Newsgroups: talk.current-events,talk.answers,news.answers
Approved: news-answers-request@mit.edu
Subject: [ADMIN] Welcome to talk.current-events!
From: tskirvin@killfile.org (Tim Skirvin)
Followup-To: poster
Message-ID: <tce-faq.20090315074501$243f@news.killfile.org>
X-Version: 1.01 (Wed 04 Apr 10:10:32 CDT 2007) - Anti-flaming charter provision
Date: Sun, 15 Mar 2009 00:45:01 -0700
Expires: Sun, 26 Apr 2009 07:45:01 GMT
Archive-name: usenet/talk-current-events/welcome
Posting-Frequency: twice monthly
Last-modified: 2007/04/04
Version: 1.01
URL: http://wiki.killfile.org/projects/usenet/faqs/tce/
talk.current-events (TCE) is an international newsgroup to discuss
the world events of the day. TCE is not a political forum; indeed,
long-standing political flamewars are specifically off-topic, and
crossposts to political fora are banned. TCE is primarily controlled by
a moderation 'bot that automatically approves messages that match the
criteria set down in this document. A moderation team manages additional
filters to ensure that the group remains topical and relatively on-topic.
How To Post
===========
(This section assumes that you already know how to post to Usenet
newsgroups in general.)
As TCE is a moderated forum, all messages must pass through the moderation
bot before they hit the network. Things that must be true for the article
to be approved:
o The article may be crossposted to no more than four groups, all of
which must be on the crossposting whitelist (see below).
o Followups must be set to no more than two groups, all of which must be
on the crossposting whitelist. If followups are not set and the message
is crossposted to more than two groups, then the 'bot will set followups
to just talk.current-events.
o Postings should be formatted within 80 characters in width (limiting
your lines to 76 characters is recommended).
o Postings must be in plain text. In particular no HTML or mixed text
and HTML posts will be allowed, nor will binary messages (with the
exception of small cryptographic signatures, such as GPG or S/MIME).
All submissions will be subjected to a number of anti-spam filters;
messages that are found to be spam are silently dropped.
Specific threads, posters, or topics may be filtered by the moderation
team. The bot and moderation team have the ability to close threads or
subject posters who violate the charter or moderation policy to additional
review.
Additionally, posts attacking the morality, intelligence, motivation, or
other personal characteristics of other posters are inappropriate. This
does not apply to public figures, unless they happen to be posters to this
group.
If all of these criteria are passed, then the message is approved and an
approval notice is sent back to the poster. If the post is not approved,
then a rejection notice is sent back to the poster. Note that these
notices will not arrive if the return address is faked; as such, the
use of non-replyable/munged addresses is strongly discouraged. Posters
who feel that they must use a munged address are encouraged to append
".invalid" to the end of the email address, to indicate that the address
is not deliverable.
Submissions to the group may also be made by mailing tce@killfile.org or
talk-current-events@moderators.isc.org .
How To Read
===========
If your news server already carries TCE, simply add the group to your list
of active newsgroups. If your news server doesn't carry TCE, it might be
a bit more of a challenge; just ask your news administrator (politely!) to
add it. Include the following detail:
Moderation Address: talk-current-events@moderators.isc.org
Once this is done, messages should automatically appear on your system,
and you can post as you would to any normal newsgroup; if you have
questions about how to do this, ask your local news administrator.
If your news server does not receive TCE, or if there are problems with
your local site, you can also read and post through TCE's main news
server. Just point your newsreader at news.killfile.org - there should be
instructions in your newsreader's manual.
Finally, there is a public web interface available to both read and post
to TCE available at:
http://news.killfile.org/
Crossposting Whitelist
======================
Crossposting is currently allowed to:
o talk.current-events
More groups will be added at the moderator's discretion. If you would
like to suggest a newsgroup to add to the crossposting whitelist, please
contact the moderation team at tce-request@killfile.org .
Sub-Groups in talk.current-events.*
===================================
The talk.current-events moderation team is authorized to create specific
sub-groups in the talk.current-events.* hierarchy to discuss major world
events as necessary, e.g. talk.current-events.katrina to discuss the
Hurricane of 2005.
More details will follow.
Charter
=======
talk.current-events is a lightly-moderated newsgroup to discuss the world
events of the day. Discussion should not be restricted to that which is
currently being discussed in the news media; instead, journalism by the
users of the group is encouraged. Discussion is also not restricted to
events in the United States, or any other specific country.
Copyright violations (especially reprints of news articles) are explicitly
banned; repeat offenders will be blacklisted from the group. Instead,
users are encouraged to just offer URLs, or short excerpts from the
articles.
The topics of Permanent Floating Flamewars are off topic unless they
involve discussion of substantial current events. As an example,
discussion of gun control is off topic unless discussion involves proposed
legislation, a major crime involving guns, court challeneges to existing
gun laws, or similar substantial current events.
The moderation team maintains and publishes a list of groups to which
crossposts are allowed (the "crossposting whitelist"); this list
specifically excludes *.politics.* and other purely-political newsgroups.
In the event of a major world event with long-lasting repercussions,
the moderators of talk.current-events may work with the administrators
of the Big-8 Hierarchies to create additional short- or long-term
groups in the talk.current-events.* hierarchy, on short notice and
outside of the standard newsgroup creation process - for example
talk.current-events.katrina to discuss the events of August 2005.
CURRENT MODERATION INFORMATION
==============================
TCE is run by 'Destiny', a Verimod moderation bot written by Tim Skirvin
and operated on killfile.org.
All posts that go through the moderation 'bot are signed with pgpmoose.
If a post does not have a cryptographically sound X-Auth header, then the
post was not approved by Destiny, and will be shortly cancelled by another
bot.
Current contact information:
Moderators: Tim Skirvin <tskirvin@killfile.org>
Dave Sill <de5@big-8.org>
Kathy Morgan <kmorgan@aptalaska.net>
edward ohare <edward.ohare@earthlink.net>
Contact Address: tce-request@killfile.org
Article Submission Address: tce@killfile.org
Newsgroup Homepage: http://www.killfile.org/~tce/