Um, it's called "a situation has come up that's not really covered by
the rules. It's time to figure out how to handle it, and update the rules
for the future."
I agree with the need for rules, but it's also important to realize when
the rules don't cover the current situation. As an example, the current
situation does boil down to the FAQ not being posted often enough, with
the added fillip of attempts having been made to contact the moderator.
If this isn't covered (and "often enough" could be defined as the 90
day expire from the archives time period), seems reasonable to figure
out what's needed to cover it.
Actually, the current situation *is* adequately covered by the
guidelines that the *.answers moderators have established for our
relations with FAQ maintainers.
If a FAQ is not posted for more than a month after it is due
(according to the posting frequency we have on record), we contact the
author of the FAQ and ask what the story is. If we get a response
indicating that the author is working on it, and the author gives us
an approximate date by which we should expect the FAQs to be posted,
we wait until a month after that date to contact the author again. If
the author doesn't give us a date, we wait until a month after our
last previous contact with the author.
If a FAQ maintainer fails to respond to four separate queries from us,
sent at least a week apart and over the course of at least a month,
about the status of a FAQ, then we suspend the *.answers approval of
the FAQ and remove it from the FAQ archive on rtfm.mit.edu and from
the List of Periodic Informational Postings. This is not a punitive
measure or anything like that; it's simply intended as a uniform,
predictable policy to assist us in keeping the FAQ archive and the
LoPIP up-to-date, when/if the maintainer wants to start posting the
FAQ again, he/she can simply resubmit it to us.
It is not our job to "reassign" a FAQ to a new maintainer, especially
not when the current maintainer says that he/she is still maintaining
the FAQ and plans on posting it. We are certainly willing to act as
mediators, when that's necessary, helping to resolve disputes related
to FAQs. However, if one person says, "The FAQ isn't being posted. I
want to take it over," but the current maintainer says, "I'm
maintaining it and I'm going to post it. Please be patient," there
isn't really much room for negotiation, so there really isn't much
that we can do.
The position of *.answers moderator is not a bully pulpit. It is not
our job to decide who gets to post a FAQ and who doesn't, and we won't
do that.
Now, about this particular case.... The maintainer of the
news.announce.newusers FAQs has responded to our queries and has
stated (at least, up until now) that he is still maintaining and
posting the FAQs. There really is nothing more that we can do. If
you want to make an offer to take them over and post them more
reliably, feel free to do that directly to the maintainer of the FAQs;
there's no reason for the *.answers moderators to have anything to do
with that.
Finally, note that Ping was right on the mark in his initial message
about this, and what he said *is* explicitly covered by the
guidelines. If you wish to post a FAQ to *.answers, you must get
explicit approval of the *.answers moderators, which means submitting
the FAQs to news-answers@mit.edu (or by posting them without an
Approved line). Furthermore, you must get approval from the
moderators of any other moderated groups you're posting to, e.g.,
news.announce.newusers. Your message to faq-maintainers saying, "If
no one objects, I'm going to start posting these FAQs in a week," was
not sufficient for either *.answers or news.announce.newusers.
Perhaps Ping was a bit more forceful than necessary; I'm sure he did
not intend to be. Regardless of that, he was right.
>In any case, several actions have been taken on this already. The
Glad to hear this. Your first reply to my message didn't indicate this.
The subject of the news.announce.newusers FAQs has been discussed on
this list several times, at least one of them recently (before this
discussion), and we mentioned during those discussions that we had
contacted the maintainer of the FAQs. I'm sorry you missed those
discussions. In any case, considering how much work moderating
*.answers is nowadays, we do not have time to discuss our internal
correspondence records every time someone asks about them on
faq-maintainers.
Personally, I've no vested interest in being the one to do this, so I'd
have no problem were the news.answers team to repost the posts to
the *.answers groups rather than myself.
That's not our job. We can't do that if the current maintainer still
claims ownership of the FAQs. See above.
As for the news.announce.newusers
moderator, if anyone happens to know his/her address, perhaps they should
be informed as to the situation and their input solicited as well?
Try news-announce-newusers@uunet.uu.net.
Jonathan Kamens | OpenVision Technologies, Inc. | jik@security.ov.com
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