Chris, is this a moderated group? (7/10/03)

~~~

Not at present.

It used to be officially "retro-moderated"; after a formal discussion and vote. This is a feature which is unique to the aus.* newsgroup hierarchy as far as I know. It means that posts are propogated and distributed as usual, but that an authorized robot program will issue a "cancel" for a post which violates the charter.

The charter has to be very simple for this to work; and the only restriction applied used to be inappropriate cross posting as defined by the formal charter, which can be found here: <http://aus.news-admin.org/groupinfo.cgi/aus.religion.christian/>

The system which hosted the retro-moderation program became unavailable some years ago, and a new host has never been found. We presently rely on the good will and sanity of newsgroup members to please follow the simple guidelines given in the charter.

Unfortunately at present the group is being overwhelmed by massive crossposting; which undermines whole rationale of an aus.* group intended for a smaller local set of users.

This is also discussed in the FAQ for the group, which is just now in the process of being resurrected. You can read a recent FAQ copy from the Google archive at this URL: <http://www.google.com.au/groups?selm=3f5ba623%40news.qut.edu.au>

Cheers -- Chris