Archive-name: objectivism/newsgroup-admin
Posting-Frequency: weekly
Last-modified: 1996/09/13
Version: 1.0
URL: http://www.uiuc.edu/ph/www/tskirvin/hpo.faq

humanities.philosophy.objectivism 
Administration FAQ, v1.0 (Last Updated: September 13, 1996)

(Disclaimers: The author of this document is in no way liable for misuse
of the information contained within, nor is he in any way responsible
for damages related to the use or accuracy of the information.)
--
Table of Contents
I.  What is HPO?
 a.  What is humanities.philosophy.objectivism?
 b.  How do I read and post to the group...
  1.  Via Usenet?
  2.  Via E-Mail?
 c.  How is the group moderated?
  1.  What are moderation guidelines?
  2.  How does the moderation work?
  3.  What are the moderator's policies?
II.  So your post was rejected...
 a.  Why was my post rejected?
 b.  Why aren't my posts showing up on my system?
III.  What other resources are there?
 a.  What other sources for information on Objectivism are there?
 b.  What is planned for the future of HPO?

Appendix A: The official charter of humanities.philosophy.objectivism
Appendix B: Why ban Neo-Tech?
--
I.  What is HPO?
 a. What is humanities.philosophy.objectivism?

	humanities.philosophy.objectivism (hereby referred to as HPO)
is a moderated group for discussion of ideas related to Objectivism,
the philosophy created by Ayn Rand.  HPO was created on June 13, 1996, 
having won its vote for creation by a margin of 362:46.  

 b.  How do I read and post to the group...
  1.  Via Usenet?

        If your news server already carries HPO, simply add the group to
your list of active newsgroups.  If your news server doesn't carry HPO,
it might be a bit more of a challenge; just ask your news administrator
(politely!) to add it.  Include the following details:

     Moderation Address: tskirvin+hpo@math.uiuc.edu -or-
                         humanities-philosophy-objectivism@uunet.uu.net
     Moderator Contact Address: tskirvin@uiuc.edu

	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 news administrators.

  2.  Via E-Mail?

	A mailing list for distribution of HPO is under consideration,
but it probably won't be ready for a while.  Email submissions can now
be made; if you would like your message to be posted, send a mail
message to tskirvin+hpomail@math.uiuc.edu.  

 c.  How is the group moderated?
  1.  What are moderation guidelines?

        HPO is controlled by a moderation bot, which is maintained
by an impartial operator.  Messages are automatically posted, based
on the following criteria:

o The message is posted only to HPO, and is not crossposted to any
   other groups;
o The message is not an encoded binary message;
o The message is formatted to have 80 or less characters per line
   of text;
o The message contains less than 80% quotes from previous messages; 
o The message is not related to any subjects that have been deemed
   off-topic by the moderator, and;
o The message is not authored by any that the operator feels have
   violated any of the above rules repeatedly or maliciously.
        
        Commercial advertising and discussion of Neo-Tech are
specifically off-topic for HPO.

        As most posting is automatic, there is a strong potential for
messages to be posted that violate the rules of the newsgroup.  To this
end, the operator of the moderation bot is authorized to issue cancel
messages that he deems inappropriate for the group.

        The operator of the moderator bot may change or ignore any and
all moderation policies as necessary to ensure the survival of the
newsgroup.

        The current banlist:

Name            Address		  	Reason
Matt Keys       mattkeys@netcom.com     Repeated and malicious posting
                                          of Neo-Tech materials
Think999	think999@ix.netcom.com  Repeated posting of Neo-Tech
	        think99999@aol.com	  materials
Sheldon Smoker	bwd@well.com		Repeated and malicious posting
					  of Neo-Tech materials

	(Noticing a pattern, folks?)

  2.  How does the moderation work?

        The moderation bot is based off of Gateway, a mail-to-news
gateway created by Russ Allbery (eagle@cs.stanford.edu), and procmail,
a mail filtering system.  Or, in less technical terms, it's a hack.
I'm looking into updating it, don't worry, just give me time.

        Currently, the bot posts anything it receives at the moderation
address that is a) not posted by anybody on the banlist and b) contains
the exact header "Newsgroups: humanities.philosophy.objectivism" (this
requirement is waved if the email submissions address is used instead).  
This will be updated in the future (ie when I get time).  After the message 
has been posted, it propagates through standard Usenet channels.

  3.  What are the moderator's policies?

        Well, let's switch over to something a bit more informal for
this...

        Obviously, my name is Tim Skirvin, and I'm the moderator of
HPO.  I am not an Objectivist; that's a good portion of the reason
that I was requested to moderate this group.  My main interest in the
matter is keeping the newsgroup going, hopefully without making it take
up all of my time.

        I don't like banning people or topics or cancel posts; I consider
both actions to be of the last resort.  I don't want to get involved in
any of the politics of the group, period.  But, if I have to, I'll do
any of it.  Just don't force me to do it, alright?

        Anyway.  I do like to know when and where there are problems
with the group, so I can head them off before I have to either get
into the politics or ban something.  I don't mind helping people out
with making the newsgroup work for them.  And, of course, I actually
appreciate suggestions.

        To summarize: as long as the group keeps going and I don't
have to step in, I'm happy.  But don't try to fight me.  I'm very
reasonable, but if it comes down to it...


II.  Why wasn't my message posted?
 a.  Why was my post rejected?

        Most likely, if your post was rejected, it was due to a charter
violation of one form or another.  The following list contains the most
common violations (and as the bot is fixed, it'll contain more):

o Your message was crossposted to two or more groups.  If this is the
   case, please resubmit your message to HPO alone.
o Your message did not contain the required Newsgroups: header.  Please
   resubmit your message, taking care to insert the line "Newsgroups:
   humanities.philosophy.objectivism" into the header.
o Your address was identified as being on the banlist.  If this is
   the case, please, don't resubmit; if absolutely necessary, contact
   me, at tskirvin@uiuc.edu.

 b.  Why aren't my posts showing up on my system?

        As with all things, there are many possibilities.

o Your posts may have been rejected; see section II.a for details on
   what you should do.  (Eventually, there will be rejection notices,
   which may help matters a bit...)
o Your posts may not have propagated to your site yet.  The standard
   delay for messages to appear at your system may vary from several
   seconds to several days; if you are positive that your messages
   are not propagating, please contact me.
o The moderator bot may never have received the message in the first
   place.  If this is the case, you will need to check your news
   system; please check the submissions address, or contact your
   news administrators.
o The moderator bot may have just screwed up.  Trust me, it happens;
   if you think this is the case, again, mail me.


III.  What other resources are there?
 a.  What other sources for information on Objectivism are there?

	In no particular order: 

FAQs:  
http://www.hypermall.com/~willp/phil/obj-faq.html
   The Objectivism FAQ
Usenet: 
alt.philosophy.objectivism  	
   An unmoderated group for discussion of Objectivism
WWW: 
http://www.mcs.net/~tshell/objectiv.htm
  "Objectivity," an Objectivist journal of philosophic theory
http://www.aynrand.org/		
   The Ayn Rand Institute
http://www.vix.com/pub/objectivism/index.html  
   Objectivism and Ayn Rand WWW Service 
http://ios.org/			
   The Institute for Objectivism Studies
http://www.oms.com/org/		
   The Objectivism Resource Guide
http:///www.rust.net/~fc/	
   "Full Context", an Objectivism essay and interview magazine


	If you have any other FAQs, web pages, or Usenet groups to add
to this list, mail me personally with a reference and a one-line
description.
	
 b.  What is planned for the future of HPO?

o The moderator bot will actually do most of the stuff it's supposed
   to.  Specifically, I'll get the 80 characters per line, excessive
   quoting, and binaries stuff done as soon as I make a couple of
   modifications to the bot; I may also add in some keyword scans to
   send the messages for me to approve, some user-verification schemes,
   and some better auto-reply stuff for rejection notices.
o I'll get the mailing list distribution going.
o As I've been keeping them, I'll figure out a reasonable way to
   distribute the logs for the group.  It may involve a web page.  I
   don't know for sure how I'm going to do this, and help on the
   matter (CGI scripts or something) would be greatly appreciated...


Appendix A: The official charter of humanities.philosophy.objectivism

Humanities.philosophy.objectivism shall exist for the purpose of fur-
thering discussion by Objectivists and those who admire Ayn Rand's
ideas.  Those who disagree with these ideas may of course also post to
h.p.o. for the purposes of civilized debate and discussion of Object-
ivism.  Any posters who persistently abuse their posting privileges
are subject to revocation of these privileges at the discretion of the
moderator (qv).

Discussion on h.p.o. may consist of attempts to support, elaborate,
apply, question, or refute the tenets of Objectivist philosophy on the
part of participants.  For example, discussion on h.p.o. may include
but is in no way limited to the topics of Anarchism in relation to
Objectivism and the dispute between David Kelley and Leonard Peikoff
as it relates to Objectivist philosophy.  Posts which request general
information about a particular topic of Objectivist philosophy or on
the availability of resources related to Objectivism are also welcome.

Every effort shall be made by the posters of h.p.o. to compile a thor-
ough text-only FAQ describing the moderation and posting policies of
h.p.o.

Crossposting shall not be permitted, excepting administrative posts
such as further RFDs, CFVs, and the FAQ.  With the approval of the
administrator such material may be crossposted to news.announce.new-
groups, news.answers, news.groups, and other groups deemed necessary
by the moderator.  Because a philosophy such as Objectivism has ap-
plications in numerous areas of human action, the actors in many of
which are not themselves directly concerned with Objectivism, discus-
sions that are crossposted often become irrelevant to one or the
other of the groups.  This has been a major problem with a.p.o. in
the past.

Moderation Policy:

The newsgroup shall be automoderated; the automoderator shall be
overseen by a nonparticipant net administrator.

The automoderator shall automatically reject all articles that fall
into the following categories:

      A) Articles that contain more than 80 characters per line;
      B) Articles that are crossposted;
      C) Encoded binary messages;
      D) Messages containing more than 20 lines of text, 80% or
                more of which is quoted material;
      E) Articles authored by those that the moderator has
                expelled from the group (see below).

The submitters of rejected articles shall be sent a copy of the FAQ
to inform them of the reason why their submissions were rejected.

The moderator of h.p.o. shall be Tim Skirvin <tskirvin@uiuc.edu>.
The alternate moderator of h.p.o. shall be Richard E. Depew
<red@redpoll.mrfs.oh.us>.  The moderators shall not post to
humanities.philosophy.objectivism except as administrative duties
require.

Commercial postings shall not be permitted; repeated posting of a
commercial nature shall be grounds for the banning of the submitter
from humanities.philosophy.objectivism at the discretion of the mod-
erator.  The moderator is further authorized to cancel said postings
if and when they appear, forwarding a copy of the FAQ to the poster.
If a FAQ is not yet available, a copy of this charter shall be sent
instead.

Postings commonly acknowledged by the Usenet community to be "spam"
or similar forms of net-abuse shall not be permitted; the moderator
is authorized to cancel all such posts, inform the submitter of his
decision, and, if the abuse persists after an initial warning, ban
the submitter of the posts from the newsgroup.

The moderator may also cancel posts which are offtopic for the group.
For example, humanities.philosophy.objectivism excludes the discus-
sion of Neo-Tech, Zon Power and the publications and activities of
the Neo-Tech Publishing Company.  Such material is off-topic for
humanities.philosophy.objectivism and repeated posts of this nature
shall result in the expulsion of the poster.  The Automoderator may
also be programmed and reprogrammed as necessary to return the ex-
cluded postings to the sender, attaching a copy of the FAQ for h.p.o.

No specific individuals shall be excluded from h.p.o., save as their
behavior on the forum itself warrants.

The alternate shall succeed the moderator upon retirement.  Should
the alternate be unwilling to do so, the moderator may choose an-
other impartial nonparticipant individual to fill his place.

Appendix B: Why ban Neo-Tech?

	Before HPO was created, the only major Objectivism-related 
newsgroup was alt.philosophy.objectivism.  This group was long the
target of large, crossposted threads, and for that alone it deserved its
own group.  The amount of effort required to create the group, however,
was significant enough that nothing ever came of this need.

	Neo-Tech changed that.  Neo-Tech, an offshoot of Objectivism,
began crossposting its articles to APO; soon, the traffic was growing
significant.  Several flamewars started over the issue, spreading into
many other newsgroups and hierarchies; Neo-Tech mailing lists got their
messages posted to APO, NT posters argued that their postings were fully
on-topic, and finally several Neo-Tech posters posted messages officially 
"declaring war" on Objectivism and APO itself.

	This more than provided the catalyst for the creation of the
group.  Neo-Tech/Zonpower was officially banned from the newsgroup, in 
order for the rest of the regulars to have a forum where they could 
discuss the other aspects of Objectivism. 
	
	If you wish to discuss this topic any further, please take it
to either alt.philosophy.objectivism or alt.neo-tech.  Thanks.
--
Copyright 1996, Tim Skirvin.  All rights reserved.
http://www.uiuc.edu/ph/www/tskirvin/hpo.faq

