Folks,

I generally take a hands-off approach to the administration of this
news server, in the (correct) belief that it will in general self-
moderate. This has worked fairly well for more than five years. As
a rule I do not read the groups in detail and rely on community and
co-admin's feedback to let me know what's going on.

In particular please be aware that I am not about to get into writing
legalistic AUP's that get ignored (or mis-interpreted) anyhow.

I want to make it clear right now that I will *not* accept any ongoing
behaviour (particularly in the groups outside off-topic) that could
end up in either -

  (a) the web view of these groups being "net-nannied" by blocking
      sites (for all I know this has already happened),

  (b) the site downgraded or mis-classified by search engines such as
      Google due to the presence of discussions on certain topics that
      do not belong here, or

  (c) that would cause average users to want to avoid the server or
      group in question.

In case the fairly "open-ended" nature of the above statement causes
concern, sorry, but I'm not going to turn it into a formal AUP nor am
I willing to argue the definition of what an 'average user' is and what
one would or would not like to see. I am expecting common sense to
prevail here. While I understand that some involved in art like to, on
occasions, 'push the boundary' of taste, and that this is an accepted
practice on some other servers, it is not acceptable here.

Over the years this server has turned into not only a superb form of
support for POV-Ray but also a real community of people, which is a
thing I am happy to see and which I want to preserve. Those who would
choose to disturb that sense of community (whether intentionally or
not) are asked to revise their ways.

For the benefit of new users reading this message and wondering what
right I have to make these statements, or who want to get into some
sort of argument over 'free speech': please be advised that this is
a privately-owned computer system which happens to host some discussion
groups. The old saying "my server, my rules" is a blunt but nevertheless
accurate depiction of the situation. People connect to this system (and
their posts remain on its hard disk) by invitation. Please keep this in
mind.

-- Chris Cason
   News server administrator
   [followups set to povray.general]

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