Wed Feb 4 11:35:23 CST 1998 Usenet II rules Introduction ------------ This document is in two parts. The first part describes the rules that govern Usenet II. The second part contains recommendations that sites might want to follow to ensure that they are productive and cooperative members of the Usenet II community. ***** The Soundness Doctrine ---------------------- All U2 sites are sound. A sound site only accepts U2 articles from other sound sites, and site takes responsibility for the generation and transmission of sound U2 articles. If it can't do that, it's not sound and will not be allowed to transmit articles into U2. A necessary prerequisite of this is that a site is not required to carry articles from any other site. All U2 sites must have a contact e-mail address (, unless there's some strong reason why that shouldn't be used) that corresponds to a person or group of people that takes responsibility for the soundness of the site. If a site is suspected of being unsound, and is unwilling or unable to take action to resolve the problem, it may be subject to the following removal process: discussion is held in net.config.unsound-sites, and a vote is held over the period of one week. A quorum (a minimum of 10 sites, being at least 20% of registered Usenet II sites) must return a 75% majority in favor of dropping that site for it to be dropped. In extreme cases the steering committee may have to take preemptive action, but this must be supported by a formal vote completed within two weeks (allowing up to one week for discussion, plus a week for the vote). Since no site is required to carry articles fromany other site, if all neighbors of a site consider it unsound, then they will find themselves cut off from Usenet II. Usenet II only exists as a result of cooperation among sites, and this cooperation can not be coerced, so there is no countering mechanism by which a site can be "voted in". On the other hand, sites do not knowingly carry U2 messages generated by unsound sites. You can be "voted out". A U2 site is only responsible for ensuring that it and its neighbors are sound. They then take responsibility for any messages they allow their neighbors to inject. If they generate unsound messages, it is responsible for blocking those messages or dropping the responsible site. If it can't, then by induction from the soundness doctrine it is no longer sound and will be subject to the same sanctions. Methods: "Rules, not Tools" --------------------------- How a site ensures that it doesn't transmit unsound articles is up to that site. It isn't required to run any specific software, including the net-monitor, or to establish any particular local policies. U2 will recommend certain tools or indicate tools that are known to be broken. If there are tools that cannot generate sound messages a site is responsible for isolating messages generated by those tools from U2. Header compliance: "Sound Messages in a Healthy Net" ---------------------------------------------------- U2 messages are well-formed. Unsound messages may be dropped or canceled locally by any U2 site and cancelled within U2 by the net-monitor. It is recommended that most sites run the net-monitor to avoid propagating unsound messages. This document is to be considered an addendum to RFC1036 and supplements, and the basic specifications for a well-formed message can be found there. All messages should contain, in the header, a valid email address for the author. This is for your protection. If your message is cancelled because you inadvertently violate the restrictions that U2 imposes, we want you to know about it. All U2 messages must have an NNTP-Posting-Host line added by a responsible agent at a Usenet-II-recognized site. An article must be self-consistent. If the subject line starts with "Re:", it is a followup, and there must be a references line to prevent orphan threads. The converse, however, is not true: a followup does not need to start with "Re:"... it is always legitimate to add a new topic to a thread. All articles posted to U2 must have the distribution "4gh". U2 sites are expected to put this into their "distrib.pats" files (or equivalent), so users don't need to do this manually. This serves as an additional filter against sites outside the net tunneling unsound messages in. Crossposts between net.* and any other hierarchy are unsound. Crossposted messages will be canceled by the net-monitor. Crossposting: "The Rule of Three" --------------------------------- No article in the world is relevant to more than a small handful of groups. If WWIII is announced, it will be announced in a group such as net.headlines.world-war-three. No article shall be crossposted such that it will spawn a thread in more than three groups. If it is necessary to post to more than three (for example, an announcement of a vote in a subhierarchy that uses voting for group creation) followups shall be set to a subset of three or fewer of the original groups. Where possible, this will be enforced by the net-monitor. Posting the same article multiple times to get around the rule of three is extremely unsound behavior. It is acceptable to post the same article up to three times, to avoid the generation of a permanent floating flame war between groups that are known to be antagonistic towards each other, or to comply with a group's policy against crossposting. Posting the same article every day or every week to get around the rule of three is unsound behavior. If an article is expected to hang around for a month it should have an expiry date set a month in the future. If your newsreader doesn't support adding an Expires header, then see the recommendations for Usenet II software. It is never permissible to post a message more than three times or to more than ten groups in total, no matter how many times it's posted or how the followups are set. Hierarchy Czars. ---------------- The conduct of each group and hierarchy shall be subject to its own policies and procedures. Hierarchy Czars shall be appointed by the Usenet II Steering Committee and will be responsible for appointing moderators and monitors, managing the hierarchy namespace, and so on. Unless otherwise stated, the content of articles is not monitored, so long as the article is properly labeled with those group names that are relevant to the topic of the message. While Hierarchy Czars are not required to act proactively in the case of mislabeling, they have the right to do so and take whatever actions are necessary for maintaining their policies and procedures. Hierarchy Czars are still subject to the overall Usenet II rules. No binaries: "Usenet is Text" ----------------------------- This isn't 1985. There are plenty of ways to exchange images and software without hiding them in text. No subhierarchy can allow posts of binaries. If necessary, a separate "bin.*" hierarchy will be created for this purpose. HTML and other verbose rich text formats are binaries. The only allowed MIME types are: none (in which case the message must be in ISO8859.1, since there must be a default and that's one that'll cover most of the likely traffic), or: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset= OR multipart/signed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit OR 7bit If the Content-type is multipart/signed, then the parts may be: Content-Type: text/plain Content-Type: application/pgp-signature If you want alt, you know where to get it. Cancellation of messages ------------------------ ONLY the following entities are authorized to cancel messages: the original poster the administrator of the originating Usenet II site the moderator of (any) group in which it was posted The Hierarchy Czar responsible for (any) group in which it was posted The net-monitor A forged cancellation from any other party is considered *highly* unsound behavior, and U2 admins should take any steps necessary to ensure that their site is not used for this purpose. This means that people currently issuing cancels for excessively posted articles ("spam-cancellers") should not extend this courtesy to Usenet II. We do appreciate the service, where it is necessary, but we believe that we can operate without it. The net-monitor will cancel any unsound message that can be easily detected algorithmically. This will at least include excessive crossposts, crossposts outside the hierarchy (to keep sites from piggybacking in), and messages without the correct distribution. The Committee themselves do not have the power to issue cancels unless they fall under the above categories or have been explicitly authorized by one of the above parties. Each hierarchy Czar will post a regular FAQ to each group or to a common hierarchy announcement group describing any additional cancel policies they follow. Voting ------ Only Usenet II administrators may participate in the formal vote of removal. Where possible, votes should be PGP-signed, with the public key provided to the vote taker at least one week prior to the start of the vote. Resolving Conflicts (procedures) ------------------- Group Moderator Policies The hierarchy or subhierarchy czar with jurisdiction over that specific portion of the namespace can control moderation policies or replace an existing moderator. Overturning Subhierarchy Czar Policies: The Czar of the hierarchy which that specific subhierarchy is within has the power to control policies for any subhierarchies. Overturning Hierarchy Czar Policies: Hierarchy Czars answer only to the Usenet II Steering Committee. The recommended course for those unhappy with a Hierarchy Czar is to propose a new parallel hierarchy that they can manage. Overturning The Usenet II Steering Committee: Any decrees from Usenet II Steering Committee can be overturned by a 3/4 majority vote made by the existing second-level hierarchy czars. This vote will done publicly by the UVV or an equally blameless body of votetakers. Specific timetable for the vote must be determined beforehand, and should never be longer than two weeks or shorter than five days. Overturning the Usenet II Rules: The Usenet II Steering Committee is expected to update the Usenet II rules to reflect current trends and needs of the general populace. Those rules are written with quite a bit of leeway, so this should occur infrequently. ***** Recommendations: "We Want you to Remain Sound" ---------------------------------------------- THESE ARE NOT RULES. These are suggestions for sites that want to join Usenet II to help them become sound members of the community. If you are capable of being sound without additional precautions over whet you're doing now, by all means keep it up. Since all U2 sites must take responsibility for messages originating at their site, running a promiscuous NNTP server or anonymous UUCP server will eventually lead to problems that will cause a site to be considered unsound. U2 members are encouraged to require signed contracts or deposits from their users before allowing posting access to U2, with actual monetary penalties for violating the terms of the contract. U2 members should consider running software that monitors for excessive multiposting, non-human-readable messages (such as uuencoded images), or excessively large postings. It should also act to prevent their propagation. U2 members are encouraged to run FAQ archives for the groups they carry or to make a deal with an electronically nearby site to provide access to such an archive. U2 sites should honor rmgroup messages from the U2 Steering Committee. They are advised to periodically verifying their list of groups against the official list. Do not post off-topic messages yourselves, including cascades, trolls, and bulk commercial messages. Encourage your users to behave similarly. Do not follow up to off-topic messages. Encourage your users to behave similarly. Sites should try to maintain sufficient logs so that action against abusive behavior can be taken against the user in question, rather than the site. The Lesson Of Comp.Windows.News ------------------------------- Hierarchy and group names should be evocative of the sort of traffic you want to attract, because the name will have more effect on the traffic than just about anything else you can think of. Recommendations for Usenet II software -------------------------------------- Mail is not news. News is not mail. Software should require a deliberate action by a user to send an e-mail reply to a news posting or a posted reply to e-mail. Simply answering "yes" to a prompt or a dialog box does not constitute a deliberate action, because people get in the habit of answering "yes" to these things. This is not to say that such software would automatically be considered unsound, of course, but only that software with features such as those listed above (examples include Netscape and obsolete versions of Pine) may cause a user to unknowingly create an unsound environment. This is not intended to discourage personal responses to postings, but rather to draw people's attention to the ease with which private correspondence can be accidentally published, and to discourage people from automatically sending carbon copies of all posted messages (which seems to be the default with some software). It is recommended that software be checked against Ron Newman's Good Net-Keeping Seal of Approval. The current home of these guidelines is . Recommendations for Complaints ------------------------------ If you have a problem with Usenet II policies, or for the policies specific to any Usenet II group or hierarchy, it is usually best to take it up with the person who directly controls that portion of the namespace. For example, if you don't like the policies of a moderator, contact them and ask politely if they'd be willing to change; if they aren't, you are fully within your rights to ask for a reason. Should you feel that the reason is insufficient, your next step would be to ask other readers of the group. A good place to do this is in a related but unmoderated newsgroup. If nobody else sees that specific issue as a problem, you'll just have to live with it. However, if lots of people feel that it's a problem, contact the moderator again. If the moderator still will not make any changes and does not offer a satisfactory reason, go to the closest hierarchy Czar, and so forth, as described above. If all else fails, start your own moderated group, your own subhierarchy, or even your own net. The worldwide electronic community is large enough for more than one forum for discussing any given topic, at any number of levels.