sci.military.moderated Frequently Asked Questions

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Date: 01 Aug 2004 11:00:03 GMT

Sci.Military.Moderated Newsgroup-Related Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

A. Changes
==========
Revised with new moderator, single file - Nov 24, 2001 gwh
Fixed some details + Iraq war topics note - March 28, 2003 gwh
crontab fixed for regular posting, Canadian forces journal - June 9, 2003 gwh
Fixed HEW archive web location - Sept 21, 2003 gwh

B. Credits
==========
The bulk of this FAQ was written by Steve Bridges, who was the moderator
for most of the 1990s. This version has been updated by the current
moderator, George William Herbert.

C. SPECIAL NOTE DURING IRAQ WAR
===============================
Current events related to operations in Iraq are off
topic and charter for sci.military.moderated . Background
questions related to technology, tactics, force structure
and such are, but the progress of the war is not.
The moderator is trying to stike a reasonable balance;
please respect the charter.

0. Note to new readers
=======================
Please read this FAQ very carefully before posting articles. If you are
new to the internet and newsgroups, I strongly suggest that you read the
FAQ, and follow the newsgroup for at least 30 days prior to your first
post.

1. Guidelines for sci.military.moderated moderation
====================================================
The purpose of the newsgroup is to provide a forum for discussion of
military-related technology. In order to be a proper "sci" group,
the discussion must remain technical; occasional sorties into
non-technical areas are OK, but they shouldn't become predominant.

I find that some topics, such as military history and theory, while
non-technical, are fine, so long as they're presented in a logical,
intelligent manner. If someone espouses that "The usefulness of
battleships in modern naval combat is questionable; these ships serve
no useful role", it's a much better presentation than saying, "I think
battleships are stupid, and they should court-martial the idiot who
OK'd their refits !" The way a statement is worded has a great
influence on whether it gets flamed; and therefore, whether it gets posted.

Volume also is important; when volume is high, I find myself less tolerant
of history and theory topics, and I stick closer to pure tech stuff.

The biggest point is to avoid flames, in general. If an author says
something stupid, it's OK to post a response point out the errors;
but don't be afraid to reject a response which is insulting. If a
posting makes a wild, unsupported claim, such as "nuclear weapons
are immoral and useless" or "NATO can easily defeat a Soviet attack",
don't hesistate to send the article back to the author, asking him to
rephrase that remark; it will certainly draw flames if you don't.

Bear in mind that impartiality requires you to air all views; if you
let a statement such as this go through, and then refuse to post
equally-imflammatory responses, you could be accused of being biased.
from experience, I know that it's very easy to overlook such a
statement; often, they might not seem imflammatory when read in
context, yet another person might be angered by them, and fire off
a flame. You just have to draw a line somewhere; if you think a
replier is overreacting, tell him so; make it clear that you're
willing to post a counterposition, but that it must be flame-free.

In general, you should avoid arms-control altogether. The lone exception
might be an arms-control posting that deals with technology; i.e.,
"Salt III says we have to disband our Pershing III's and the Soviets can't
build any SS-29's; How do the spec's for those missiles compare ?"
SDI is a touchy subject. It's got a lot of good technical content, but
it's so politically charged that you have to watch it very carefully.

1A. What about "I've got a school assignment...."
--------------------------------------------------
The previous moderator's policy as stated in the FAQ
was that requests for help with school assignments were
basically off topic. That was in line with standard Usenet
policies at the time.

Since then, Usenet has evolved. Generally, it is as useful
a resource for students as for anyone else, and you should
feel free to ask questions. However, Usenet in general
and this group in particular are not here to do people's
homework for them. Questions of the format "Help, I have to
write an essay on X, what's it all about" are not appropriate.
If you have done your initial homework to understand what
a subject's background is, and are looking for references
or additional information for specific questions within it,
then that is appropriate.

1B. What's the Charter?
-----------------------
The newsgroups charter is:
        sci.military.moderated:
        ------------------------
        sci.military.moderated is for the open discussion of
        military-related technology. The discussions should
        remain technical in nature, occasional sorties into
        non-technical areas are acceptable, but they should not
        become predominant.

        The group is not to be a forum for political or military
        activism, nor is it to be used to find veterans, war
        buddies, etc., soc.veterans exists for that purpose.
        Questions about military training, quasi-military
        organizations and citizen militias should go to other,
        more appropriate groups. Military folklore is acceptable
        on a limited basis, but it should primarily go to
        alt.folklore.military. Commercial posts, advertising, and
        binary postings of any sort are inappropriate.

This is from the reorganization vote records when the old moderated
sci.military was made into the new sci.military.moderated, at the
same time as sci.military.naval was created (early 1995).
Records from that vote are at:
        ftp://ftp.uu.net/usenet/news.announce.newgroups/sci/sci.military-reorg

2. BRIEF GUIDE TO POSTING
=========================

If the focus of an article is then I might
more oriented to ..... suggest you post
                                   it over in ...
------------------------------ -------------------
Naval issues/technology sci.military.naval

guns you can tote yourself rec.guns

misc other weapons rec.martial-arts

explosives/bombs rec.pyrotechnics
                                   alt.engr.explosives

nuclear, biological, chemical alt.war.nuclear
                     alt.war.nuclear.biological-chemical-radiological-moderated

paintball rec.sport.paintball

picture files alt.binaries.pictures.misc
                                   alt.binaries.pictures.d

cadet questions/
basic training alt.military.cadet

Veteran questions soc.veterans

US Army specific us.military.army

Note -- requests for pointers to pictures are acceptable, but no binary
posts of any type (uuencoded, mime, binhex, embedded HTMP etc..) will
be accepted.

2A. What is a moderated newsgroup
----------------------------------
With the explosive growth of people reading newsgroups, a lot of new users
don't understand what a moderated newsgroup is.

Very simply, a moderated newsgroup is one where a person or group of people
decide what is appropriate and what is not. That person or set of people
are the moderator or moderators. For sci.military.moderated,
this is currently one person, George William Herbert.

When somebody posts an article to a moderated newsgroup, it gets e-mailed
to the moderator(s) for approval prior to actually being placed in the
newsgroup. From the end-user standpoint, the procedure for posting to a
moderated newsgroup is no different from posting to a non-moderated one.
The difference is that your article may not show up immediately in a
moderated newsgroup. The delay (at least for sci.military.moderated) can
be from 1 to 3 days, though most posts are approved on the same day they
are sent. The current moderator attempts to check the mailbox and
approve articles at least once a day including most weekend and holiday
days, and often several times a day during the week, but cannot guarantee
that he will do so every day.

Unless your posting bounces back with some sort of mail error, there is no
need to post your article multiple times if you don't see it immediately.

3. ADDRESSES
=============
Most news software should be set up to submit postings via email to
sci-military-moderated@moderators.isc.org. If for some reason that this
does not work, the following addresses may be used:

        sci-military-moderated@retro.com

In a catastrophic emergency mail directly to the moderators personal
account will also work:

        gherbert@retro.com

4. Is there an e-mail digest?
==============================
There was an email digest prior to 1993, but not since.

5. For what reasons are articles rejected?
===========================================
In addition to the guidelines listed in (1), I reject articles for the
following reasons --

        A. Too much quoted text from a previous poster
        B. Line length is greater than 80 characters
        C. Same information has already been provided by another poster
        D. Personal salutation in article. This has never been in the FAQ
            before, but has been a reason for rejection. There are a
            couple of reasons for this -- some mailers seem to mis-address
            such mail to me, and also I can never be sure if a personal
            salutation was meant as an e-mail to the author.
        E. Dead thread. If no new posts have been received on a thread
            for 7 days since the last batch of articles was posted, I
            consider the thread dead. If a post is received with offers
            no new significant info on the tread, it will be rejected. The
            purpose of this is to save bandwidth and to not keep rehashing
            the same info over and over.
        F. Factual error -- If I know a post contains info that is
            incorrect, it will be rejected. This doesn't happen too often.

Note: When I see a personal salutation in a posting, I assume that it is
meant as an e-mail reply to the original author

I try to e-mail back to each poster whose article has been rejected, but
sometimes this is not possible, as some news software (mainly NNTP) separates
the real name of the poster from the mail headers it adds, and it takes a
lot of time to save the file in a separate file, edit the headers, and
generate the reply. Also, sometimes the system that the sender is sending
from is not registerly properly, and a DNS lookup will fail, returning the
rejection back to me.

6. Forged approval lines
========================
With the recent problems with moderation in misc.activism.militia, the
moderator was forced to step down. Before he did that, he informed the
readers how to forge an approval line to post to a moderated group.

Recently, there was a forged approval to sci.military.moderated. While the
article was within the charter, it was cancelled out of principle. This
has happened in the past also.

If I do come across any articles with forged approved lines, I will issue
cancels on them, and will inform the postmaster/news admin at your site of
the breach of net etiquette.

8. Military Associations
=========================
This section has been extensively revised by George William Herbert.

The following information is provided as a reference for the readers
of sci.military.moderated; as a disclaimer, the author is and has been
a member of some of the referenced US associations.

Information on similar foreign associations would be appreciated...

8A. United States
-----------------

Air Force Association
---------------------
Online: http://www.afa.org/
Publications: "Air Force Magazine"

Association of the United States Army
-------------------------------------
Online: http://www.ausa.org/
Publications: "Army"

US Naval Institute
------------------
Online: http://www.usni.org/
Publications: "Proceedings"; "Naval History"

Marine Corps Association
------------------------
Online: http://www.mca-marines.org/
Publications: "Marine Corps Gazette"; "Leatherneck" [focused on enlisted]

8.B Canada
----------

Canadian Military Journal
Online: http://www.journal.forces.gc.ca
Publications: "Canadian Military Journal"

9. Archive sites
=================
An archive discussing various aspects of nuclear weapons is the
Nuclear Weapon Archive (formerly the High Energy Weapons Archive),
maintained by Carey Sublette. It is located at:
        http://nuclearweaponarchive.org

There is no specific archive of sci.military.moderated,
but Google has searchable archives of most newsgroups
including this one at:
        http://groups.google.com

11. Subject lines
==================
Please watch the subject lines. When a thread starts to drift, please
change the subject line to something appropriate.

• Previous message: John Schilling: "Re: Recent railgun news"
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