• humanities.philosophy.objectivism Administration FAQ, v1.35

    From tskirvin@tskirvin@killfile.org (Tim Skirvin) to humanities.philosophy.objectivism,alt.philosophy.objectivism,humanities.answers,alt.answers,news.answers on Sunday, July 06, 2003 00:00:01
    From Newsgroup: alt.philosophy.objectivism

    Archive-name: objectivism/newsgroup-admin
    Posting-Frequency: weekly
    Last-modified: 2002/12/08
    Version: 1.35
    URL: http://www.killfile.org/faqs/hpofaq.html

    humanities.philosophy.objectivism
    Administration FAQ, v1.35 (Last Updated: December 8, 2002)

    (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 * = recently updated
    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?
    3. Via the web?
    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?
    c. How do I turn off confirmation messages?
    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?
    Appendix C: What is PGPMoose? Appendix D: Why is my news server broken, and how do I fix it? *
    --
    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 12, 1996,
    having won its vote for creation by a margin of 362:46.

    The HPO Homepage at http://www.killfile.org/~tskirvin/hpo/, and contains the newsgroup's charter, past logs of the group, and other
    information regarding HPO.


    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@killfile.org -or-
    humanities-philosophy-objectivism@moderators.isc.org
    Moderator Contact Address: tskirvin@killfile.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 news administrators.

    If your news server does not receive HPO, or if there are problems
    with your local site, you can also read (but not post) from HPO's main
    news server. Just point your newsreader at news.killfile.org - there
    should be instructions in your newsreader's manual.

    2. Via E-Mail?

    At this point, there is no mailing list for distribution of HPO; however, such a list would not be difficult to create if there were
    sufficient desire. Email contributions to HPO are accepted, if mailed to tskirvin+hpo@killfile.org.

    3. Via the web?

    HPO can be read for free at Google Groups (http://groups.google.com), the successor for Dejanews. An up-to-date listing of the last two days of posts is also available off the group homepage; further logs have been archived, and will probably be available in the near future.


    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
    gryb gryb@adams.icl.net Regular off-topic posts, bad formatting


    2. How does the moderation work?

    The moderation bot, named Mackie, is based off of battloid, a moderation package written by Tim Skirvin, and procmail, a mail filtering system. The code will probably be released sometime in the near future;
    it will be available at http://www.killfile.org/~tskirvin/verimod/.

    Put simply, the robot moderator will process your message and post
    it, unless you violate one of the basic rules:

    o Your article must have a From: and Subject: line.
    o Your article isn't crossposted to any other newsgroups.
    o No line of the body of your message is more than 80 characters long
    (though lines will be wrapped if possible).
    o Less than 80% of your message quotes another message.
    o Your message doesn't look like a binary or off-topic message.
    o Your message doesn't look like spam, based on a simple header and
    body check (these guidelines are not published, as they change
    near-constantly, but are pretty basic - don't put "XXX", "$$$",
    or anything similar in your headers and you'll be okay).
    o You are not on the banlist.

    Messages that are approved are injected into the local news
    server, and propagate standardly to the rest of Usenet.


    3. What are the moderator's policies?
    <informal>
    Policies...hmm, how best to describe them... Well, I'm not here because I'm an Objectivist - I'm not, which is one of the reasons I was requested to moderate this group in the first place. My goal here is to
    help keep Usenet (and specifically HPO) working, hopefully without taking
    up all of my time.

    In general, I keep my hands as far away from the group as
    possible. I read very few of the messages that go through the group;
    mostly I just scan the subject headers, or I occasionally read a thread
    about some topic that looks interesting. My main role is to cancel
    blatantly off-topic messages that made it through the mod-bot, which
    usually consist of MAKE.MONEY.FAST posts and other spams. When it is
    brought to my attention, I also have to enforce the rest of the charter
    - specifically the ban on Neo-Tech and advertisements. I don't enjoy
    doing that kind of stuff, trust me, but I'm willing to do it to keep the newsgroup alive.

    If you're having any technical problems with the group, mail me personally (at tskirvin@killfile.org) - don't try to post about the problems, I probably won't read it. If you see what appears to be a charter vio-
    lation, mail me about it, and I'll take care of it. If you have any sug- gestions, feel free to mail them to me too. Just leave me out of the personality clashes on the group and I'll be happy...
    </informal>


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

    Well, step one is "check your rejection notice" - that's what
    they're for, after all. The most common violations:

    o Your message was crossposted to two or more groups. If this is the
    case, please resubmit your message to HPO alone.
    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@killfile.org.
    o Your message contained excessive quoting. If this is the case, feel free
    to rewrite and resubmit your message according to the group guidelines.
    o Your message looked like spam, from a simple pattern match. If your
    subject line is in all caps, or looks like a MAKE.MONEY.FAST message,
    try changing that and resubmitting.

    Of course, it's also possible that the 'bot just screwed up, or
    there was some minor problem with the submission; if in doubt, mail the moderator.


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

    As with all things, there are many possibilities.

    o If your post was rejected, you should have gotten a rejected notice with
    the reasons for the rejection; feel free to fix the message up and
    resubmit it.
    o Even if your message was rejected, you may not have gotten a rejection
    notice for your post if you use a "spam-block" email address; all I can
    say to this is "stop using them".
    o My local news server might not be working right. If this happens, I'll
    do what I can to fix it, but give me some time - see Appendix D.
    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.


    c. How do I turn off confirmation messages?

    If you include the line "X-No-Confirm: yes" in either the headers
    or the first line of your posts, you won't get any confirmation messages.
    If you want to turn off the messages (semi-)permanently, give me a mail
    and I'll take care of it.


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

    In no particular order:

    FAQs:
    http://home.nuclei.com/phil/obj-faq.html
    The Objectivism FAQ

    Mailing Lists:
    http://www.exit109.com/~integrity/osg/osg/home.html -or- integrity@exit109.com
    OSG - The Electronic Objectivism Study Group E-Mail List objectivism@whitman.edu (to subscribe, mail listserv@whitman.edu with
    the body "sub objectivism [your first name] [your last name]")
    [REPORTED DEAD - IF I DON'T HEAR ANYTHING BACK SOON, I'LL REMOVE IT]

    Usenet:
    alt.philosophy.objectivism
    An unmoderated group for discussion of Objectivism http://www.killfile.org/~tskirvin/hpo/
    The HPO Homepage - the charter, voting records, logs of HPO submissions

    WWW:
    http://home.nuclei.com/phil/
    Objectivism - The Philosophy of Ayn Rand http://enlightenment.supersaturated.com/objectivity/
    "Objectivity," an Objectivist journal of philosophic theory
    [REPORTED DEAD - IF I DON'T HEAR ANYTHING BACK SOON, I'LL REMOVE IT] http://www.aynrand.org/
    The Ayn Rand Institute
    http://www.nationweb.com/
    The Objectivist Trade Center
    http://www.vix.com/objectivism
    Objectivism and Ayn Rand WWW Service
    http://home1.pp.sbbs.se/lyceum/lr.html
    Lyceum References, a list of Objectivism-related resources http://www.hypermall.com/geekspk
    #GeekSpeak Web Pages, an IRC channel for discussion of Objectivism http://www.2think.org/rand.shtml
    Ayn Rand Links
    http://www.objectivistcenter.org/
    The Objectivist Center
    http://www.aynrandbookstore.com/
    "Objectivist Books, Conferences, Courses, and More" http://www.fullcontext.org/
    "Full Context", an Objectivism essay and interview magazine http://www.objectivism.net
    Source for the works of Ayn Rand on CD-ROM
    http://www.objectivism.addr.com/
    Richard Lawrence's Objectivism Reference Center

    All of the above references were suggested via email, and were
    verified to work before addition; I take no other responsibility for the information contained within. If you have any other resources to add to
    the list, mail me personally with a reference and a one-line description.

    (Thanks to Mark Kormes, who sent me an updated list and spurred
    me to fix this stuff up!)

    b. What is planned for the future of HPO?

    o I'll get the mailing list distribution going.
    o Restart the weblogs, probably with a nice web interface (the software is
    mostly there)
    o Update the software to a newer version of Verimod, to allow for users
    to see more statistics than they really need.


    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. An unmoderated newsgroup in a volatile hierarchy, this group was long the target of large, crossposted threads. The amount of effort required to create a new group, however,
    was enough inertia that, for years, nothing ever came of the need.

    Neo-Tech changed that. Neo-Tech, a self-proclaimed offshoot of Objectivism, one day began to crosspost its articles into APO; soon, the traffic was significantly higher, much of it over NT. Several flamewars started, spreading into other newsgroups and hierarchies; the Neo-Tech
    mailing list was gated to APO, long essays were posted daily, and
    finally several NT'ers posted messages officially "declaring war" on Objectivism and APO.

    These incidents provided the catalyst for the creation of a new
    group, humanities.philosophy.objectivism. Under the charter, 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 all other aspects
    of Objectivism without interruption. This ban has been extremely controversial, but it is absolute: no discussion of Neo-Tech or Zonpower
    is permitted on humanities.philosophy.objectivism.

    If you wish to discuss this topic any further, please take it
    to either alt.philosophy.objectivism or alt.neo-tech. Thank you.


    Appendix C: What is PGPMoose?

    PGPMoose is a post-authentication system, allowing anybody to
    verify that messages to moderated newsgroups were accepted by the moderators involved. It was added to the HPO moderator bot after a minor rush of
    forged approvals, and should be effective at stopping similar attacks in
    the future.

    The public key required for verification and links to all required PGPMoose software is available on the HPO homepage.

    Appendix D: Why is my news server broken, and how do I fix it?

    (I've been getting a lot of questions about this lately; while
    this is all essentially repeating what's said above, I might as well say
    it again).

    Just because you can read HPO from your local news server doesn't
    mean that you can post to it. Many news servers are misconfigured, and
    do not properly forward posts to the moderator for approval; some just
    post the message locally, and other send them to the incorrect addresses. Either way is probably going to require you to talk with your local news
    admins to get it straightened out.

    So, what should you do if you've posted something to HPO and it
    didn't make it through? First of all, make sure you've read through
    section II.b. carefully! Most problems are caused by spamblock addresses
    and the like, and are only the fault of the poster. If you're still
    convinced that there may be a problem with your news server, send a copy
    of one of your recent posts to:

    tskirvin+hpo@killfile.org

    (Note that you shouldn't just send "test" posts; they're off-topic
    and annoying. Just send posts that you would otherwise have posted.)

    If the message is posted, then your problem is probably with your
    local news server. You'll want to contact your local news admins (call
    your local help desk for information) and ensure that their servers are configured with a) the group set as moderated and b) submissions sent to '%s@moderators.isc.org'.

    If your message still isn't posted, then go ahead and give me a
    mail. I'm not going to help you debug your mail problems too carefully,
    but it's good to know that there's something going on.
    --
    Copyright 2002, Tim Skirvin. All rights reserved. http://www.killfile.org/faqs/hpofaq.html
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