news-1.csn.net!ub!dsinc!netnews.upenn.edu!Lehigh.EDU!navier
Subject: [soc.culture.russian] SCR and Cyrillization FAQ: part 1/4 (charter and posting guidelines)
Date: Sat, 09 Mar 96 23:23:09 GMT
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Archive-Name: cultures/russian/charter
Posting-Frequency: monthly
Last-Modified: 1996/03/07
Version: 1.6
URL: http://www.lehigh.edu/~pv02/scrFAQ.html

This part of SOC.CULTURE.RUSSIAN FAQ answers the questions:

1.1
   - What is S.C.R.?
   - What is the language of S.C.R.?
   - What should and should not be posted to S.C.R.?
   - What other newsgroups with related topics exist?
1.2
   - What is considered net abuse on soc.culture.russian?
   - How to react to net abuse?
   - Why hate speech articles cannot be eliminated?
   - How to react to hate speech?
   - How to react to an article you LIKED?
   - What is a killfile and how to use it?
   - Whom to killfile?
   - What is the crossposting strategy?

1.1 SOC.CULTURE.RUSSIAN CHARTER

Newsgroups line:
soc.culture.russian             All things Russian in the broadest sense.

CHARTER

SOC.CULTURE.RUSSIAN is an unmoderated newsgroup for free exchange of
information, ideas and opinions on Russian culture, language, history,
economy, science and all other topics related to Russia in the
geographical, national, political and cultural sense of the word.

Posts of five types listed immediately below bear NO relevance to the
topics of soc.culture.russian:

    1. Discussion of the alleged massacre of Turks by Armenians in the
       beginning of the twentieth century.
    2. Claims that Nazi crimes in 1933-1945 never happened.
    3. All national hatemongering (represented by the typical
       cliche "All [...] are [cowards|idiots|traitors|...]).
    4. Unwanted and unsolicited commercial advertisements.
    5. Massive crossposts hitting more than ten newsgroups.

The topics pertaining primarily to the study of Russian as a foreign
language and to international contacts between children studying Russian
at school should belong in k12.lang.russian rather than in
soc.culture.russian.

The topics pertaining primarily to the heritage of problems left by
the Soviet Union and its dissolution should belong in
soc.culture.soviet rather than in soc.culture.russian.

Likewise, the current political affairs between the former republics
of the Soviet Union should be discussed in alt.current-events.russia
and in talk.politics.soviet rather than in soc.culture.russian.

The primary languages in the newsgroup are English and Russian (in
Latin transliteration and in KOI-8 [RFC-1489] Cyrillic).

1.2 SOC.CULTURE.RUSSIAN POSTING SUGGESTIONS

The material below expresses my personal opinion on the matter, and
is in no way binding, but be advised that if you don't follow the
guidelines below, chances are that the greater part of the readers
of soc.culture.russian will hate your guts.

The newsgroup is unmoderated, which means that anything not grossly
off-topic or beyond the written and unwritten laws of the net goes.

The things beyond are few and include massive crossposts (as also
indicated in the chapter), spams (see news.admin.net-abuse.misc
FAQ for the definition of this term), posts of pyramid schemes
("MAKE MONEY FAST" and the likes), forged posts and binary dumps.
Usenet does not take kindly to this kind of abuse and protects itself
from abusers.

If you see a "MAKE MONEY FAST" post, a post that has been posted to
many (twenty or more) newsgroups or a uuencoded post of the source
code of a cruise missile control program, the right way to react is
to send a POLITE e-mail message to the postmaster of the site from
which the net abuse appears to propagate, with a carbon copy or
five to the perpetrator.

For instance, suppose that loser@twits.com posted an advertisement
for an electric device for imitating the sound of mating hamsters
to twenty-five newsgroups. You use the mail/forward function of
your newsreader to forward the article to postmaster@twits.com
or root@twits.com, prependong the article with a brief explanation
of what's wrong with it and thanking the site postmaster in advance
for stopping the abuse.

If you see an obviously forged article (for instance, something
that appears to be written by you but definitely wasn't), the
task of tracking down the perp is way harder. If the content of
the article is potentially damaging (say, it contains a request
on your behalf for weapon-grade uranium or a sexual proposal to
Socks the Presidential Cat), you must immediately contact your
own postmaster and notify him|her|it of the problem, post an
article denouncing the forgery and post a request to help you
track the forger to news.admin.net-abuse.misc. Some amateurish
forgeries can be traced by the NNTP-Posting-Host or Path lines
in the header easily enough. However, a good forgery is very
hard to trace.

Compared with spams and the like, ad hominem flames, nationalistic
rants and other irritating but local things are not immediately criminal
and normally should not require any police or vigilante action.

It must be stated that though national hatemongering is
explicitly prohibited on soc.culture.russian, very few entities
(it is not known whether they deserve to be called humans) do
routinely violate this prohibition and post demented hate-filled
rants.

The number of the hatemongers on soc.culture.russian is very
small (less than ten). Their realspace lives are usually a
mess and some definitely could use psychiatric help.

As censoring even hate speech is a touchy issue, the
best way to deal with the hatemongers is to ignore them. If
this sounds too saintly for you, you always can write e-mail
(not POST) to the sender of the article you did not like and
tell him|her|it all that you think about him|her|it, his|her|its
ancestry, his|her|its neighborhood, his|her|its
boyfriend|girlfriend|whatever and his|her|its dog|cat|llama.
Don't forget to quote the entire text of the article that
upset you.

This works MUCH more effectively than following-up to a rant
and keeps the noise level of the newsgroup lower.

On the other hand, if you LIKED somebody's article, it is
also good to send a short message of appreciation to the
author via e-mail. Don't post a followup if you have nothing
of relevance to add.

It is wise to KILLFILE the posters whom you see to post
nothing of interest - it saves both your nerves and your time.
KILLFILE feature allows you to select the posters whom you
don't like and let your newsreader automatically filter their
articles, so in your corner of cyberspace these obnoxious
halfwits just cease to exist. Not all the newsreaders have
the killfile feature. I suggest that you use one that DOES
have it.

Some of the characters who, in the opinion of the maintainer of this
FAQ, post a lot while contribute nothing are listed below.

   sviznyuk@top.magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu
   Dragon@Darkstar.siberia.ru

  Serge Viznyuk (Dragon Fly) - The Only True Russian on Internet.
  Enough said.

   dlv@bwalk.dm.com
   simvlad@bwalk.dm.com

  Dimitri Vulis - also known as "the vulis." At the moment, the only
  purpose of his net.existence seems to post ad hominem insults
  addressed at various net.personae or to launch trolls.

  Some information on Vulis can be found at the URL

  http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/hypertext/faq/usenet/net-legends-faq/part3/faq.html
  (net.kooks FAQ)

  An interesting parody by David Sewell is at the URL

  http://packrat.aml.arizona.edu/~dsew/Netwriting/no-exit.html

Yet another extremely irritating thing is unnecessary crossposting
between related but distinct newsgroups (for soc.culture.russian
this usually means crossposts from/to soc.culture.soviet). Such
crossposting is not recommended by the charter and SHOULD BE
ELIMINATED. If you DO crosspost excessively, you must be aware 
that you show very poor net manners. Refer to the charter to 
see where your post belongs and keep crossposting to absolute 
minimum.

In general, do unto your neighbor what your neighbor wants to do
unto you, and do it fast - you may not have the chance to reload.

Or, put simpler, UZI does it.

DISCLAIMER: There is no me but me, and pv02@lehigh.edu is my only
            true address. My PGP public key is available at
http://www.lehigh.edu/~pv02/pgpkey.txt  All _my_ articles dated
            Saturday, February 10 1996 or later are PGP-signed.
.
