Archive-name: bahai-faith/welcome
Posting-Frequency: monthly
Last-Modified: 7-April-1992

Welcome! to the soc.religion.bahai newsgroup. This article is one of
several that shall be posted periodically.


PURPOSE

The group will act as a non-threatening forum for discussing and
sharing information about the tenets, history, and texts of the Baha'i
Faith. Prior to its formation there was a good amount of traffic on
this topic in other newsgroups; this group provides a "single point of
contact" for such discussion.

Examples of posts that fall within the group's scope are:

* The Baha'i Faith's relation to other religions
* Relevance of Baha'i principles to current world events/problems
* Analysis of particular scriptural passages or themes
* General Q & A

MODERATOR POLICIES

The newsgroup will be subject to standards of Baha'i consultation, a
decision-making process whose salient features include frank yet
respectful statement of views and the concerted, open-minded search
for truth. In practice, the moderators will reject personal attacks
(flames) directed at individual posters, similarly inflammatory
attacks directed at religious institutions, and articles which use
offensive language. These guidelines are intended to regulate only
the tone of the discussions, and not their contents.

Repetitive postings (such as multiple responses to one request for a
book reference) may also be rejected. Any rejected article will be
returned to the sender with an explanation. The moderators may also,
when it appears helpful, insert clarifying remarks in posts, with the
intent of maintaining a good signal/noise ratio.

SUBSCRIPTIONS

At USENET sites, one is subscribed to all newsgroups, including
soc.religion.bahai, by default. If soc.religion.bahai does not appear
on your system, request that your news administrator make it
available.

In the near future, the soc.religion.bahai newsgroup will be gatewayed
to USENET from a moderated Internet mailing list, bahai-faith, which
will share soc.religion.bahai's policies. At that time, those without
USENET access may address subscription and unsubscription requests to

bahai-fai...@oneworld.wa.com

If you have access to both USENET and Internet email, the former
medium is generally preferable, as it requires fewer network resources
per additional subscriber.

SUBMISSIONS

Once the bahai-faith mailing list is available, its readers will
submit articles to the moderators by mailing them to

bahai...@oneworld.wa.com

Please note that the distinction between the bahai-faith and
bahai-faith-request addresses is that administrivia will be handled at
the latter. (This distinction applies to most other mailing lists as
well.)

At USENET sites that provide automatic mailing in support of moderated
newsgroups, posting to soc.religion.bahai will transparently mail the
article to the moderators. At other sites articles will need to be
mailed explicitly to the moderators, by means of the mailing list
address:

bahai...@oneworld.wa.com

NETIQUETTE

Please bear in mind that, because of the gatewayed nature of
soc.religion.bahai and bahai-faith, each posted article will appear in
both a USENET newsgroup and an Internet mailing list. The combined
technical limitations of these forums require that a "least common
denominator" approach be used in posting articles.

Specifically, authors should be aware that:

* USENET news has a massive readership, as articles are replicated on
literally thousands of hosts; mailing list readerships are generally
much less extensive

* except for the Subject: header, mailing list articles have no
built-in way of referencing previous articles

* whereas news facilitates the direction of responses to either the
entire readership (via a "Follow-up") or an individual author (via a
"Reply"), a mailing list requires that the user explicitly rewrite
an address for one of these tasks (depending on the list's
configuration) by altering the default To: header or possibly just
adding a Cc: header in a mail reply

* a mailing list subscriber's host may have quite limited mail
storage, so article length is a concern

Therefore, the following suggestions are offered for your
consideration before posting.

An option in requests for specific information (how do I reach
someone, where is this quotation to be found, etc.) is to ask
explicitly that all replies be mailed directly to the poster, who may
then post a summary if it is of general interest. This would result
in only 2 messages (or perhaps just one) being seen by all
subscribers, which could be desirable in some contexts. Likewise,
responses to such requests may, in some cases, be most appropriately
addressed just to the original poster.

Rather than posting a paper, essays, long news account, etc., please
submit an announcement of the item, asking that readers respond via
private mail in order to obtain the item.

If you quote a previously posted article, please limit the amount of
quoted text that you include. One may generally assume that readers
have already seen an article to which one is responding. Therefore,
you need only quote as much as required for establishing a context.

Please choose your Subject: heading carefully!

Our thanks for your help in maintaining a good "signal to noise"
ratio.

With best wishes,

Bill Baker, Aaron Nabil Eastlund, Babak Kashef, Mark Towfiq, and Rick
Troxel, Moderators