[Prev][Next][Index][Thread]
Updated SRH Reorg FAQ
The soc.religion.hindu-reorganization FAQ
This document attempts to answer some commonly asked questions about
the soc.religion.hindu reorganization proposal, and it also attempts
to dispel a lot of the myths and fallacies about the proposal.
Modification History:
18 Dec 1995: FAQ Created
21 Dec 1995: FAQ reorganized (!) and expanded
Divided into 4 sections, new sections added include
I.5, I.6, II.2, II.4, III.3, IV.4, IV.5
Some other sections expanded
The latest version of this document can be found at
http://www-ece.rice.edu/~vijaypai/srh-faq.html
Questions and answers in this document:
Section 0: Where can I find the RFD?
Section I: The proposed reorganization, and what it entails
I.1 What is the purpose of the proposal?
I.2 Will this destroy soc.religion.hindu?
I.3 Why form new groups?
I.4 Where is this discussion taking place?
I.5 Are more moderators really necessary and beneficial?
I.6 How could more moderators handle the workload problem?
Section II: The moderators and the proponents
II.1 Who are the proposed moderators?
II.2 Where are the moderators "active"?
II.3 Who are the proponents, and what do they do?
II.4 What does the GHEN (Global Hindu Electronic Network) and the
Hindu Universe have to say about the work of the proponents and
the moderators?
Section III: People involved in the RFD
III.1 Did Ajay Shah know about this RFD?
III.2 Was Ajay Shah involved with this RFD?
III.3 Did Raj Bhatnagar know about this RFD?
III.4 Where can I find the RFD, again?
Section IV: Rumors and innuendos
IV.1 What about the claim that this is politically motivated?
IV.2 What about the claim that this is an attempt to control the
content of SRH?
IV.3 Does this have any relation to soc.religion.vaishnava?
IV.4 Have the proponents/moderators refused to call themselves Hindu?
Have they said Vaishnavas are not Hindu?
IV.5 Are there double standards? Why are SRV and SRH different?
Section 0: Where can I find the RFD?
This is the most important question that can be asked, yet it seems
that much of the discussion which is taking place comes from people
who have not read the RFD. This is unfortunate, because the RFD clears
up a lot of the questions regarding the motivation of this RFD, and
the resulting scenario if this proposal passes.
The simplest place to find the RFD is on news.announce.newgroups, on
which articles generally don't disappear for a long time. It was also
cross-posted to a number of other groups, such as news.groups, such as
news.groups and soc.culture.indian. In addition, it was submitted to a
number of other moderated groups and mailing lists. All of this is
outlined in the RFD proposal.
Also, it can be found at
gopher://osiris.wu-wien.ac.at:7119/0news.announce.newgroups%3A7608
and also at
http://www-ece.rice.edu/~vijaypai/srh.html
(as an aside, apologies for mixing Indo-Arabic and Roman numerals)
Section I: The proposed reorganization, and what it entails
I.1 What is the purpose of the proposal?
An excerpt from the Rationale section of the RFD:
" There exists at present a moderated newsgroup soc.religion.hindu,
which unfortunately has several shortcomings in its existing
setup. These have recently been apparent, and this proposal seeks to
fill in a number of such oversights in SRH's construction, by making:
i> - provisions for multiple moderators to ensure quick response and
fairness;
ii> - provisions for replacement of moderators;
iii> - clear definitions of moderation guidelines;
iv> - provisions for handling disputes between an author and a
moderator;
v> - clarifications regarding what constitutes unacceptable behavior
by a moderator."
I.2 Will this destroy soc.religion.hindu?
In short, no. It will replace soc.religion.hindu with three groups:
unmoderated group talk.religion.hindu
moderated group soc.religion.hindu.moderated (renames soc.religion.hindu)
moderated group soc.religion.hindu.info
I.3 Why form new groups?
Each of the proposed groups serves a different purpose. The RFD has
sections giving the rationale for each of the groups, and a charter
for each group is provided. To summarize, soc.religion.hindu.moderated
will be where (moderated) discussion about Hinduism takes
place. Soc.religion.hindu.info will be where informational
announcement of interest to Hindus takes place, and
talk.religion.hindu will provide an unmoderated forum where other
Hinduism-discussions can take place.
I.4 Where is this discussion taking place?
This discussion is taking place on news.groups, where discussions of
this nature generally take place. Furthermore, some discussion is
taking place on soc.religion.hindu, but it should be cross-posted to
news.groups.
I.5 Are more moderators really necessary and beneficial?
More moderators will definitely help the group, since the workload of
a single moderator will be less of an issue. More importantly, the
hardware failure/unavailability of a single moderator's machine will
not be a "catastrophic" issue, as it is now. Ajay himself has
indicated (in article <4ba3ia$jao@babbage.ece.uc.edu>) that his server
is sometimes unavailable, and this impacts the group negatively. For
example, he mentions that it was down for 15 hours one day during the
RFD period, and he mentions that postings could not be made once for a
prolonged period because of a hardware upgrade.
Having multiple moderators would definitely help in this respect,
since there would not be a single location where a failure would
cause the newsgroup to effectively shut down.
I.6 How could more moderators handle the workload problem?
Ajay claims that he approves articles 4-6 times per week, but while
that may be the case since he received the RFD, it was most certainly
not correct for several months before the RFD. This is not an attempt
to find fault with Ajay, since surely his job and his family
responsibilities take up time, and nobody wants (or expects) him to
neglect those for SRH. However, it does make sense, then, to have
multiple moderators, to make the workload easier on each.
One of the proponents gathered data from the SRH archive concerning
the number of posts approved to SRH and the dates and times they were
approved. This information has been compiled, and can be found at
http://www-ece.rice.edu/~vijaypai/srh-stats.html
Be aware that this page has a number of graphs, so a graphical browser
is essential to see the full data.
Even Raj Bhatnagar seems to agree that the idea of having multiple
moderators has merit, and he has suggested ideas for how to select
more moderators. Most people who have spoken about this issue seem to
agree that multiple moderators is a good thing. While Ajay has spent a
great deal of time on moderating SRH, it does not make sense to force
any moderator to work alone on a newsgroup that large.
Section II: The moderators and the proponents
II.1 Who are the proposed moderators?
>From the RFD:
Moderator: Srinivas Kandala <srini@inrs-telecom.uquebec.ca>
Moderator: Anshuman Pandey <apandey@u.washington.edu>
Moderator: Srini Pichumani <srini@eecs.umich.edu>
Moderator: Raghu Seshadri <seshadri@cup.hp.com>
Note that the moderators represent diverse viewpoints, and this was
intentional. When a search for moderators was conducted, the goal was
to find honorable people who were familiar with Hinduism and who
cannot be said to be partial to any side. It is apparent that Ajay
Shah is not on this list, but that was his choice. Well before the RFD
was posted, Ajay was offered the opportunity to serve as a moderator
on the new groups, but he declined. The proponents, however, offered
him the opportunity to be a moderator, and still extend the offer,
should he decide to reconsider.
II.2 Where are the moderators "active"?
The moderators post to a large number of newsgroups and mailing lists,
and their names are familiar to a wide audience. The can be found on
soc.culture.indian, soc.religion.hindu, alt.hindu, soc.culture.tamil,
soc.culture.indian.telugu, rec.music.indian.classical,
rec.sport.cricket, the Indology mailing list, the India-D digest,
CricInfo, and an IRC channel or two. A DejaNews search, done properly,
will also reveal some (but not all) of their activity on various
newsgroups. However, if you are searching Dejanews, please be aware
that it does not perform a very complete search if you only give it
e-mail addresses, since one person might use several e-mail
addresses. So, a search for their first and last names is a better
choice. However, DejaNews still isn't a perfect resource in and of
itself, since it seems to not carry certain groups, like
soc.culture.tamil.
II.3 Who are the proponents, and what do they do?
As listed in the RFD, the proponents are:
Mani Varadarajan <mani@srirangam.esd.sgi.com>
Henry Groover <HGroover@Qualitas.com>
Vijay Sadananda Pai <vijaypai@ece.rice.edu>
Vivek Sadananda Pai <vivek@cs.rice.edu>
Shrisha Rao <shrao@nyx.cs.du.edu>
The proponents are the ones responsible for the administrative details
concerning the RFD _only_. They are the ones responsible for writing
the RFD, contacting moderators, etc., but they will have no say in the
newsgroup once it is created. In some sense, the proponents are like
the "sponsors" of the RFD - they handle administrative issues _only_
regarding the RFD. Once the newsgroup is created, the role of the
proponents is over.
II.4 What does the GHEN (Global Hindu Electronic Network) and the
Hindu Universe have to say about the work of the proponents and
the moderators?
The GHEN and Hindu Universe are run from Raj Bhatnagar's machine,
where groups like soc.religion.hindu and alt.hindu are also archived.
These sites are probably the largest Hindu sites, and they are
maintained by Ajay Shah as well as other people. It is interesting to
note that these sites not only contain several Hinduism-related posts
by the proponents and moderators in the archives for alt.hindu and
SRH, but this site also explicitly links to sites created by some of
the proponents. For example, the pages located at
http://rbhatnagar.csm.uc.edu:8080/interesting_links.html
http://rbhatnagar.csm.uc.edu:8080/temple_info.html
http://rbhatnagar.csm.uc.edu:8080/hindu_organizations.html
all contained links to pages created by many of the proponents as of
December 20. So, as far as the GHEN is concerned, it seems that the
proponents are most definitely interested in Hinduism.
Section III: People involved in the RFD
III.1 Did Ajay Shah know about this RFD?
Ajay knew about the pre-RFD discussions on news.groups, and he was
given a copy of the RFD well before it was posted to the
newsgroups. He was also asked to be a moderator of the newsgroups, so
he was well aware of this RFD.
III.2 Was Ajay Shah involved with this RFD?
Ajay declined the offer to be a moderator for the newsgroups, but that
was his decision. He also had the opportunity to provide feedback
regarding the RFD before it was posted. It seems that Ajay also
discussed the RFD with other people, because David Lawrence indicated
that even before the RFD was posted, he had received mail about it.
III.3 Did Raj Bhatnagar know about this RFD?
Apparently, he did not, and he states that Ajay did not inform him
about it. This is most puzzling, since Ajay was sent a copy of the RFD
well before it was publicly posted. In that time, Ajay Shah told Vijay
Pallod (a friend of Ajay's in Houston) about this RFD, and asked Vijay
Pallod to get in touch with one of the proponents. Vijay Pallod only
had the most cursory understanding of what was going on and what was
being proposed, and it was clear that he hadn't even read the
RFD. Vijay Pallod also seemed completely unaware of how Usenet worked,
and he did not even know how to read news through his access provider,
AOL. In short, Vijay Pallod was totally unfamiliar with Usenet, but
while Ajay Shah contacted Vijay Pallod and told him about the RFD, he
never bothered to inform Dr. Bhatnagar.
III.4 Where can I find the RFD, again?
Once again, check news.announce.newgroups or
gopher://osiris.wu-wien.ac.at:7119/0news.announce.newgroups%3A7608
Section IV: Rumors and innuendos
IV.1 What about the claim that this is politically motivated?
If this claim is examined, you will see that it has little support in
reality, and is more of a smokescreen than anything else. All of the
events surrounding this RFD were very public, and this RFD was not a
surprise. The pre-RFD stage, in which people were invited to
contribute to the RFD and share their comments, took place on
news.groups some time ago.
Once the RFD was drafted, a copy of it was sent to Ajay Shah well in
advance of it being posted to the newsgroups, and Ajay Shah, who is
currently the moderator of soc.religion.hindu, was asked to be one of
the moderators of the proposed newsgroups. So, it cannot be said that
the current moderator of SRH was somehow not aware of the proposal, or
that he was not asked to be involved.
In fact, Ajay Shah requested one of his friends in Houston, Vijay
Pallod, to get in touch with one of the proponents, Vivek Pai, and
discuss the RFD. All of this happened well in advance of the RFD being
posted, so it cannot be said that this RFD was a surprise. The
conversation between Vivek Pai and Vijay Pallod was lengthy and
cordial.
IV.2 What about the claim that this is an attempt to control the
content of SRH?
This is totally without merit. Ajay Shah, the current moderator of
soc.religion.hindu, was contacted about being a moderator for the
proposed groups. He declined. Had this been an attempt to control SRH
in some manner, does it make sense that Ajay would have been asked to
be moderator? This offer was made through several channels, including
publicly on news.groups, directly to Ajay, and also indirectly through
Ajay's friend, Vijay Pallod. There was no attempt to oust Ajay.
IV.3 Does this have any relation to soc.religion.vaishnava?
There is no direct link between this reorganization proposal and
soc.religion.vaishnava. There have been people claiming this is a
"revenge" move or "retaliation", but these claims don't hold up to
close examination. First of all, why would the proponents for this RFD
have contacted Ajay Shah if they wanted revenge against him? The
position of moderator is arguably the most important position in a
newsgroup, and were this some sort of vendetta, it doesn't make sense
that Ajay would have been asked to be moderator.
IV.4 Have the proponents/moderators refused to call themselves Hindu?
Have they said Vaishnavas are not Hindu?
The answer is no on both counts, and this is another misinterpretation
of what was said during the soc.religion.vaishnava discussions. The
proponents do not by any means refuse to call themselves Hindu, and,
in fact, most are involved with a number of Hindu organizations. The
second question is also a distortion of what was said during the
discussions. The proponents _never_ said that all Vaishnavas are not
Hindus by default. What _was_ said was that there are people
(especially outside of India) who follow Vaishnava religious
practices, but are not culturally Hindus. There was no attempt made to
imply that one could not be a Hindu and a Vaishnava at the same time.
IV.5 Are there double standards? Why are SRV and SRH different?
It has been pointed out that the charter for soc.religion.vaishnava and
the RFD proposal for SRH are significantly different, and that this
indicates some evil intentions. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Soc.religion.vaishnava is an auto-moderated group, which means that all
moderation decisions (for lack of a better term) are made by a computer
program. Basically, the software makes sure that a series of conditions
are met, such as
a) the article must contain at least one of a large number of
publicly-posted keywords, such as Krishna, or Vishnu, or Bhagavatam, etc
b) the article must be properly formatted (less than 80 columns, not
in all caps)
c) the article cannot be cross-posted
d) one person may submit only a small number of articles per day
These are the only criteria used to accept or reject posts to SRV, so
the charter of that group can be significantly simpler than the
charter for a group to be moderated by humans. After all, much of the
RFD for SRH discusses what sort of postings are suitable for SRH*, and
how the moderators are to handle the various groups. It also discusses
what a moderator may or may not do, and what happens when a moderator
resigns or is forced to leave for unethical behavior.
Needless to say, none of these conditions really apply to the computer
program used to moderate SRV, so it is not surprising that the RFD for
SRH does not look like the RFD for SRV did. After all, in terms of
complexity, the moderation software for SRV, while not trivial, does
not have any "intelligence" - if a post meets all those conditions,
it is accepted. The only content-based check is the check for a keyword,
and that's fairly simple.
In comparison, the moderators for SRH are _expected_ to use their own
judgement, and since no two people are identical, some rules need to
be made explicit regarding what is expected of the moderators. The RFD
is somewhat like a "contract" between the moderators and the
readership of the group. It explains what is expected of both parties.
