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Updated answer to Question 3, Who Moderates This Group? |
| (1.) Is Soc.Religion.Mormon Moderated? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| In a word, yes. Soc.religion.mormon is a moderated newsgroup. |
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| (2.) What Does "Moderated" Mean? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| A moderated newsgroup is one where every article you see in the group has been
reviewed and approved before it was posted to the group. Mechanically, this means that
articles submitted to the group are converted to an e-mail message and send to a dedicated
mail address. All mail arriving at this address is reviewed by a moderator (or moderators)
before it is accepted and posted to the group. |
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| (3.) Who Moderates This Group? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
Soc.religion.mormon is moderated by a combination of automated and human moderation.
The automoderation system, called JARED, manages the incoming mail queue and performs the
first review of the article. Depending upon the action JARED takes, one or two members of
the moderation panel may be asked to review the article. The members of the moderation
panel, and their religious affiliation are:
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| (4.) My Article Hasn't Shown Up. Where Is It? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Good question, and one that gets asked frequently. There are three parts to the
answer. Let's look at all of them. (a) It's in the moderation queue. Remember that every article you submit is first e-mailed to the moderation system before it can be posted. (b) Moderated articles are always slower than unmoderated ones. If you think about the mechanics of Usenet, you can understand this one. When you submit an article to an unmoderated newsgroup, it is sent first to your local news server. Your article is then sent by that news server to other news servers in its "neighborhood". They, in turn, sent in on to other news servers and, eventually, your articles will be "propagated" to news servers all over the world. So, in an unmoderated group, you get to see your articles immediately, and it takes longer for you to see articles posted by other people running on other news servers. Now remember that the article you submit to a moderated newsgroup does not go to your local news server; it goes to a moderation queue somewhere else. Even if were accepted within minutes of being received, it would appear first on the news server local to the moderation panel. This server may be quite remote from your server, in terms of net connections, and it may take hours, days, or weeks to arrive. (c) It wasn't accepted. There is a third possible reason that you article did not appear. The moderators may have found your article unacceptable and may have rejected it. Rejected articles do not disappear, however. You will receive an e-mailed notice for any rejected article, unless you have a spam-blocker in your e-mail address, without instructions on how to overcome the blocker. |
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| (5.) How Can I Get My Article Accepted By The Moderators? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The simple answer to that question is: meet that standards set out in the charter of
the newsgroup. Note: Acceptance of an article does not mean that the moderators agree with the content of that article. Acceptance of an article only means that it appears to meet the charter of the group. Do not confuse approval of an article with agreement with its content Now to get your post accepted, first and foremost, it must meet the purpose of the group. As mentioned in the Introduction, that is: courteous discussion of issues pertaining to the LDS church. If what you have written:
(a) Non-courteous posts
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| (6.) How Can I Get My Article Rejected By The Moderators? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
To have your article rejected by the moderators it must either be in violation of the
charter or, in the judgment of more than one moderator, it must fail to meet the standards
for articles as defined in the charter. A short summary of
the reasons for rejection is listed below. An article will be rejected as a violation of the charter if it contains:
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One certain way to have your post rejected is to include too many lines quoted from
previous articles or other sources. Originally, this was not a restriction imposed by the moderators, but was imposed by the news gateway at the moderation site. Over time, it has become a matter of style as well as necessity. The basic concepts are:
In general, if you have less to say about a post than the amount of
text you quote, then your post is likely to be returned. |
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In the interests of encouraging discussion, the moderators may
also return your post for changes if it
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| (7.) How Much Crossposting is Too Much? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Any. Articles acceptable for soc.religion.mormon may not include crossposting to any other newsgroup. There are technical reasons not to allow crossposting between more than one moderated group, and practical reasons not to allow crossposting between s.r.m and an unmoderated group. This is not a whimsical restriction; it was carefully weighed and considered. |
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| (8.) What Happens To Articles That Aren't Accepted? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Articles rejected by the moderators are returned to the original poster as an e-mail
message, unless the poster has a spam-blocker in their e-mail
address, without instructions on how to overcome the blocker.
No other action is taken on the article. If the author intended to
cross-post the article
to multiple newsgroups (a violation of the charter for this newsgroup and a reason why it
was rejected), it will not appear in the other newsgroups.
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| (9.) Why Did My Article Get Rejected? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Your article was rejected because more than one moderator judged it to not meet the
standards required by the charter for posts to the newsgroup. Please note that JARED, the
automoderator, can be one of the moderators to reject a post. You will know your article
was rejected when you receive an e-mail notification of the rejection. You should not
assume that your article has been rejected based upon the fact that you have not seen it
appear in the group. If you are not sure what could prevent your article from showing up,
you missed part of this FAQ; go back and start over.
The e-mail notice you receive will include information on why your posted was rejected
and which moderators reviewed the article, followed by the original text of your article.
You are welcome to edit your post to meet the standards of the group and resubmit it.
Note: Rejection of an article does not mean that the moderators disagree with the content of that article. Rejection only means that it does not appear to meet the charter of the group. Do not confuse rejection of an article with disapproval of, or disagreement with, its content. |
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| (10.) Who Can I Talk To About My Rejected Article? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Rejected articles can be appealed to the panel of moderators. Send your appeal to srm-board (at) srm.npl.com Please include the text of the rejection notice, and an explanation of why you disagree with the decision. If you do not ask for a response, you may not receive one. In other words, unsolicited criticism may not generate a response. By the way, the single most frequent appeal concerns a rejection for excessive quotation, which only goes to show that all together too few people read the FAQs. What's a maintainer to do? |
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| (11.) What's The Best Way To Appeal My Article's Rejection? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
The most effective way to appeal the rejection of an article is
to send an e-mail to the moderation panel (see the address above) and explain why you feel
your article should be accepted. (The easiest way to do this is simply reply to the
notice you received). Remember the newsgroup exists to "provide a forum for courteous discussion of issues pertaining to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons)", as stated in the charter. If your post contained courteous discussion of those issues, you could point out how the article would contribute to the group. Less effective means to appeal an article are to argue why your post should not have been rejected. It may be much harder to make this case, especially if you avoid offering reasons for acceptance. In particular, you should note that using prior acceptance of other articles as a requirement for acceptance of your submission is rather ineffective. Acceptance of any article does not establish a binding precedent on acceptance of future articles. This last point is particularly true for rebuttals of a previous poster's comments. On occasion threads wind down to a continuous verbal volley of "You said ...", "Did not", "Did too." At some point, the moderators will decline to post the next article in this series. It is always hard when someone else gets the last word, but please accept that sooner or later _someone_ does have to have it. The more you stay on topic and avoid taking shots at the other poster, the more closer you will come to getting the last word. Appeals to the effect that you didn't get to say nasty things to the person that just said nasty things to you will get a sympathetic reading, but aren't likely to affect the decision. |
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| (12.) Do the Moderators Always Send Rejection Notices? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
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No, not always; for two reasons. First, some people include
a spam-blocker in their e-mail address, without instructions on how to
overcome the blocker. People who have altered their e-mail address to prevent bulk e-mail
may also prevent our
moderation system from sending them rejection notices. |
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Duh. |
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We, too, have found that some of the bottom-feeding bulk e-mail
sites extract addresses from any response sent to their off-topic commercial submission.
If we return these articles, we end up receiving unwanted and unsolicited offers for
unlikely commercial ventures sent to the moderators board mail address. If you intend to
send blatant, off-topic commercial messages to the newsgroup, let this answer serve as
your official rejection notice.
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| (13.) I'm Having Trouble Submitting Articles. What Can I Do? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Not all newsreaders are created equal, nor are all configured alike. In most cases, you
can submit new articles or follow-up existing articles by using the standard features of
your newsreader. If that process does not work with your software or configuration, you
can submit your articles directly by e-mailing them to the submission address: |
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| (14.) No One Responds to My Articles. Are You Censoring the Replies? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
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There can be several reasons why no one is responding to your articles. First and
foremost you should have paid closer attention to the section on why articles might not
show up as quickly as readers might prefer. In particular, propagation anomalies may
simply be hiding the responses from you. Another possible reason for lack of posted response to an article is that the responses
may indeed be rejected by the moderators. Was your article close to the edge of what would
be considered "on topic" for this newsgroup? For example, discussions of how
evolution can be contrasted to or reconciled with scriptural accounts of creation are
likely to fall within the charter of the group; discussions of the mechanics of evolution
are less likely to do so. Finally, of course, there is the possibility that no one found your article fascinating
enough to respond. Nah, couldn't happen. |
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| (15.) Is There A Particular Format For Articles? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
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There is no set format for articles beyond the conventions required for other news or
mail articles (that is, a header of RFC 822-style images, followed
by a blank line, followed by the body of the message). Within the body of the
message, you should have only a plain text copy of your article. [Browser users beware of
sending HTML-encoded text. These articles will not be accepted.] Beyond format, there is the matter of style and grace. All posters to soc.religion.mormon are encouraged to have style and grace. |
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| (16.) Can I Post a Link to a Web Site? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The short answer is yes. But the more than short answer is your post needs to be more than short, too. If you want to direct the readers to some resource on the web you need to include a description of what they will find on the other side of the link. Why are you posting the link? What do you want people to find? What should they expect? Answer those questions and your post should be accepted (subject to the normal topicality, courteousness, and so on criteria elsewhere herein described). Fail to do so and it could fail to be approved. Please note that this applies to links googling in the deja archives. |
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| (17.) What is a Periodic Posting and Who Makes Them? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
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A Periodic Posting is, first and foremost, an article containing information likely to
be of interest to the readership of soc.religion.mormon. Beyond that, it is also an
article whose information does not change, and whose value does not diminish,
substantially over time. This FAQ is an example of a periodic posting. Although long time
readers of s.r.m. will be quite familiar with its content, new readers will (hopefully)
benefit from it. Period postings are made by the staff of s.r.m as a service to both the authors of the
posts and the patrons of the newsgroup. Any participant who has an informational posting
that could be of benefit to the group is encouraged to send a note to the moderation board
(srm-board (at) srm.npl.com) and ask for the guidelines concerning periodic postings. |
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| (18.) Are There Subjects That The Moderators Won't Allow? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Why, yes there are, and thanks for asking. All of us here
at soc.religion.mormon have, combined, more than a decade of experience
participating in the various Usenet religion forums. In all that time, we have
learned that there are some topics that just do not lead to any beneficial
discussion. For example, a debate over which religious groups should be called
"Christian" is not likely to win friends or influence posters. In
general, the moderators take the position that members of a religious group get to
decide what to call themselves, while individuals outside that body do not. If
you attempt to post an article that questions how others define themselves, you can
expect that it will be rejected as a disallowed topic. |
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| (19.) Some Posts End with ObLDS. What is an ObLDS? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
ObLDS stands for "Obligatory LDS". Every post submitted to this group is
expected to touch, at least tangentially, upon issue related to the LDS church. Usenet
culture has established this as an obligation on the poster to provide some relevant
content. The ObLDS is a humorous way of acknowledging the obligation. For example, a short
follow-up article pointing out some (often unintentional) humor or irony in a previous
article might conclude with an ObLDS (or ObMormon) comment to attempt to tie the comment
in to the purpose of the group. Humor, particularly the exquisitely pithy one-liner variety, is welcome on
soc.religion.mormon, though not necessarily encouraged. |
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| (20.) Does the group have a motto? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Not really, but if it did it would be: |
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| "He's no crackpot either, even if it sounds like he is." | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Which came from a post from a general student at boisestate.edu, so we really can't offer a lot of credit where it might be due if it were our motto. |
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| (21.) Where Can I Find The Charter For This Group? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The charter for soc.religion.mormon can be found at: |
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| (22.) Where Can I Find The FAQs For This Group? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
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That's a good question. The answer is that the FAQs, including this one, are in a continual process of development. The following are available Mormon Temples and Temple Worship FAQ |
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| (23.) Do I Need a Disclaimer in My Article? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
You will sometimes see disclaimers in the headings or signatures of articles posted to soc.religion.mormon. Such disclaimers may be of some value if the content of your article is related to your employment, and even then their value may be questionable. But as someone who has been seen wearing a belt with my suspenders, let me hasten to add: |
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| Disclaimer This FAQ is provided as is without any express or implied warranties. While taking every effort to ensure the accuracy of the information contained herein, the author assumes no responsibility for any errors or omissions, or for damages (real or imaginary) resulting from the proper or improper use of the information contained in this FAQ. This FAQ contains my opinions only and not necessarily those of my employer, members of the moderation panel, nor any other person, living or dead. Any other disclaimers omitted in error are hereby incorporated by default. Always read and follow labeled directions carefully. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
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