things, and as
   of February 15, 2000 the technical moderator, Keith Schneider, was
   left running the group largely on auto-pilot.
   
   In March 2002 Keith passed control of the group to Brian Edmonds.
   Since April 2003 the group has been managed by a moderation team of
   Brian, Apostate, Ron Hammon, Gary Rockley, and Marc Fleury, who are
   running the group and a companion, gated mailing list with the
   assistance of Brian's robomoderation software.
   
   Since its creation a number of control messages have been sent which
   at some sites appear to have erroneously changed the status of the
   group to unmoderated. If this is the case at your site, you should
   bring it to the attention of your news admin, as any postings you make
   to a moderated group which is not properly recognized as such at your
   site will be silently discarded at any site where the group is
   correctly carried as moderated.
     _________________________________________________________________
   
Charter

   soc.atheism provides a forum for discussion of the social aspects,
   ramifications, and benefits of being an atheist. For instance, what
   leads one to atheism, what famous people are atheists, how has atheism
   manifested historically, how to deal with religious relatives, what
   should children be taught about religion, what atheist groups can one
   join, the political aspects of being an atheist... These are a small
   sample of acceptable topics. Topics that are specifically to be
   excluded from soc.atheism are atheism vs. religion discussions,
   conversion attempts, and general discussions about correctness or
   justification of atheism. These topics should be discussed in
   talk.atheism, a forum specifically dedicated to such debates. 
   
  Miscellaneous Policies
  
   The moderation software may (now or possibly in the future) enforce
   the following policies:
   
     * Postings must be in plain text. In particular no HTML or mixed
       text and HTML posts will be allowed. Excessive quoting and large
       sigs are strongly discouraged.
     * Postings should be formatted within 80 characters in width
       (limiting your lines to 72 characters is recommended), and also
       should not exhibit the long/short/long/short/etc misformatting
       that some posting agents can produce when misconfigured.
     * No binary postings of any sort will be accepted. Exceptions will
       be made for cryptographic signatures and such. S/MIME signatures
       are usually far too bulky and will probably not be accepted.
     * Crossposting is not allowed except through manual intervention by
       the moderator. Contact the moderator if you feel you need to
       crosspost to soc.atheism and any other group.
     * Followups can be to no more than one group, or to poster.
     * Mail address blacklisting and whitelisting may be implemented as
       deemed necessary. In addition a number of anti-spam filters are in
       place, and will be expanded as needed.
       
   All posts (with a working return address) will either be returned with
   a rejection notice, or posted to the newsgroup and mailing list. One
   exception is that rejection notices for the same error are suppressed
   for a few minutes after the first one is sent to reduce the danger of
   the robomoderator being used as a mailbombing agent.
   
   Posting with a non-replyable address is strongly discouraged. If you
   feel you must post with such an address, please make sure you are not
   using one in a valid mail domain; appending .invalid to the address is
   the recommended way to ensure this.
   
  Robomoderation
  
   The robomoderation software (robomod) enforces various anti-spam and
   text formatting requirements. Note that in order to receive rejection
   notices or other information from robomod it must have a valid email
   address for you. More information on the registration process,
   including how to use munged addreses, can be found at
     * http://www.gweep.ca/~robomod/register.html
     * post to the newsgroup or mailing list with the following text in
       the subject (without the quotes): "send file: register.txt"
       
   Submissions from non-registered addresses will be held for human
   moderation. The moderators may at their discretion register addresses
   for auto-approval, or revert them to hand moderated status.
     _________________________________________________________________
   
How To Submit a Post

   At a correctly configured site you should simply be able to post to
   soc.atheism and everything will be managed for you behind the scenes.
   If you find this does not work for you, you can submit directly to the
   submission agent by mailing your posting to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
   
   Please try the newsgroup first, and be sure to bring any problems to
   the attention of your local news administrator so that they can be
   dealt with.
     _________________________________________________________________
   
The Mailing List

   All postings to soc.atheism are also distributed to the mailing list
   [EMAIL PROTECTED], which is available in both regular and digest format.
   For subscription information, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] or
   visit the list webpage at
   http://www.gweep.ca/mailman/listinfo.cgi/socath.
   
   Likewise, all postings to the mailing list are also distributed to the
   newsgroup, so subscribers can use whichever of the newsgroup, list, or
   digest formats is most comfortable.
     _________________________________________________________________
   
   Brian Edmonds
   $Date: 2003/04/14 18:28:03 $