From Newsgroup: news.groups.proposals
This is a formal Request for Discussion (RFD) to remove the
moderated newsgroup soc.culture.jewish.moderated.
The Big-8 Management Board plans to begin voting on this proposal
after five days. Please offer any final discussion or comments before
the end of this waiting period. Voting may take up to one week (seven
days); a result will be posted following the end of the voting period.
Newsgroups Line:
soc.culture.jewish.moderated Discussion of Jewish culture and
religion. (Moderated)
Distribution:
news.announce.newgroups
news.groups.proposals
soc.culture.jewish.moderated
soc.culture.jewish
Proponent: Usenet Big-8 Management Board <
board@big-8.org>
Charter:
This is a moderated newsgroup for the discussion of all aspects of
Judaism, including its history, philosophy, culture, practice, and
law.
In general, any post which contains substantive Jewish content is
appropriate. Note that for certain subjects there may be other
newsgroups which are equally or more appropriate (for example, soc.culture.jewish.holocaust or rec.humor.jewish); the decision of
which appropriate groups to use is left to the poster.
The following, however, are inappropriate for posting in soc.culture.jewish.moderated:
- Inappropriately crossposted discussion, i.e. any article crossposted
to more than 3 groups, or to any group on the list of banned groups
(to be specified by the moderators). Articles approved for posting
in news.answers or news.announce.newgroups are exceptions to this
rule, and may be posted at the discretion of the moderators.
- Discussion whose connection to Judaism consists solely of the Jewish
identity of one of its participants or subjects: for example,
discussion of American politics is not on-topic solely because one
of the politicians being discussed is Jewish, or because one of the
posters involved in the discussion is Jewish. Such discussions must
have substantive Jewish content to be acceptable, as explained
above. (Personal announcements of relevance to the
soc.culture.jewish.moderated community and responses to such posts
are acceptable for posting, however.)
- Political discussion, including Israeli, Middle Eastern, and Arab
politics, except as it has substantive Jewish content, as explained
above. (Such posts should be sent to appropriate newsgroups such as
talk.politics.mideast or soc.culture.israel.)
- Discussion whose connection to Judaism consists solely of a
relationship to Israel, without other substantive Jewish content.
For example, the relationship of religion and state in Israel is
acceptable, but discussion of Israeli health care reform is
inappropriate. Similarly, discussion of secular Jewish identity in
Israel is OK, but discussion of Israeli pop music is inappropriate.
(Such posts are best directed to soc.culture.israel).
- Offensive or derogatory statements aimed at any individual or
group. Criticism of ideas or actions, however, are acceptable
provided that they meet the other requirements of the charter and
moderation policy.
- Posts denying or questioning the existence or extent of the
Holocaust. Responses to such posts are similarly off-topic. (Those
wishing to engage in such discussions might be interested in
alt.revisionism or soc.history). Discussion of how Jews can or
ought to respond to such ideas, however, is acceptable.
- Proselytizing or witnessing for any non-Jewish religion. Responses
to such posts are also off-topic. Discussion of how Jews can or
ought to respond to such attempts, however, is acceptable.
- Discussion of the beliefs or doctrines of Jews for Jesus, Hebrew
Christianity, Messianic Judaism, or other similar groups which
affirm that Jesus was or is the Jewish Messiah. Responses to such
posts are similarly off-topic. (Those wishing to engage in such
discussion might be interested in soc.religion.christian or
alt.messianic.) Discussion of how Jews can or ought to respond to
such groups, however, is acceptable.
- Binary posts, except for small binaries included in non-binary
messages for the purposes of authentication.
- Commercial posts for non-Jewish items. Occasional commercial posts
for Jewish items may be permitted at the discretion of the
moderators.
Finally, note that the primary language of the newsgroup is English.
If you use words or phrases from other languages, please consider
translating them so that everyone can understand them. The moderators
may reject any post which is in a language which no member of the
moderation panel understands.
Moderation Policy: soc.culture.jewish.moderated
The moderators are responsible for ensuring that posts to the group
conform to the requirements of the charter and may use whatever
scripts or procedures they believe are necessary to best achieve that
goal, subject to the following restrictions:
- Submissions from moderators shall go through the same approval
process as used for submissions from non-moderators, and at no point
shall a moderator approve his or her own submission. The moderation
panel may, however, issue guidelines authorizing moderators to
approve their own administrative posts when the interests of the
newsgroup demand immediate action.
- No person shall be suspended from posting to the newsgroup unless
they have previously received at least three warnings, and any such
suspension shall last no longer than one month. A second or
subsequent suspension of the same poster shall require only one
warning and may last up to one year, but shall be approved by at
least 2/3 of the moderation panel.
- Any decision of a single moderator shall be subject to an appeal to
the entire panel, where a majority vote shall control. Any
submission which has been approved and posted, however, shall not be
cancelled.
The moderators shall post the current moderation guidelines to the
newsgroup on a regular basis, and shall make them available upon
request. Changes to the guidelines shall be announced in the
newsgroup and shall require the consent of a simple majority of the
moderation panel.
New moderators shall be approved by a majority of the current
moderators, and may be added whenever the moderators feel it is in the
best interest of the newsgroup. Moderators may, of course, resign at
any time; they may also be removed for cause by a 2/3 majority of the moderation panel.
In accord with the moderation policy (above)'s charge to the
moderators to use whatever means they deem appropriate to ensure that
posts conform to the charter, the moderators have adopted the
following *initial* moderation procedures. They are, of course,
subject to change by majority vote of the moderators.
Proposed Initial Moderation Guidelines for
soc.culture.jewish.moderated:
- Initial robo-moderation (pre-screening)
All submissions will be initially checked by the robo-moderation script,
which will take the following actions, in the specified order:
1. Articles which are inappropriately crossposted or are binaries will
returned to the submitter with an appropriate explanation.
2. Articles which meet moderator-specified criteria will be forwarded
for human moderation (which is described below). Any post which is
crossposted to another moderated newsgroup will be forwarded for
human moderation.
3. Articles submitted by posters on the auto-approval list (see below)
will be approved and posted.
4. All other articles will be forwarded for human moderation.
- Auto-approval
The moderators will maintain a list of posters who, through their
submissions to the group, have shown that they will comply with the
group's charter and have thus qualified for auto-approval. In
general, the moderators will add any poster who has submitted five
consecutive approved submissions, but the moderators may, when they
believe it is in the best interest of the newsgroup, decline to do so.
An auto-approved poster who submits an inappropriate article may be
removed from the auto-approval list by a majority vote of the
moderation panel. He or she shall immediately be eligible for
re-addition to the auto-approval list per the above procedure.
The moderators shall inform posters when their auto-approval status is
changed.
- Human moderation
Submissions which are designated for human moderation shall be
forwarded to one randomly selected moderator, who shall approve or
reject it in accordance with the charter. If the moderator feels it
is desirable, he or she may return the submission for reassignment, or
may forward it to the entire panel for decision by a majority vote.
Any article which is rejected under this provision shall be returned
to the submitter with an appropriate rejection message which shall, if possible, include suggestions for how the post could be modified in a
way which is likely to increase the chance of approval in the future.
Rationale for removal:
The group currently has no moderator address assigned and hasn't seen
any posts since 2016. The group's website,
<
http://jewish-usenet.org/>, appears to have been defunct since at
least 2013.
On 2025-03-28, Daniel Faigin, the most recent moderator that the Board
was able to identify and reach, indicated that he no longer uses
Usenet and asked whether the group could be "archived and closed to
new submissions".
There exists an unmoderated group, soc.culture.jewish, that could in
principle be used to discuss Jewish culture and religion. (However,
as noted in the RFD to create soc.culture.jewish.moderated, the
unmoderated group has a large proportion of posts that "are either
off-topic, indiscriminately crossposted..., or anti-Semitic".)
Discussion so far:
David E. Ross reported that a WHOIS query shows that the registration
for the domain name used by the group's website was last updated on
2025-05-10, but that it was unclear if the domain had been poached.
The Board determined that four of the six original moderators are
still living and informed them about the RFD by e-mail. To date no
replies have been received.
The Board also e-mailed the most recent moderator, Daniel Faigin, to
inform him of the RFD, and he provided a referral to a potential
replacement moderator. The Board wrote to the nominee twice but
received no response.
Fred Goldstein, a former participant in the group, wrote that the group
shut down in 2017 due to a technical issue that the moderators could not solve. He indicated that the former participants of the group would
probably not return to it even if the moderation system was restored.
History of the group:
1995-12-14: 1st RFD (create) by Harry S. Cohen
2000-04-05: 1st RFD (create) by Russell Steinthal
2000-05-12: 2nd RFD (create) by Russell Steinthal
2000-06-14: 1st CFV
2000-06-28: 2nd CFV
2000-07-09: Result: soc.culture.jewish.moderated passes 212:34
Procedure:
Those who wish to comment on this request to remove this newsgroup
should subscribe to news:news.groups.proposals and participate in the
relevant threads in that newsgroup.
To this end, the followup header of this RFD has been set to news.groups.proposals.
All discussion of active proposals should be posted to
news.groups.proposals.
If desired by the readership of closely affected groups, the
discussion may be crossposted to those groups, but care must be taken
to ensure that all discussion appears in news.groups.proposals as
well.
For more information on the newsgroup removal process, please see
https://www.big-8.org/wiki/Removing_newsgroups
History of this RFD:
2025-05-30: 1st RFD (remove)
2025-06-13: 2nd RFD (remove)
2025-07-18: Final RFD / Last Call for Comments
--
Usenet Big-8 Management Board
https://www.big-8.org/
board@big-8.org
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