alt.astrology.tropical Study & debate of tropical astrology. (Moderated) Message submission address: aat@stump.algebra.com Contact for questions, etc.: aat-board@stump.algebra.com Charter: Alt.astrology.tropical is intended as a lightly moderated group for discussion, debate and study of tropical astrology by professional astrologers, advanced students, beginners and skeptics. Related topics are also allowed where they are pertinent. Justification of readership: At this time, most of the unmoderated usenet astrology groups are poorly created spam traps. The main unmoderated group suffers from massive trolling, spam, kook and flamewars. The single moderated group does not allow the discussion of validity (effectively decapitating the group) and suffers from poor server acceptance, poor communication, and consequently, few users and low traffic. A hand count conducted in alt.astrology for the 30 days preceding September 6th, 2001, resulted in a tally of 813 posts that would be on-topic in the new group, out of 2850, or roughly 28%, giving an estimate of 2413 ontopic posts for a 90 day period. The tally did not include flames or off-topic material, using a strict definition. The estimated total count for the 3 months prior to 9/6/01 was 25,400. 28% of that total would tally to 7112 posts. Additionally, a count of the moderation panel's ontopic posts from a 90-day period at the beginning of the year, produced an additional 1200 posts from posters who were not included in the handcount above. Moderation guidelines: The following types of posts will be prohibited -- 1) Binaries (except PGP-type signatures) with or without virus-infections, encrypted, incoherent, or unreadable posts, or posts encoded in anything other than plain text (including HTML). Posts with pointers to 'safe' binaries are allowed. Messages or advertisements excessively multi-posted to other groups, flood posting, cancel or supersede attacks and similar denial of service attacks and/or other net-abusive postings. Excessively large posts may be returned for editing or division. 2) Posts in languages other than English will be allowed, provided that translation can accomplished, or verifiable translation is provided. In all other cases however, posts that cannot be understood by the moderators due to language or syntax difficulties will be rejected. (You are urged to email the moderators so that proper language support can be provided.) 3) Posts that violate copyright (excluding 'fair use' of both Usenet posts and all other content as provided for by law) are illegal and will be rejected. 4) Advertisements or commercial announcements, except site pointers as part of a signature line, or as permitted on a limited basis by the moderators. Signature lines should be limited to 6 lines (including the separator) or less. 5) Crossposting between alt.astrology.tropical and other moderated groups and/or to more than 5 other newsgroups. Acceptance of crossposts will be entirely left up to the moderator's discretion. The newsgroup line of your posts may be adjusted. 6) Reposts of previously written material, depending on content, may be allowed, but may only be reposted once per six months or after occasional legitimate requests. You should use pointers to websites or other resources instead. FAQs or other general information posts may be reposted more frequently at the moderators' discretion. 7) All personal attacks, abuse, flamebait and flames. This includes personal attacks disguised as astrological analysis, skepticism, debate on moderation and also attacks placed in signatures or headers. Discussion of moderation methods and decisions should be posted with a title line beginning 'RFD:', and such discussion is encouraged where it is needed. Skeptical discussion of astrology in general should have title lines beginning 'VALIDITY:'. The moderators may prefix subject lines. 8) Claims of the superiority of particular methods (but not personal superiority). These may be made, but are subject to debate. Such debate about methods that does not contain personal attacks is NOT considered flaming. The subject lines of posts may be edited. Moderation panel replacement policy: There will be three active moderators at all times, backed up by a moderation panel from which moderators will be drawn. Voting on serious questions can be initiated by panel members, and the addition or removal of moderators or panel members must be voted upon. If no changes are made in the course of one year, a confirming vote will be conducted to assure smooth functioning. Proponent: Ash Moderator: Sharyn Smith (representing a panel of nine) Charter-optional verbiage: The moderators of alt.astrology.tropical welcome all posters, and all topics relevant to tropical astrology, and wish only to minimize the savage flamewars endemic to the rest of the alt.astrology hierarchy. Please restrain yourself from making exaggerated claims or responding overly harshly to such claims, and avoid dragging topics relevant to other newsgroups into this one. The moderators would appreciate it if you attempted to exercise personal courtesy at all times. If you are new, please read the FAQ first before posting to help avoid any potential pitfalls. Trolling for free readings by 'beginners' is discouraged. If you need help with a particular chart, you should post complete birth data, including location and date. Please note that no one is required to respond to your request, or respond to any post at all. The moderators, will, however, respond to questions about the newsgroup as quickly as they can, and will help new posters as needed.