From: Da Moderators Subject: [FAQ] Soc.Culture.Hawaii Posting Guidelines Newsgroups: soc.culture.hawaii Approved: sch@lava.net SOC.CULTURE.HAWAII POSTING GUIDELINES [The following guideline is a living document, which is updated and amended as necessary.] I. WHAT IS A MODERATED NEWSGROUP, AND HOW DOES IT AFFECT MY POSTS? II. WHAT TYPES OF POSTS ARE APPROVED? III. WHAT TYPES OF POSTS ARE NOT APPROVED? IV. WHAT TYPES OF POSTS MIGHT NOT BE APPROVED? V. WHAT DO I DO IF MY POST IS REJECTED? VI. FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS -------------------------------------------------------- I. WHAT IS A MODERATED NEWSGROUP, AND HOW DOES IT AFFECT MY POSTS? Soc.Culture.Hawaii (SCH) is a moderated newsgroup. All articles are filtered by a team of moderators prior to appearing in this newsgroup. Do not post additional copies of your article if it does not appear immediately in SCH It will take at least several hours (maybe even up to one day) before a moderator can review your article to determine its appropriateness in SCH. This FAQ explains how to submit an article to moderators and what you can expect from them. In order to submit an article, post your article in the same manner as you would to any non-moderated newsgroup. The NewsServer software will detect that the newsgroup is moderated through its config file, and will turn the entire newspost into an e-mail which is directed to an account accessible to moderators. The team of moderators will retrieve articles from this account several times a day and review the article for appropriateness into SCH. Articles submitted to Soc.Culture.Hawaii are usually posted everyday. -------------------------------------------------------- II. WHAT TYPES OF POSTS ARE APPROVED? THE FUNCTION OF THE MODERATORS IS TO KEEP ARTICLES ON TOPIC ACCORDING TO THE CHARTER OF THE NEWSGROUP. MODERATORS DO NOT PASS JUDGEMENT ON THE CONTENT OF A POST AS LONG AS IT IS WITHIN THE POSTING GUIDELINES SPELLED HEREIN. RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE CONTENT OF A POST LIES SOLELY WITH THE AUTHOR OF THE POST. Moderators will be guided by the prevailing sentiments of the group in their decisions to permit or refuse articles. The moderators as a team will approve or reject submissions based on the posting guidelines. There may occasionally be some unpredictably egregious situations, in which case the moderators will do their best to come to a team decision on the problem. For this reason, the moderation team reserves the right to refuse any and all posts on the basis of the posting guidelines. If an article is approved for inclusion by moderators, it will be propagated to newsgroup servers throughout the Internet and appear in SCH. EDITORIAL CONTENT: Approved articles will not be edited by moderators. b. From time to time moderators may insert brief factual remarks to clarify or assist the discussion. All remarks inserted by moderators will be identified by square brackets [], including the use of the "[PA]" tag, discussed below under "ADVERTISING." -------------------------------------------------------- III. WHAT TYPES OF POSTS ARE NOT APPROVED? The following details posts that are not approved in soc.culture.hawaii. 1. CROSS-POSTED ARTICLES (articles posted to more than one newsgroup) are approved at a moderator's discretion, however massively cross-posted SPAM, as well as articles cross-posted to other moderated groups, etc. will generally be refused. Note that if the post is not approved for posting to soc.culture.hawaii, it will not show up in any of the other cross-posted newsgroups. NOTE: The rule applies even to localized posts that are cross-posted to numerous Hawaii-related newsgroups. 2. COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL: Articles containing clearly copyrighted material from another person without the explicit approval of the copyright holder will not be approved. Any copyright release notice must be prominently visible in the article. You may, in general, quote text posted to soc.culture.hawaii by other posters. You may not however, quote text that was contained in private email to you, unless you obtain permission from the individual to do so. 3. OFF-TOPIC ARTICLES: Only on-topic articles meeting the requirements of the charter will be approved. NOTE: Threads that evolve or meander will still be approved as long as they remain on-topic to the SCH charter. 4. GROSS PROFANITY AND INDECENCY: Articles containing gross profanity and/or indecency will not be approved. Note that the occasional use of a profane word may be permitted if it falls within the context of an otherwise acceptable submission, since the operative word is "gross," which the moderators define as "excessive," or "undiscriminating." While soc.culture.hawaii does not focus on adult-only topics, there are very few minor posters; on occasion some posts may include mature topics or profanity. Reader discretion is advised. 5. BINARIES AND NON-ASCII TEXT: Articles containing binaries will not be approved. This includes the posting of photographs, software code, and encrypted or compressed data. In addition, text written in MIME, html and other encoded formats are highly discouraged, and may result in contact from a moderator. Usenet discussion newsgroups at their root are meant to be read with the simplest of text standards, which in this case is the standard ascii_7 character set. If you use a web browser or other graphically oriented software to read Usenet, change your Preferences settings to turn OFF html or MIME (or conversely, turn ON plain, DOS, or ascii text). 4. FORGED HEADERS: Any article which is posted into SCH via a forged approval will be immediately cancelled by moderators. Moderators will send a complaint to the postmaster of the ISP where the forger resides. 5. ADVERTISING: The following WILL NOT be approved: a. Spam of any sort, including but not limited to get-rich-quick schemes, pyramid (or multi-level marketing) schemes. b. Announcements by commercial promotions or advertisements of products and services that are not related to the topics of Hawaiian and local culture(i.e., Longs Drugs, Safeway, 7-11, McDonald's, Sam's Club, house cleaning, Internet service, web design company). The moderators will however, allow the discussion of such businesses by other individuals (i.e. a special sale going on for some products in some stores, a business closing its doors). Those representing such businesses may also participate in such discussions, as long as the post is not of an advertising nature. c. Classified and personal ads of the type you would normally find in the classifieds in a newspaper (i.e., "room for rent", "guitar for sale", "penpal wanted," "vacation cottage available"). The following WILL be approved: Brief, factual announcements of concerts, hula competitions, luaus and other such events will be accepted as long as readers of the newsgroup find these announcements useful. Due to overwhelming demand by the readers, announcements of new music releases by Hawaii artists are now included in the above category of approved brief, factual announcements. URL announcements that are related to the topics of Hawaiian and local culture are generally approved, assuming the text supporting the URL summarize the contents of the webpage and be clearly written as on-topic, and that the Web page the URL points to is considered on-topic. URL announcements to the same site (or related linked pages to it) cannot be submitted more than twice a month. To make it easier for the reader to identify such public announcements (PAs), and to provide a means of screening for readers NOT wishing to see any such PAs in the newsgroup, the moderators will henceforth clearly mark all such posts with the tag "[PA]" at the start of the subject heading, without prior notification to the poster. HOW TO WRITE A PA: The moderation team will treat your announcement like a Public Service Announcement submitted to standard media (radio, TV, newspapers). Your message should be no longer than 150 words (equivalent to a 60-second radio spot), and should be clear and concise. As an eyeball, your announcement should be no longer than one screenful (75 characters per line, 35 lines long) Your announcement should benefit the community with the following information: WHAT? Is this an event? What is it called? WHEN? When will this be held? Date and time WHERE? Where will it be held? Give address (including room number, if applicable) as well as name of site. WHO? Who is this being sponsored by? Who will it benefit? Who is the intended audience? If you are the primary contact, make sure to leave your name as well as a valid email address and phone number to which people can reach you for more information. If you have an official web site for the event, include that as well. Individuals should use their IRL (in real life) names and valid email addresses. The moderators reserve the right to email you at this address for confirmation on your announcement. PAs for the same event will not be posted more often than once every two weeks. For more information on tips for writing Public Announcements, we suggest you look at the following sample URLs: Media Outreach Guide from the National School-to-Work Learning Center: http://www.stw.ed.gov/states/outreach.htm Sample media materials and tips from the US Dept. of Education: http://www.ed.gov/Family/agbts/tips.html Get the Word Out, from Emerson College/Health Communication: http://www.emerson.edu/acadepts/cs/healthcom/Resources/message.htm -------------------------------------------------------- IV. WHAT TYPES OF POSTS MIGHT NOT BE APPROVED? STANDARD NETIQUETTE: The Usenet community has developed its own set of standards and protocol, referred to as "netiquette." The following will not automatically cause moderators to reject your post; however, be advised that posters are highly encouraged to follow netiquette, for the enjoyment of all readers. In this give-and-take environment, you are expected to learn your manners. Thanks go out to Kevin Martin, who has kindly allowed us to borrow from his netiquette guidelines at http://www.nic.com/~csy2kt/errs.htm. * Personalities and Epithets - Address the post, not the poster. * Quoting Headers - Unless you are reporting net-abuse to an ISP, there is no reason to quote headers. * Grossly Excessive Signatures - The global Usenet standard is four lines. Citations of the Uniform Commercial Code, complete song lyrics, site ads that are consistently longer than the posts they accompany, ASCII "art" longer than a few lines, etc. are not welcome. Signatures should be no longer than six lines at the most. Any signatures with more than six lines will either automatically have their signatures shortened to the Usenet standard of four lines, or have the post rejected. * Grossly Excessive Quoting - Quoting a entire post of more than a full standard screen, without any visible attempt to trim or insert comments. Adding less than three new lines after quoting a screenful or more. "Me Too" posts in general. * Test Messages - If you have something to say, say it. You don't need to blow into the microphone first. Refer posting problems to the moderator. If you can't receive the group, you need to contact your own service provider. * SHOUTING AN ENTIRE POST - THE CAPS LOCK KEY IS ON THE LEFT SIDE OF YOUR KEYBOARD SOMEWHERE. Turn it off! * Subject Trickery - Using whitespace, leading punctuation, meaningless decorations, or similar tricks to make your Subject stand out is rude to everyone else who reads the group. * [Mis]use of HTML - Usenet is not the Web. If your browser posts only in HTML, it's broken. If it repeats every post in text and HTML both, it's broken. Usenet is a plain text medium. You are welcome to post URLs if they enhance the information you already provide in your post. * Gross Rudeness - "Please respond by email because I don't read this group" is a gratuitous insult. Note that this is not the same as asking for a courtesy copy (CC:) nor is it the same as offering to summarize replies for the benefit of the group. * Non-Latin Characters - Do not use 8-bit ASCII (in headers) or Quoted-Printable (in headers). Our charter states that we do not require the use of English, but it should be possible to read your Subject line in 7-bit Latin (Roman) characters. * Naked URLs / Empty Posts - No, we don't want you to post your entire Web page (see above -- posts written in HTML will be rejected). Posting a URL is much better, but please tell us why you are doing it! Why should we go there? Your Subject line may be chopped off in transit, so don't assume that it tells the story. Saying "See subject line" will leave many readers frustrated. * Attributions and Nested Quotes - Please be sure that your newsreader properly nests quotes so that it is clear who is quoting whom. <> * No Context in a Followup - The flip side of "excessive quoting." Newsgroup message propagation is not perfect, and causes readers to sometimes see a response before an original post shows up in their newsgroup. For this reason, you should include some amount of quoting to the post that you are replying to. This gives other readers the proper context of the discussion. NOTE: Restrict yourself to ONLY the relevant portions of the post, as it is redundant to repost the whole thing. The preferred format in this newsgroup is for you to put the quoted material on top, with your reply below it. You can also inject your comments between paragraphs of quoted material, so it looks like a back-and-forth discussion. Do not forget to include the quote marks when you do this. * Line Wrap - If your post is broken into alternating long and short lines on a standard 80-column terminal, it is ANNOYING. Use a fixed width font and keep your line lengths below 78 characters. * Quoting Signatures - The only signature we should see is yours.* QUOTING AND TRIMMING REMINDER Please remember to trim your quoted material and insert your reply comments between them at the appropriate locations. It's been noted that a number of posters have gotten into the habit of quoting the entire previous message and simply adding a short reply at the top of the message. Mixing these 2 methods creates confusion when trying to follow what is being repied to. Not trimming and replying on top is not only considered bad nettiquette, but it also wastes resources for ISP servers and time and money for those who are still paying for Usenet access by the hour. We ask the readers for their voluntary cooperation with this, and, repeated non-compliance may result in returning your submittals, unposted. -------------------------------------------------------- V. WHAT DO I DO IF MY POST IS REJECTED? KEEP A COPY OF YOUR SUBMISSION: It is the your responsibility to keep a back-up of your submissions. If a moderator rejects the post, the moderator, for purposes of clarity, may edit the post to point out the offending language. MODERATOR COMMENTS: In most cases, the moderator who rejected your submission will explain the reason why it was not approved. In some cases, the moderator might also provide you with additional information on what to do with the submission such that it would become acceptable for approval. RESUBMITTING REVISED, ONCE-REJECTED POSTS: You may resubmit your revised post to soc.culture.hawaii in the same way that you normally submit your posts to the newsgroup; you need not submit it to the moderator who sent the submission back to you. If the submission is acceptable in its revised state, the post will be approved and will show up in the newsgroup. NOTE: You will NOT receive an acknowledgement stating that your revised post was accepted. Treat the publishing of the post in the newsgroup as confirmation of approval. APPEALS PROCESS: If you wish to have your submission re-evaluated in its original, unrevised form, reply privately to the moderator who sent you the rejection notice. Attach a copy of the original post. Somewhere near the top of your email (either in the subject header or in the first lines of your email), include the word "APPEAL" to provide a heads-up to the moderator. The moderator will then forward your appeal (with the contents of your submission) to the rest of the moderators. The moderation team will read your post and render a decision. NOTE: Depending on the reason your original submission was rejected, it is possible that the team will go into a drawn-out discussion. If this occurs, it may take a number of days to respond. It should however, not take longer than one week. If you have not heard about your appeal within a week, contact the moderator for a reminder. An appeal must be approved by majority vote in the moderation team (currently three to two). -------------------------------------------------------- VI. FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS 1. MY POST DIDN'T SHOW UP. [Geek-speak warning] Unlike most other newsgroups, SCH is moderated. This means articles do not enter the Usenet pool for distribution throughout the Internet immediately. When your newsreader posts an article, it is sent to a special program running on a (usually) dedicated machine at your Internet Service Provider. This special program (named something like "INN" or "C-NEWS") is called the "News Server", and it looks at the newsgroup definition and sees a special flag telling it that this is a posting to a moderated group. The News Server will then take one last look at your article, and forward it almost instantly as a piece of email to the "Submission Address," (soc-culture-hawaii@moderators.isc.org) ,whereupon it is forwarded to the real submission address which is... oh never mind. Anyway, there your article waits until one of the five moderators checks in. What happens next depends on what you have submitted. Assuming that your article is deemed appropriate for the group, the moderator will then send it to a special program which reformats it as a valid post to a moderated newsgroup, and injects it into the Usenet system, where it then propagates throughout the Internet (and the world). Where you are posting from will determine how long it takes for the article to appear after a moderator has approved it. If you are in Hawai'i, it should appear within 15-20 minutes of the moderator approving it. If you are in Vancouver, BC (like I *was*), it could take an additional 15 minutes, or -if your ISP's feed is really bad- up to 5 additional days. Unfortunately, that's life. Consider before you curse this too much that, if you are posting to an unmoderated group, that it will take almost the same amount of time before anyone would see your post anyway, and the same amount of time for their reply to reach your site, thus doubling the time to see any response. There are remedies that will reduce the amount of time required for articles to propagate through the system, and we are currently experimenting with them, so please be patient, we're not finished yet! 2. I GOT A PIECE OF EMAIL FROM A MODERATOR. That's probably self-explanatory telling you why your article isn't going to be posted. Or, from time to time, we might respond personally to articles that pass our way with helpful comments, especially if time appears to be of the essence. 3. MY POSTS NEVER SHOW UP, NO EMAIL. Hmmm. Well, there are a few possible reasons for that. If you have been able to submit before, then that means that your ISP has probably got the submission address correct, so we'll discount that. We'll also assume that your article wasn't something which a moderator would take one look at and file in the trash without even bothering to eMail you back. So, what else could have gone wrong...? >From time to time, the newsserver at your site (or the site where SCH "lives") could break, and perhaps nobody notices it. If this happens, you will notice that nothing else is showing up in the group either. There are two other possible causes. One is called the "Quote.Cop", and he *WAS* a special option compiled into the newsserver at our site which counts up the number of lines in a post starting with >, and if they made up more than 50% of the lines in the post, then the newsServer software would NOT allow the article to be posted. For this reason, some of the moderators will habitually edit the quoting characters of your posts to remove any of the characters that attract ... "his" attention. Notice the use of the PAST TENSE. This option *MAY* still be turned on again in the future. It would be best if you kept the quoted/total ratio down yourself, 'cause in the not-too-distant future, the "Quote-Cop" may return, and we probably won't be so helpful. Finally (and this one is a killer for 'O-lelo Hawai'i ), characters with ascii values above 127 seem to have a really hard time on UseNet. If a post contains any special characters, like those required to correctly represent 'O-lelo Hawai'i , the post will most likely die. >From time to time, "We conducting research..." 4. MY POSTS SHOW UP IMMEDIATELY, NOBODY REPLIES. This is a potential symptom that your ISP has not set up their newsServer correctly, and has not marked the newsGroup as moderated. So, your post appears (locally) immediately. Then, your ISP attempts to share it with another one of its "peers" (another newsServer running at a pseudo-friendly ISP) that is correctly configured, and that server "drops it on the floor", which is Internet parlance for... your article disappears and is never seen or heard from again. Complain. This is a symptom of a deeper problem (your ISP doesn't take its newsFeed seriousely), and if they don't fix the problem, consider changing ISP's. 5. MY POSTS SHOW UP MORE THAN ONCE. Er, yes, well, uh... yeah. It seems that the piece of software that actually does the injection into UseNet, from time to time, has a little "burp" just before it finishes, and so it doesn't remove the article, and 15 minutes later, the system attempts to post it again. This appears to be fixed now... Back in the days when this was a major problem, it was referred to as the "Geist" (as in "Poldergeist"), and in-jokes sometimes still refer to it. In honor of a certain personality who was instrumental in the creation of the predecessor group (ACH), the "Geist" has been nicknamed "Eric". (8-)