MISSION STATEMENT: Alt.religion.wicca.moderated is a moderated forum for those interested in the religion of Wicca, its many traditions or denominations, and neopagan witchcraft. It offers a more structured environment for Wiccans and others interested in these traditions to compare ideas than is provided by other, similar groups. ARTICLE I: ACCEPTED POSTING AND NETIQUETTE OFF TOPIC POSTING: Certain types of posts are not appropriate to alt.religion.wicca.moderated and will not be tolerated. These posts include: * Spam - Unsolicited commercial posts (spam) will not be tolerated in alt.religion.wicca.moderated. Posts that offer to sell, rent, buy, advertise or posts that link to sites that offer to sell, rent, buy, or advertise goods or services that are not directly relevant to pagan interests will not be permitted. Such posts include (but are not limited to) ads for sex/pornography sites and multi-level marketing offers. Commercial advertisements that are relevant to pagan interests will be permitted as long as the subject line begins with the [AD] tag, denoting an advertisement. Modstaff reserves the right to reject any advertisements with the proper subject line if they feel that the ad is inappropriate for alt.religion.wicca.moderated. * Ad Hominem Attacks - Posts made with the express intent of hurting another individual or group, or posts that denigrate, demean, ostracize, discriminate against, or attack an individual or group will not be tolerated in alt.religion.wicca.moderated. Alt.religion.wicca.moderated is a structured environment where users can feel comfortable posting questions and concerns; 'flames' of this nature serve no purpose but to destroy this environment. * Intolerance and Religious Preaching - Alt.religion.wicca.moderated serves individuals from many religious paths and traditions, as well as many different lifestyles. Posts that preach the superiority of one specific path over others, or show intolerance toward specific lifestyles will not be tolerated here. Posts that denigrate, demean, ostracize, discriminate against, or attack other religious traditions or lifestyles in an effort to create an intolerant atmosphere will likewise not be tolerated. * Trolls - Articles which are perceived to have been written solely for the purpose of provoking outrage or indignation among the readers of alt.religion.wicca.moderated will be rejected: "trolling for flames" is not permitted. Alt.religion.wicca.moderated is an ecumenical and diversified news group accepting posts from authors of any race, sex, sexual orientation, age, or religious creed so long as said posts are relevant to Wicca and follow the rules for posting to the news group. PROPER POSTING: As a courtesy to readers, it is important that all posts made to alt.religion.wicca.moderated follow a basic format compliant with the accepted rules of netiquette. Each post should include a subject line that is relevant to the post's message. A message that is commercial in nature and Pagan oriented should contain the prefix [AD] in the subject line; denoting an advertisement. Message bodies should be formatted at no more than 80 characters per line to enable all users to view each post. Quoted material should be kept to a minimum; only enough material should be quoted to ensure that the new material can be properly understood or put in the proper perspective. When quoting, it is courteous to leave the original author's name attached so that there is no question as to who is being quoted. In addition, when quoting an entire string of replies, authors' names should be left in the quote to ensure that each line can be properly attributed to its author. It is also customary to insert '' or some other marking to indicate that sections of quoted material have been left out. This will show that the original post contains more material than is being reposted, and will refer readers to the previous post. To prevent confusion, a blank line should be inserted to separate quoted material from original material. It is also customary to prefix each quoted line with a special character (most commonly, the 'greater than' symbol '>'), this will enable viewers to easily make the distinction between quoted and original material. Issues of poor grammar or spelling should be resolved privately, by email. 'Flaming' an individual for either is actively discouraged on alt.religion.wicca.moderated. Excessive use of profanity and vulgarity should be avoided. Alt.religion.wicca.moderated is dedicated to providing a user-friendly environment to people of all ages. All posts must adhere to the rules as presented in this charter, and should also conform to the guidelines of civil debate. Signature files are permitted on posts to alt.religion.wicca.moderated. A sig file should be no more than 20 lines (ideally four lines or less) and should have 80 characters or less per line. In addition to a signature file, a post may contain other identifying lines such as PGP keys or Dejanews add-ons. Binary attachments are not permitted on posts made to alt.religion.wicca.moderated. Posts with binary attachments will be filtered out by the robomoderator. Please keep in mind that moderators are authorized to remove not only the individual posts, but the posting privileges, of those who post abusively, as outlined below. ARTICLE II: MEMBERSHIP All new users of alt.religion.wicca.moderated shall be considered guests. Modstaff will review posts made by guests before they are submitted to the news group. If a post is off topic, or does not follow the guidelines for posting to this news group as outlined in this charter, the post will be rejected and shall not appear on alt.religion.wicca.moderated. Due to current Usenet limitations, a rejected post that is cross posted will not appear on any of the groups posted to. Users who have demonstrated compliance with the rules for alt.religion.wicca.moderated and have shown themselves to be responsible when posting to the news group may become members of alt.religion.wicca.moderated. Members' posts are pre approved when submitted and are not reviewed by Modstaff. It is expected that posts made by members will follow rules of posting to this news group as outlined in this charter. Members who fail to comply with these rules when posting may lose their membership status. A guest may become a member on alt.religion.wicca.moderated by continuously posting on-topic, and by fulfilling all guidelines for membership outlined in this charter. Modstaff is responsible for determining the status of all users of alt.religion.wicca.moderated based upon the content of their posts to the group. The minimum requirements for membership will initially be set by Modstaff and may be changed with a majority vote by the moderating body. Modstaff will post the current minimum requirements to the news group on a regular basis. Modstaff may elect to waive the minimum requirements for any individual user, but may not predetermine the status of any individual before they attempt to post to the group. Modstaff is not required to grant membership to user's who meet the minimum requirements. Modstaff may also rescind membership at any time as outlined below. ACTIVE VS INACTIVE MEMBERSHIP: An 'active' member is a member who has posted to alt.religion.wicca.moderated within three months of the current date. Only active members are allowed to cast votes or campaign for Modstaff, as outlined elsewhere in the charter. An 'inactive' member is a member who has not made any posts to the news group within three months of the current date. Inactive members are not eligible to vote nor may they campaign for Modstaff. Inactive members are still 'members', however, in that posts from inactive members are still pre-approved. To be considered an active member again, an inactive member must post to the news group. The post is pre-approved, and the status of the member instantly becomes active. Inactive members are not permitted to vote or campaign for Modstaff. A ballot received from an inactive member does not constitute a 'post' reestablishing membership, and shall be considered void and discarded. Participation in any electoral discussion, however, is enough to reinstate membership. A member may be inactive for no more than two years. After two years of inactivity, the user is dropped from the pre approved member list. The user shall be considered a guest and Modstaff will review any posts made by the dropped member. The user may post normally and become an active member once more by meeting the requirements for becoming a member, as outlined above. Guests who become members are automatically considered 'active' members. While Modstaff is not required to grant membership to any user, a guest that has met the current minimum requirements may directly petition Modstaff for membership by sending an inquiry to the moderating contact address. A Modstaff vote will be held for all inquiries with a simple majority being required for membership. Each guest who petitions for membership will be informed, via email, the results of the vote and their current posting status. All requests to be taken off the membership list and returned to guest status will be honored by Modstaff. This decision may be reverted by sending a letter of intent to the Modstaff contact address. Any guest may choose to reject membership, and remain a guest of alt.religion.wicca.moderated by sending a letter of intent to the Modstaff contact address. IMPROPER POSTING: Posting a message that does not follow the rules of posting as outlined in this charter constitutes abuse. Any member who abuses the privilege of pre approved posting may be taken off the pre approved member list, and be considered a guest. Modstaff reserves the right to rescind the membership status of any user for improper posting with a majority vote. Alternately, Modstaff may choose to post a public warning or send a private email, requesting that a current discussion topic be dropped. Not honoring Modstaff requests or not following suggested guidelines shall be considered grounds for losing membership status. These abusers will remain guests for no less than three months, having each post reviewed by Modstaff. At the end of this three month period, an abuser may once again become a member with no loss of posting privilege or voting privileges. Users who once again abuse posting privileges may be removed from the pre approved member list and may remain a guest indefinitely, at Modstaff's discretion. A guest who continuously attempts to abuse posting privileges may be banned from alt.religion.wicca.moderated. Any member of Modstaff may call for a ban on any guest who has attempted to abuse posting privileges. A two thirds majority agreement by Modstaff is needed to enact a ban. However, a temporary ban lasting no more than two days may be enacted immediately by any member of Modstaff without the two thirds majority vote of Modstaff. This will ensure that abusers will not be able to continue their abuse while Modstaff is reviewing the situation. If a ban is successfully enacted, the user will be placed in the auto bounce list. None of this user's posts will appear on alt.religion.wicca.moderated, or on any cross posted groups. A banned user may petition Modstaff for reinstatement of posting privileges by sending a letter to the Modstaff contact address, no less than six months after a ban is enacted. A two thirds majority agreement of Modstaff must be reached in order to lift a ban. Once lifted, the user is immediately considered a guest and may post normally to alt.religion.wicca.moderated. Modstaff may decide to restrict the posting privileges of a reinstated user to that of "guest status" indefinitely. Modstaff may reinstate full membership privileges to an indefinite guest at any time, or may be petitioned to reinstate this status by appealing as outlined below. Should a two year span occur in which no posts originate from a banned address, Modstaff will remove the address from the banned user list. If subsequent posts are received from a formerly banned address, Modstaff may decide to allow these messages to be posted normally, or to reenact the ban. APPEALING MODSTAFF DECISIONS: Anyone may appeal a decision made by Modstaff by emailing the Modstaff address. In the event Modstaff do not grant this appeal—either by denying it or by not ruling on it within one month, the appellant may appeal to the active membership by petition, using the tag [APPEAL], under the same rules of petition as for the removal of Modstaff. [10% within a month to second, two weeks to discuss, 51% within a month to pass.] If the appellant has no posting privileges, Modstaff must post the appeal on the appellant's behalf. If this appeal fails, that decision may not be appealed again until six months after the petition failed, at which point the process may start again from the beginning. Rejection of email to Modstaff from that appellant must expire in six months, to permit this renewed appeal. The appellant must then be notified by email of this opportunity to renew the appeal. Mail bombing or other abusive email from appellant to Modstaff, after lapse of such a six month period, will entitle Modstaff with a 2/3 vote to extend the no-appeal, auto reject period by six months. Modstaff must post all Modstaff decisions, including the receipts and results of all appeals, on the news group, using the [ADMIN] tag, within one week of their occurrence. ARTICLE III: MODERATION POLICY AND PROCEDURE: The terms 'Wicca' and 'Paganism' are elusive at best, and there are manydiffering meanings to each term. There will be no discrimination of postsdue to differing opinions of what these terms actually mean. While posts should be Wiccan in emphasis, the line where 'Wicca' ends and 'Pagan' begins is a broad one. Those non-wiccans who post to alt.religion.wicca.moderated on spiritual and magickal matters are welcomed as long as their posts are Wiccan relevant. Henceforth, a majority is defined as 51% (or higher) of the active members voting in a particular way. Only active members may vote. Inactive members must reestablish activity before their vote is considered legitimate. Guests are not allowed to vote. alt.religion.wicca.moderated shall be moderated by an odd number of moderators with the assistance of a robomoderator. The robomoderator will be responsible for weeding out posts that contain binary attachments, are heavily cross-posted, repeat posts (floods), and posts from banned users. The robomoderator will also be responsible for logging posts that are rejected and the reasons for rejection. CROSS POSTING: Cross-posted messages (messages that are posted to more than one news group at the same time) will be accepted on alt.religion.wicca.moderated. However, a message that is cross-posted should be on-topic for ALL groups that it is being posted too. In addition, any messages that are 'heavily cross posted' will be weeded out by the robomoderator and will not appear on any news group that they are posted to. A message is heavily cross-posted if it is posted to five or more groups at the same time. Directly related news groups are not counted toward this five-group cross-post limit. Modstaff is responsible for determining whether a group is directly related to alt.religion.wicca.moderated. Any member may propose to have a group listed among the directly related groups by sending a letter to the Modstaff contact address. A majority vote by Modstaff is required to add the group. If the current list of directly related groups changes, Modstaff will post the entire list to alt.religion.wicca.moderated. Posts that pass through the basic filters of the robomoderator will be distributed to Modstaff for approval. Modstaff will ensure that each manually moderated post conforms to the charter of alt.religion.wicca.moderated. QUALIFICATIONS FOR MODSTAFF: All Modstaff candidates must be members in good standing with the news group. Each candidate must compose a short biography containing basic information about experience and qualifications pertaining to both Wicca and technical computing skills. PROCEDURE FOR ELECTING NEW MODERATORS: To officially begin an election for moderators on alt.religion.wicca.moderated, Modstaff will post an announcement on the news group explaining their intention to elect new moderators and the allotted time for candidates to present themselves. All interested active members will then submit a net bio to the Modstaff contact address. Modstaff will post these net-bios to the news group after the allotted time has expired. Modstaff will also post a pre formatted 'ballot' to the news group, as well as email a copy of this 'ballot' to each member. The ballot will contain instructions on how to properly complete the ballot, and where to send it to be tallied. Guests and inactive members are not permitted to vote. Only ballots cast by active members of alt.religion.wicca.moderated will be accepted as legitimate. Each active member will receive one vote per open position on Modstaff. In the event that more than one position is open, each voter will select from the list of candidates a number of names up to or including the number of open positions, and cast one vote for each candidate selected. For instance, if five candidates run for three open positions, each voter may select from one to three names from that list, but may not cast more than one vote for any one candidate. Ballots will be posted weekly for a one-month period on alt.religion.wicca.moderated, and collected throughout the entire voting period. At the end of one month, Modstaff will tally the ballots, and the results will be posted to alt.religion.wicca.moderated. Modstaff will offer the positions available to the candidates with the highest number of votes (not necessarily the majority of votes). The first available position will be offered to the candidate with the highest number of votes. The second available position will be offered to the candidate with the second highest number of votes, etc. If the candidate is unable or unwilling to accept the position, it will be offered to the candidate with the next highest number of votes. In the event of a tie between candidates, Modstaff will cast a single vote between tying candidates and immediately offer an available position to the candidate with the highest number of votes. If a tie still remains (a three-way tie, for instance) Modstaff will cast a single vote between the remaining tying candidates, and immediately offer a position to the candidate with the highest number of votes. Modstaff will continue to cast single votes and immediately offer any available position to the candidate with the highest number of votes, until there are no remaining ties or there are no remaining positions to offer, whichever occurs first. A member is considered part of Modstaff as soon as a post is made publicly accepting the offered position. REMOVING A MODERATOR: To begin the process of removing a moderator from Modstaff, a member of alt.religion.wicca.moderated must post a petition. The petition will be allotted one month to be resolved. If at any time during that month, 10% of the active member list 'sign' the petition, then the moderator in question is removed and an election is called following normal procedure as outlined above. When publicly showing support for a petition, the post should contain a [PETITION] tag in the subject header. If not enough active members 'sign' the petition by the end of one month's time, the petition is failed and nullified. There may only be one outstanding petition against any single moderator at any given time. A new petition may be formed regarding the moderator in question only after the previous petition is resolved. A moderator that has been removed may recampaign in any election by following the procedures above for becoming a candidate. However, if a majority of the active members (51%) sign the petition of removal within the allotted time, the moderator in question cannot recampaign for any Modstaff position for a period of no less than six months. An election for a vacancy on Modstaff must begin within three months of the vacancy occurrence. Temporary moderators may be appointed by Modstaff to assist with moderation during such a vacancy; such appointments are not to exceed six months in duration. A moderator who has been recalled within the last six months may not serve as a temporary moderator. ARTICLE IV: AMENDING THE CHARTER: IMPORTANCE OF A DYNAMIC CHARTER - For a news group to accommodate growth and change among its users, it is essential that its charter be dynamic and flexible. Creating a method in which the charter of alt.religion.wicca.moderated can be modified for the future will ensure the usefulness and usability of this news group. It is the responsibility of both Modstaff and the active members of alt.religion.wicca.moderated to supervise any modifications made to the charter. Charter amendments must follow ALL outlined procedures and must be officially recognized by Modstaff. Only Modstaff has the authority to publish an amended charter. Modstaff is also responsible for updating any published versions of the charter each time an amendment is made. Only the most current charter version may be distributed; although older, dated versions may be archived. AMENDING PROCEDURE - To begin the amendment process, a proposal must be both posted to alt.religion.wicca.moderated and mailed directly to the Modstaff email account. Only proposals posted by active members will be considered legitimate petitions. A petition must clearly state which section of the charter is being proposed for amendment and how that section is to be amended. The body of the proposal must conform to a standard format for alt.religion.wicca.moderated: To ADD a section to the charter: The body of the proposal must contain both the section to be added and the immediately preceding and immediately following paragraphs. All paragraphs must be exact quotes of the charter or the exact section to be added. The section to be added must be placed between the immediately preceding and immediately following paragraphs, with a blank line separating each paragraph. The word "ADD:" must appear directly before the section being added. To REMOVE a section from the charter: The body of the propoal must contain the paragraph immediately preceding the section to be removed, the section to be removed, and the paragraph immediately following the section to be removed. The section to be removed must be directly preceded by the word "REMOVE:". All paragraphs must be quoted exactly with no abbreviations or ellipses. To REPLACE a section of the charter: The body of the proposal must contain the original section in exact form and the replacement section. The original must be preceded by the word "REPLACE:". The replacement must be separated from the original with a blank line and preceded with the word "WITH:" Only one charter revision may be made in each proposal. It is acceptable to combine two or more of the formats above if the proposed change is applicable to more than one section of the charter. (For instance, a charter wide spelling change for a particular word or group of words) The original proponent must include a valid contact email address at the bottom of the proposal. Any proposal made without this contact address will be considered illegitimate Each legitimate proposal will be allotted a one month time period in which to be resolved. If at any time during that one-month period, 10% of the active members 'sign' the proposal, the proposal becomes an active petition. If the allotted time period expires and not enough active members have signed the proposal, the proposal is failed and discarded. When a proposal becomes a petition, Modstaff will post an intention of modifying the charter to the news group once per week. The petition is allotted 14 days in which members of alt.religion.wicca.moderated may suggest both stylistic and content specific changes to the petition. These suggestions are to be mailed directly to the original proponent of the proposal. The original proponent of the proposal may alter the petition in any way or leave it as is. Once the allotted time for suggestion has expired; the original proponent will post the petition (either altered or original, but not both) to alt.religion.wicca.moderated. The petition will receive a one month time period in which to be finally resolved. 51% or more of the active member list must vote "YES" to the petition in order for it to become an amendment to the charter. If this 51% quorum is not reached; or less than 51% of the active member list vote "YES", then the petition is defeated and discarded. A defeated petition may be proposed again, following the outlined procedure. At the end of the allotted time, Modstaff will announce to alt.religion.wicca.moderated the results of all petitions to amend the charter. Upon receipt of a ballot, Modstaff will respond to the original sender with a message including the contents of the ballot. If the reciept is accurate, the ballot will be processed. If the member would like to change his or her ballot or the receipt is not accurate, s/he may resubmit the ballot with the corrected changes. Resubmitted ballots will not be accepted after the alloted time for the vote has expired, and only the last vote recieved before the deadline will be counted. Only one petition may be active at any given moment. If a proposal receives enough signatures to become a petition while an active petition is being resolved, the proposal becomes a petition but is tabled until after the current petition is resolved. Tabled petitions are resolved in the order they are created. There is no limit to the number of proposals that can be made at any given time. Modstaff is responsible for updating the charter within 2 weeks after a petition is ratified by 51% of the active members. The updated charter will be posted to alt.religion.wicca.moderated and any other locations that contain an outdated version (web pages, ftp sites, etc.).