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[Revised 1 August 2005]
MISC.LEGAL.MODERATED POSTING INSTRUCTIONS
1. Posting should be done in the ordinary manner by using news
software. DO NOT MAIL POSTINGS TO THE MODERATOR. If you can't post using news
software, mail your message to <mailto:misc-legal-moderated@moderators.isc.org>.
If you need to contact one of the moderators, send your email to
<mailto:mlm-request@rev.net>
2. This is considered a public forum, and, in addition, many participants
follow the newsgroup using one or another of the usenet archive services. As
such, you should expect that all approved submissions will be archived. The
"X-no-archive" header will be removed.
3. Nearly all submissions will either be approved by the moderator,
or rejected and returned to the sender. If you post a message and it
isn't rejected and doesn't appear on misc.legal.moderated, one of 3
things is most likely to have happened:
a. your news software or your news server's software is broken
or misconfigured,
b. you submitted a post with munged headers, or
c. you sent spam (and were reported to your provider; have a
nice day).
Note that since this is a moderated forum, there is an inherent delay between
when you submit an article and when it is either rejected or posted. Depending
on the moderators' other commitments, this delay can sometimes strecth to a few
days. Please be patient before contacting the moderators about a missing post
or reposting it.
4. The moderator will evaluate each message based on the criteria
listed in the misc.legal.moderated Charter (see below). The following
factors will be considered:
a. The percentage of the message devoted primarily to issues
of law (as described in the Charter).
b. The amount of quoted material in the message, relative to
the amount of original material added by the poster. Quoted
blocks longer than 22 lines are presumptively overlong; edit
or summarize the original as needed; the summary or brief
quotation should come at the beginning of the post. Conversely,
followups which provide no context at all (no quoted text or
summary of the prior article) will probably be rejected.
c. The degree to which the message is repetitive of prior
messages, including multiple posts of the same article in
different newsgroups.
d. Commercial solicitation (absolutely prohibited).
e. The civility of the message and its *ad hominem* nature.
Potentially defamatory submissions will be rejected; the
problem can often be remedied by "John Doe"-izing references
to specific persons or organizations.
f. The degree to which the message contains blatantly false
assertions of law.
g. The degree to which the message contains legal assertions
which, while not obviously false, are completely unsubstantiated.
h. The "value added" by the message to the thread. Note that in
particular, posts that consist of little more than "thanks for the
help" will _not_ be approved. The moderators understand that thanking
people for help is a polite thing to do, but nonetheless, that isn't
appropriate for the forum. If you would like to thank a particular
poster for their comments, it would be best to do so privately via
email.
i. Proper formal elements such as legible formatting (e.g.,
lines no longer than 75 characters; no HTML), accurate
attributions, apposite subject lines, and concise .signature
blocks (4 lines is plenty for anyone). These are age-old Usenet
rules, and will be enforced.
5. Generally speaking, the moderator will post a warning message when
a thread is veering away from appropriate subject matter, but the
moderator reserves the right to reject posts without prior warning if
they are blatantly inappropriate.
6. Posters are free to munge headers (such as
From: biff@willy.NOSPAMloman.org
and leaving aside forgeries in the name of an actual third party).
Spammers harvest mail addresses from Usenet, unfortunately, and munging
headers is one way to escape their clutches. Acceptable on-charter
submissions will be posted notwithstanding header munging or
anonymizing.
However, if an article fails to meet m.l.m posting criteria, it will be
rejected as usual and it is likely that the poster will not
receive the rejection notice if the 'From:' address has been munged.
This applies even where the true address of the author may be evident
but might require decoding or extraction (for example:
janedoeNOSPAM@some-isp.net or d*o*g*b*e*r*t@a*o*l*.*c*o*m) or where the true
address is listed elsewhere (e.g., in the .sig block).
If you are posting something to which you are expecting a response from one
of the moderators, please have the common sense and courtesy _not_ to use a
munged address. And in any event, such inquiries are better emailed to
mlm-request@rev.net.
==============================================================================
CHARTER: MISC.LEGAL.MODERATED [original text, with additions in
brackets]
Name: Misc.legal.moderated
Status: Moderated. Larry Kolodney has volunteered to serve as initial
moderator.
[Effective 12/27/94, Mark Eckenwiler named co-moderator.]
[Effective March 1998, Larry Kolodney resigned as co-mod.]
[Effective June 1998, Bernie Cosell named co-moderator.]
Charter: Misc.legal.moderated is for the discussion of law and
legal theory. It is recognized that these are
contested terms, and contested terrain, and that law's
domain varies from country to country. The group is
intended to provide a home for well-tempered
discussions including, but not limited to:
1. Current developments in the law including but not limited to
court decisions, legislative enactments, and executive
actions with legal implications.
2. The content and effects of existing constitutions, laws, and
rules of court at all levels: international, multi-national
(e.g. EEC, EFTA NAFTA), national, state/provincial/
departmental, and local/communal.
3. Proposals for changes to the above which have a 'legal'
content, e.g. technical proposals for changes designed to
achieve political ends (e.g. draft language for a statute or
constitutional amendment).
4. Legal doctrine, legal theory (jurisprudence), and schools of
legal interpretation and thought.
5. Legal history, legal sociology and other interdisciplinary
work of interest to lawyers, judges and/or legal scholars.
6. Professional ethics and professional discipline of legal
professionals, both in public and private life, and of their
associates and matters relating to the role of law and
lawyers in society.
7. Posts by practitioners concerning legal problems they have
encountered that may be of interest to the legal community.
8. _First-person_ anecdotes and commentary by non-practitioners
concerning encounters they have had with lawyers, the
police, the courts or other entities which administer the
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