This is the first call for votes for the moderated newsgroup
"news.answers."  I will first present the vital statistics about the
vote itself, and then the proposed charter for the newsgroup.


			  VOTING INFORMATION
			  ------ -----------

VOTING PERIOD:

	The vote will run from Thursday, August 15, 00:00:00 GMT, 1991
	to Sunday, September 15, 00:00:00 GMT, 1991.  Any votes
	received before the beginning of the voting period or after
	the end of it will not be counted.

VOTE ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:

	On or around August 30, a mass acknowledgement will be posted,
	listing the addresses of the individuals fromw whom votes have
	been received.  Furthermore, the vote-collecting software will
	acknowledge all votes with a return E-mail message.

REPEATED CALLS FOR VOTES:

	A second call for votes will be posted on the same day as the
	mass vote acknowledgement.

HOW TO VOTE:

	The address to which to send your vote is
	mail-server@pit-manager.mit.edu.  If this address does not
	work, other possibilities include:

		mail-server%pit-manager.mit.edu@athena.mit.edu
		mit-athena!pit-manager.mit.edu!mail-server
		mail-server%pit-manager.mit.edu@MITVMA.BITNET

	If none of these addresses works for you, please talk to your
	site administrator to find out how to send in your vote.  If
	your news software obeys the "Reply-To:" header of postings,
	then replying to this message should cause your vote to be
	sent to the correct address.

	To cast a YES vote, your message should	contain the line

		send voting/news.answers-yes

	in the "Subject:" line of the message header or in the message
	body.  To cast a NO vote, your message should contain the line

		send voting/news.answers-no

	in the "Subject:" line of the message header or in the message
	body.

	If you do not receive an E-mail message acknowledging your
	vote, or if you otherwise have trouble casting your vote, you
	can submit your vote by hand or ask for help by writing to
	postmaster@pit-manager.mit.edu (see above for other address
	formats to try if this address format does not work).

	ONLY VOTES MAILED TO ONE OF THE ABOVE TWO ADDRESSES WILL BE
	COUNTED.  Votes posted in any newsgroup will not be counted.
	Votes mailed to the address in the header of this message will
	not be counted.

	If you wish to change your vote at any time, mail a new vote
	from the same address and it will override your original vote.


			  NEWSGROUP CHARTER
			  --------- -------

NAME:

	news.answers

MODERATOR: 

	Jonathan Kamens (jik@athena.mit.edu)

PURPOSE:

	The news.answers newsgroup will serve as a repository in which
	periodic informational postings (a.k.a "Frequently Asked
	Questions" postings, or "FAQs") from other newsgroups will be
	posted.

	Although it's difficult to say exactly what qualifies as an
	FAQ that belongs in news.answers, the basic description is,
	"any posting which answers common questions and is meant to be
	read by humans belongs."  Furthermore, FAQs cross-posted in
	news.answers should have meaningful subject lines.  For
	example, an FAQ for rec.chess should have a subject line
	saying something like "Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) about
	chess," rather than just "Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)."

	For example, the comp.unix.questions "Frequently Asked
	Questions about Unix - with Answers [Monthly posting]" and the
	news.announce.newusers "Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions
	on Netiquette" would belong, as would the README file from
	comp.mail.maps.  However, the comp.mail.maps map postings and
	the readership statistics from news.lists would not.

	Where there is an ambiguity, the moderator will decide whether
	or not a posting belongs in the newsgroup.

	There are several reasons for this newsgroup to exist.  They
	include:

	* It will be easier for site administrators to keep FAQs
	  around for a long time if they are all cross-posted to one
	  newsgroup.... Administrators can make the maximum expire
	  time for news.answers very long, instead of making every
	  newsgroup with FAQs in it have a long maximum expire time.

	* It will be easier for sites that archive FAQs to generate
	  their archives, since they will need to watch just one
	  newsgroup rather than scanning the entire news spool.

	* It will provide an "quick reference" for users, in several
	  different respects.  Users who want to browse through the
	  various FAQs that the USENET has to offer will be able to do
	  so in just one newsgroup.  Users who want to find an FAQ
	  from a particular newsgroup but don't know its subject can
	  search for that newsgroup in the headers of the articles in
	  news.answers.

	* Software for retrieving FAQs can also be simplified to use
	  news.answers as the basis for FAQ searches.

MECHANISM:

	The FAQ maintainers who want their FAQs to appear in
	news.answers will mail the moderator a copy of the FAQ.  The
	moderator will then respond either (in most cases) agreeing
	that the FAQ belongs in news.answers, possibly with minor
	modifications (e.g. a more detailed subject line), or (in a
	few cases) rejecting it as inappropriate for news.answers.

	FAQs that are approved will be assigned a unique (to
	news.answers) archive name, which the FAQ maintainer should
	put in an "Archive-Name:" line at the top of the FAQ.  For
	example, the comp.unix.questions FAQ might be given the
	archive name "unix-faq", in which case "Archive-Name:
	unix-faq" would be added to the top of the FAQ.  Multi-part
	postings will be so labeled in the "Archive-Name:" line, for
	example, "Archive-Name: X-faq/part1".

	Maintainers of approved FAQs will be reminded to make sure to
	put appropriate Followup-To: (and possibly Reply-To:) headers
	in their postings to prevent users from trying to followup
	into a moderated newsgroup.

	Once an FAQ has been approved or news.answers, its maintainer
	can post it directly to the group himself, by indicating in
	the header of the message that it was approved by the
	news.answers moderator.  FAQ maintainers who don't know how to
	do that can contact the news.answers moderator to find out.

	This should be emphasized: The moderator of news.answers will
	not actually be posting copies of FAQs in the newsgroup.
	Instead, the moderator's job will be to approve FAQs, which
	will then be cross-posted by their maintainers to the
	newsgroup, and to watch the newsgroup to make sure unapproved
	postings do not appear in it.  However, the moderator should
	be willing to assist those FAQ maintainers who would like the
	moderator to post their FAQs for them, and/or who would like
	help in figuring out how to properly go about posting a
	periodic FAQ.

	The moderator of news.answers will also run a mailing list of
	FAQ maintainers and other interested parties, for discussion
	about creating, maintaining and archiving FAQs.
