X-Message-Number: 7880
From: Joseph Strout <>
Newsgroups: sci.cryonics,news.announce.newgroups,news.groups
Subject: RFD: sci.cryonics (moderated)
Date: Mon, 17 Mar 1997 20:47:38 -0800
Message-ID: <>

                     REQUEST FOR DISCUSSION (RFD)
                     moderated group sci.cryonics

This is a formal Request For Discussion (RFD) for changing the status
of the existing group sci.cryonics from unmoderated to moderated.
This is not a Call for Votes (CFV); you cannot vote at this time. 
Procedural details are below.

Newsgroup lines:
sci.cryonics        Cryonics and related topics.  (Moderated)


RATIONALE: sci.cryonics

The existing unmoderated group sci.cryonics has been suffering from a
decreasing signal/noise ratio.  In addition to the usual cross-posted
spam, there have been numerous personal attacks of a highly offensive
nature posted from anonymous remailers, as well as forged messages
apparently from legitimate members of the group.  This traffic is
damaging to the members of the group, as well as to the cryonics
community as a whole.  Changing the newsgroup from unmoderated to
moderated should greatly reduce the volume of such messages, and so
enhance the value of the group.

CHARTER: sci.cryonics

Cryonic suspension is an experimental procedure whereby patients who
can no longer be kept alive with today's medical abilities are
preserved at low temperature for treatment in the future.  This
newsgroup will be the place to keep up-to-date on topics related to
cryonics, which include biochemistry of memory, low temperature
biology, new cryonics-related research and publications, legal status
of cryonics and cryonically suspended people, nanotechnology and cell
repair machines, mass media coverage of cryonics, conferences, and
local cryonics group meetings.

Unacceptable messages include personal attacks, messages posted
without a valid sender address, and any message not pertaining to the
topics above.

MODERATOR INFO: sci.cryonics

Moderator:  Keith F. Lynch <>
            <http://www.access.digex.net/~kfl/>

Keith has been active on the net for 20 years.  He is vice president
of the Life Extension Society.  He maintains an indexed and cross-
referenced archive of the Cryonet mailing list (he does not maintain
the list itself, however).

Backup Moderator: Joseph J. Strout <>
                  <http://www-acs.ucsd.edu/~jstrout/>
        
Joe has been reading sci.cryonics and the CRYONET mailing list since
1993.  He is currently pursuing his Ph.D. in Neuroscience at the
University of California, San Diego.

END MODERATOR INFO.

END CHARTER.

PROCEDURE:

This is a request for discussion, not a call for votes.  In this phase
of the process, any potential problems with the proposed newsgroups
should be raised and resolved.  The discussion period will continue
for a minimum of 21 days (starting from when the first RFD for this
proposal is posted to news.announce.newgroups), after which a Call For
Votes (CFV) will be posted by a neutral vote taker.  Please do not
attempt to vote until this happens.

All discussion of this proposal should be posted to news.groups.

This RFD attempts to comply fully with the Usenet newsgroup creation
guidelines outlined in "How to Create a New Usenet Newsgroup" and "How
to Format and Submit a New Group Proposal".  Please refer to these
documents (available in news.announce.newgroups) if you have any
questions about the process.

DISTRIBUTION:

This RFD has been posted to the following newsgroups:

  news.announce.newgroups, news.groups,
  sci.cryonics

and the following mailing list:

  CryoNet (discussion of cryonics)
      subscribe via <>

-
Proponent: Joe Strout <>
Mentor: Jonathan Grobe <>


Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=7880