Posting Guidlines for sci.archaeology.moderated

Moderation Policy:

Articles may be requests for information, announcements of relevance, etc. Lengthy quoting (more than 30 lines) of source material must be accompanied by commentary or by other text which ties it to on-going discussions. Articles which quote substantially the same source material repetitively will not be approved. Articles consisting of materials which are available on-line at ftp or WWW sites will not be approved, rather pointers to sites may be given. Moderators may waive this rule at their discretion.

Articles which contain personal attacks of any sort, racist comments, ad hominem arguments, etc. will not be approved for posting.

Disagreements are welcome (so long as they contain no flames), but if a thread looks as though it's never going to be resolved, the moderators reserve the right to terminate it/suspend it until new evidence is produced.

Blank messages, test messages, MAKE.MONEY.FAST, binaries, uuencoded messages, and so forth, will not be approved for posting. Archaeology related advertisements for courses, jobs, new book notices, etc. will be accepted, but not advertisements for metal detectors or the sale of antiquities.

While the principle purpose of a moderated archaeology group is clearly the exchange of useful archaeological information and postings generally should be scholarly and include verifiable citations of the hard evidence which supports them, discussions of alternative perspectives which meet these criteria are not prohibited.

Although posts which reference works in which a consistent pattern of false and/or out of context claims have been demonstrated will not be considered appropriate for discussion in a moderated science group, alternatives to presently accepted views, when well researched and presented in a verifiable format, will not be denied a fair hearing.

Racist and Ethnocentric remarks will not be tolerated in postings to the moderated group. Regardless of label the quideline shall simply be whether ethnocentrism and racism are involved. For example: In the case of assumptions like those once promulgated by "Hyperdiffusionists", that cultural evolution cannot explain observed phenomena because people X "obviously" could not have produced artifact Y without help, ethnocentrism and racism are clearly present and the post should be rejected.

Moderators may, at their discretion, change the Subject: lines for threads which have strayed from the initial subject.

Cross-posting is discouraged and where they occur will obviously have to be clearly archaeologically relevant. Due to the nature of Usenet, rejected posts do not get crossposted.

Rejected articles which would be acceptable after editing will be returned to the poster with an explanation and suggestions for change. Articles rejected for other reasons may be shared with the other moderators for group consideration if the poster wishes to appeal.

Any article that contains more than fifty percent quoted material (and the author's signature shall not count as original material for purposes of determining the proportion) may be trimmed or rejected at the discretion of the moderator. In exercising this discretion, the moderator shall take readability considerations into account, such as the amount of quoted material at the beginning of the message, and the size of the blocks of quoted material. If the entire length of the article (excluding header and signature) is less than 24 lines of 80 characters, then the requirement of 50% original material may be waived at the moderator's discretion.

In keeping with Usenet netiquette conventions, signatures should be restricted to 4 or 5 lines. Moderators may, at their discretion, trim .sigs to four lines before posting articles.

All articles should have an easily identified name and email address for the poster. Because of the variety of newsreaders, all submittals should be signed with the sender's name and email address. If this is missing, moderators may add one at their discretion.


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