Newsgroups: comp.robotics.research
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From: ion@falcon.cc.ukans.edu (Iain Shigeoka)
Subject: [ADMIN] The comp.robotics.research Charter
Message-ID: <D8nEn7.IF8@news.cis.umn.edu>
Summary: Rev. 1.0 (Please read)
Keywords: guidelines
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Nntp-Posting-Host: tera.cs.umn.edu
Reply-To: ion@falcon.cc.ukans.edu (Iain Shigeoka)
Organization: Univ. of Kansas
Date: Tue, 16 May 1995 01:47:16 GMT
Approved: hougen@cs.umn.edu, crr@ireq-robot.hydro.qc.ca
Expires: Thu, 15 Jun 1995 00:00:00 GMT
Lines: 233


Charter for comp.robotics.research (Revision 1.0  May 13, 1995)


TABLE OF CONTENTS

0.0 Introduction
1.0 Charter
2.0 Moderator Information
3.0 Moderation Policy
 3.1 Keywords
 3.2 Submission guidelines:
 3.3 Crossposting articles
 3.4 Excessive "noise" policy
 3.5 Moderator comments
 3.6 Followup-to: header
 3.7 Anonymous posting
 3.8 Moderator conflict resolution
 3.9 Moderator replacement
4.0 Other information resources and archives. 


0.0 INTRODUCTION

    Welcome to comp.robotics.research.  Throughout the rest of this
    document comp.robotics.research will be referred to as CRR.  This
    is a moderated newsgroup for the discussion of ongoing and
    proposed university, government, and industrial research in the
    field of robotics.  Please refer to the moderation policy before
    making any submissions to CRR.  This charter will be posted to the
    newsgroup monthly.

     Submissions:       crr@ireq-robot.hydro.qc.ca
     Meta-discussions:  crr-request@ireq-robot.hydro.qc.ca


1.0 CHARTER

    Comp.robotics.research is a moderated newsgroup for the discussion
    of ongoing, and proposed university, government, and industrial
    research in the field of robotics.  Appropriate material includes
    short presentations and discussions of significant research
    results, requests for collaboration on research projects,
    descriptions of ongoing research projects, and new or unique
    equipment, Requests for Proposals, Calls for Papers, Conference
    and short course announcements, announcements of position
    vacancies, and announcements of the availability of materials at
    Gopher, WWW, and FTP sites.


2.0 MODERATOR INFORMATION

    This newsgroup is currently co-moderated by:

     Martin Boyer  <mboyer@ireq-robot.hydro.qc.ca>
     Iain Shigeoka <ion@falcon.cc.ukans.edu>

    Backup moderators for CRR are:

     Wesley Scott <wscott@tam2000.tamu.edu>
     Dean Hougen  <hougen@cs.umn.edu>

    To reach the moderators, send email to the meta-discussion address
    (crr-request@ireq-robot.hydro.qc.ca).


3.0 MODERATION POLICY

    The moderation policy for CRR has been developed to facilitate an
    effective forum for professionals to discuss robotics research
    issues.  These guidelines are open to improvements.  Suggestions
    and comments are welcome.


3.1 Keywords

    CRR uses several keywords in the Subject:  heading, enclosed in
    brackets, to denote special articles.  These keywords should be
    prepended to articles by the author where appropriate.  The
    moderators will also prepend a keyword to articles when they feel
    it is necessary.  Normal "discussion" articles do NOT use a
    keyword.  This is the default.  The following keywords are
    currently used in CRR:

     [ADMIN] - Used exclusively by the moderators to inform the
           readership of important news regarding CRR.
     [FAQ] - Denotes FAQ's and other informational digests.
     [Q] - Questions that lend themselves to a single answer as
           opposed to a discussion.  This also makes them good
           candidates for inclusion in the CRR FAQ.
     [CFP] - Call for Papers
     [CONF] - Conference and short course announcements
     [ANNOUNCE] - To announce position openings, new info sites (WWW,
           FTP, Etc.), and to alert readers to other "happenings".


3.2 Submission guidelines:

    Authors that wish to post to CRR should email their articles to 
    the submission address (crr@ireq-robot.hydro.qc.ca).  The
    moderators of CRR expect to act as "filters" not censors.  Their
    job is to keep out irrelevant articles and cut down on excessive
    "noise" in the newsgroup.  Articles submitted to CRR will be:

     1) accepted, as is
     2) accepted, with revisions
     3) declined, but encouraged to be resubmitted
     4) declined

    Authors will be notified of acceptance or rejection through email.
    Declined articles will be returned to the author along with a 
    short note detailing why the article was rejected.  Articles will
    be declined for the following reasons:

     1) The article does not fall within the CRR charter.
     2) There are copyright or reprint permission problems.
     3) The question has previously been answered.  The poster will 
        be referred to the FAQ.
     4) The article contains excessive "noise".  See section 3.4 
        below for more information.
     5) The message targets one person and should be emailed.
     6) The article is a chainletter, flame, etc...
     7) The article contains blatant commercialism.  This will be
        handled on a case by case basis.  In general we are looking
        for "Information, not promotion".


3.3 Crossposting articles

    Due to technical difficulties, crossposting will not be honored 
    for articles submitted to CRR at the present time.  Accepted
    articles will be posted to CRR but will NOT be crossposted to 
    other newsgroups.  We hope to support crossposting in the near
    future. Authors who attempt to crosspost to CRR will be notified.


3.4 Excessive "noise" policy

    In order to maintain an efficient forum, the moderators of CRR 
    feel it is necessary to reduce the amount of non-essential "noise"
    often present in Usenet articles.  This noise generally consists
    of unnecessarily long signatures and excessive quoting of previous
    posts.  We request that author signatures be kept to a minimum.
    Four lines should be more than enough space.  In addition, authors
    should only quote information directly relevant to their own
    article.  Articles containing excessive noise will be declined.
    The author will be encouraged to resubmit the article if the noise
    is removed.  For a general guideline, authors should investigate
    the informational posts in news.announce.newusers.  In particular,
    the following postings may be useful:

     Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette
     Hints on writing style for Usenet


3.5 Moderator comments

    Moderators will occasionally inject short comments into articles.
    These comments will generally be placed at the end of the article
    so as not to interrupt the flow of an author's thoughts.  This
    will generally be done to facilitate the discussion.  For example,
    if the author makes a vague reference to an FTP site, the
    moderator may inject a comment giving the site address and
    download directory.  Moderators will use brackets to denote their
    comments.  Each comment will end with the moderator's initials.
    [This is an example of a moderator comment.  -IS]


3.6 Followup-to: header

    The Followup-to:  header will be pointed back to the submission
    address and not to the poster.  Authors should configure the
    Reply-to:  and From:  headers for personal email response.


3.7 Anonymous posting

    The moderators will not anonymously post articles to CRR or any
    other newsgroup.  Articles submitted anonymously to CRR will, in
    almost all cases, be declined.


3.8 Moderator conflict resolution

    Any conflicts arising between moderators or between the moderators
    and the readership shall be resolved by a neutral third party.  At
    the present time, no set procedure has been established for doing
    this.  Until this is done, the temporary moderators will have the
    responsibility and authority to arbitrate and decide the proper
    course of action.


3.9 Moderator replacement

    If a moderator can no longer moderate CRR or retires, the 
    remaining co-moderator will act as sole moderator until a
    replacement can be found.  If both moderators leave, a
    temporary moderator will act as sole moderator until a
    replacement can be found.


4.0 Other information resources and archives.

    At the present time no archive exists for CRR.  One will be 
    created as soon as possible.  In addition, CRR is looking for
    volunteers to compile FAQ's for inclusion in the archives.  Any
    ideas or works in progress should be reported to
    crr-request@ireq-robot.hydro.qc.ca so that your efforts can be
    coordinated with others.  This will hopefully prevent you from
    duplicating someone else's work.

    The comp.robotics archive is available via anonymous ftp from
    ftp.cs.brown.edu.  A wais searchable index of the archive is also
    available (wais://ftp.cs.brown.edu:8001/comp.robotics).  Kevin
    Dowling currently maintains the excellent comp.robotics FAQ.  It
    is available online through the URL's:

     http://www.frc.ri.cmu.edu/~nivek/faq/TOC.html
     ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/robotics-faq/
         (Get parts 1-5)

    or through a mailserver: mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu.

----------------------------------------------------

Charter for comp.robotics.research,  (c) Copyright Iain Shigeoka 1995
                                         All rights reserved.
                                                        
***************************************************     
* Iain Shigeoka:  ion@falcon.cc.ukans.edu         *     
*                 http://falcon.cc.ukans.edu/~ion *     
***************************************************

