California UseNet Project Plans

Phase I - Gather support for a coordination process

This is the first part of the effort to establish coordination for the ca.* newsgroups. This phase will have the following activities occurring in parallel:

Create a mail list for coordination volunteers.
Write charters for existing ca.* newsgroups - including discussion from each affected group. No changes will be made to any newsgroup; this will only record their current descriptions.
Contact news admins to obtain support for the future issuing of newgroup/rmgroup messages in accordance with the to-be-developed newsgroup creation process.
In order to have something to begin getting support for, some preliminary brainstorming on potential newsgroup creation processes will be done, including input from public discussion.

The process will not create or change any newsgroups in this phase.

Phase II - Develop California newsgroup coordination process

In this phase, the brainstorming about possible coordination processes continues and moves on to begin selecting among alternatives. The outcome is not presupposed at this point but must take the following points into account:

California has one of the largest and most diverse online populations represented by any regional news hierarchy. Tolerance is encouraged.
The newsgroup creation processes will be based on public input, whether they depend on discussion, voting or any combination of them.
Procedures requiring the work of volunteers will not be pursued unless enough potential volunteers can be found to have confidence that the procedure can be implemented.
An effort should be made to use available experience and learn lessons, good and bad, from other related efforts on UseNet.
There must be procedures for at least the following:
- creation, removal and modification of newsgroups,
- modification of newsgroup charters,
- installation and removal of moderators (moderated newsgroups only),
- authority and limitations on enforcement of charters and
- amendment of the procedures themselves.

Once the procedures appear to stabilize after several rounds of revision from discussion on ca.news.group and the volunteers mail list, the procedures will be frozen and implemented. Further modifications can only be made according to the amendment process.

Phase III - Implementation

The coordination volunteers will commence operation of the procedures as written.

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