CHARTER: rec.humor.jewish

The Jewish people have always been able to laugh at their lives and culture. Rec.Humor.Jewish, is for anyone who wants to share and discuss humor, primarily humor as it pertains to Jews, their culture, Israel, and the Jewish religion. Non-Jewish humor will also be accepted. The whole idea is to make people laugh!

A. Unacceptable postings: (Postings *must* follow these guidelines. Posts which do not will be returned to the sender with a copy of the charter.)

1.) Anti-Semitic - i.e. those which call for genocide and violence against Jews, and derogatory or false characterizations which would tend to perpetuate anti-Semitism.

2.) Revisionist - i.e. those which deny the Holocaust.

3.) Postings from individuals and/or groups who, in submissions to RHJ, have openly advocated harm against the Jewish people.

4.) Website announcements which are not related to Judaism, except for website announcements for "not Jewish, just funny" (NJJF) humor, unless those websites feature anti-Semitic "humor".

5.) Excessively crossposted Articles - articles posted at the same time to four or more newsgroups.

6.) Trolls, spam, off-topic or offensive posts - Posts which, in the moderator's judgement, would have the primary effect of disrupting the newsgroup.

7.) Personal messages - posts which contain comments directed at an individual and would be best if communicated directly to him/her.

8.) Threads which are no longer on topic as determined by the board of moderators. Once a thread or subject has been discontinued, future postings to the thread will be rejected. The poster(s) will be encouraged to move continued discussion to a more appropriate newsgroup or private email.

9.) Conversionists - Posts which offer or promote conversion to another religion. This would also include posts that promote so-called "Messianic Judaism" or "Hebraic Christianity".

10.) Any of the following: Large binaries; posts over 400 lines long, or more than 75 characters per line of original text, or those with executable or macro attachments; ROT13 encoded; damaged headers, and/or other non-standard formats which are incompatible with the RHJ robo- moderator and/or most newsreaders. PGP-type signatures would be permitted.

11.) Postings with explicit sexual content (XXX-rated), or which imply access to explicit sexual content are unacceptable.

12.) Submissions that are exact duplicates (other than header, sig, formatting) of posts submitted within the past 2 days.

13.) The official lingua franca of RHJ is English. Posts submitted in languages other than English will not be accepted, except as outlined in "General Behavior"(below).

14.) Commercial policy: We do not accept commercial posts, advertisements, announcements and/or endorsements for profit or non-profit endeavours, except as listed as acceptable in our "intros and sigs" policy. We also do not accept posts that direct people to a site if the act of visiting the site results in payment to the site-owner or a third party. However, we will accept submissions that offer links to non-commercial Jewish humor sites, subject to the other items of our charter. We review this policy on an as-needed basis. We will not post messages discussing this policy, but your comments via email are welcome. Please send them to <RHJ-board@kamens.brookline.ma.us>.

15.) Copyrighted works: (see RHJ's copyright FAQ). Copyrighted materials will be rejected. Please do not submit copyrighted materials or portions thereof.

16.) Intros and Sigs: Commercial intros are NOT permitted. Commercial sigs ARE permitted to a maximum of 4 lines or 320 characters (whichever is less), exclusive of one divider line, provided that the submission is part of an on-topic post. Non-commercial intros and sigs ARE permitted. Intros are limited to a maximum of three lines or 240 characters (whichever comes first), exclusive of divider lines. Non-commercial footers may not exceed 20 lines.

B. General Behavior: (All postings are *encouraged* to follow these guidelines. Postings which fail to follow these guidelines will be forwarded a copy of the FAQ and charter, but the message *will* be still be posted.)

1.) Posters are expected to maintain a basic tone of civility.

2.) Posters should not make derogatory remarks about religious practices or the lack of them.

3.) Posters should refrain from making derogatory comments about other religious, racial, or ethnic groups.

4.) Identifying Tags: Posters of the following categories are encouraged to use the following tags:

NJJF - Not Jewish just funny

NFJJ - Not funny, just Jewish

MAY-OFFEND - May contain offensive language or reference

ANNOUNCE - Announcement from the board of RHJ. For board use only.

INFO - announcements from others than the board (not in current use)

ADVERT - Non-Profit Advertisement (not in current use)

META - discussions of RHJ policy (not in current use)

If posters fail to use these tags, the moderator(s) reserve the right to insert them without prior consent. Additional tags may be created should the need arise.

5.) Use of languages other than English: Use of Hebrew, Yiddish, or other Jewish Diaspora languages is acceptable if a translation is provided. Hebrew and Yiddish in common usage (such as words in prayers and common Jewish conversation), particularly words appearing in our NG's glossary, are acceptable without an accompanying translation. However, if there is no translation provided, it is up to the moderator to determine whether the words are "in common usage", and we reserve the right to reject posts which we cannot understand.

6.) Although HTML posts are currently accepted, we urge posters to refrain from using HTML encoding. Using HTML is considered bad netiquette.

C. Rejected Messages and Appeals

The Board of Moderators will try to make sure that actions listed above will not be applied to users who commit infractions inadvertently or because they have misunderstood our policies.

A poster whose post has been rejected or whose name has been placed on the auto-reject list has the right to appeal to the moderators of this newsgroup. The poster may then e-mail the moderator(s) at the appeals address (see below). The decision of the moderators is final.

D. Moderation Policy

The moderation of RHJ combines robo-moderation and a moderation panel to set standards for civil discourse and provide guidance for newcomers, but also allow express posting. The group will provide a supportive atmosphere for newcomers to RHJ and/or Usenet by issuing periodic postings listing the groups charter and posting guidelines.

The robo-moderator searches every submission to rec.humor.jewish for certain trigger words, forwarding any submissions containing these trigger words to the panel of human moderators for review. The list of trigger words is maintained by the moderators, who add words as needed.

Submissions from people on the express poster list are scanned for trigger words, as described above. Any messages including such trigger words will be referred to a moderator. All other posts from express posters will be accepted and posted by the robo-moderator without human review.

Submissions from those not on the express poster list which clearly fall into one of the categories referenced in the Charter under "unacceptable postings" will be automatically rejected. A note will be sent to the author (or apparent author) including the rejected post and explaining the reason(s) for rejection. All other submissions from non-express posters will be referred to the moderation queue.

Posters can get on the express posting list by posting to the group; their posts will be reviewed by the moderation panel, and after four acceptable posts, *and* upon request, *and* upon approval of the board, they will be placed on the express posting list and sent a notification of this change in status. The board reserves the right to revoke express posting status if submissions are found to violate RHJ's charter.

If a moderator accepts the article, it is posted to the newsgroup. If the moderator feels the article should be rejected, that moderator writes a comment explaining why and notifies the sender of the rejection. Any moderator who is unsure about the appropriateness of a post may poll the moderation board for additional opinions.

The number of active moderators in the moderation panel is currently six. Additional moderators may be recruited from the readership as demand warrants. If a moderator wants to retire from the moderation panel, he or she agrees to make a public statement at least one month prior to retirement so that a replacement moderator may be found. When vacancies occur, anyone may volunteer to become a moderator or advisor with the consent of more than half of the current moderation panel. Moderators or advisors may be removed by a vote of two-thirds of the moderation panel. Moderators may request to be put on inactive status due to personal demands. If this inactive status exceeds six months, the moderator position will be considered vacant, and a replacement may be sought.

E. Disclaimer

- The moderators of this newsgroup are not responsible for truthfulness or legality of any of the posts. - The approval of a post by a moderator is NOT an endorsement by the moderator or board. - Posters assume full responsibility for the content of their posts. - Readers using information that appears in the newsgroup do so at their own risk. - Posters agree that by posting items to this newsgroup they indemnify and hold harmless the directors and service providers. - The copyright for all posts remains with the poster, the poster's source, in the public domain, or as appropriate.

F. How to Contact RHJ:

For rejection appeals: rhj-board@kamens.brookline.ma.us <mailto:rhj-board@kamens.brookline.ma.us> For general questions: rhj-board@kamens.brookline.ma.us <mailto:rhj-board@kamens.brookline.ma.us> If your ISP doesn't carry RHJ: rhj-board@kamens.brookline.ma.us <mailto:rhj-board@kamens.brookline.ma.us> Technical contact address: rhj-admin@kamens.brookline.ma.us <mailto:rhj-admin@kamens.brookline.ma.us> Article submission address: RHJ@kamens.brookline.ma.us <mailto:RHJ@kamens.brookline.ma.us>

Rev. 12/17/00

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