For your newsgroups file:

dfw.flame

For flaming and discussion related to flaming in the coverage area of the dfw.* hierarchy USENET newsgroups

CHARTER

Area of Coverage of dfw.flame

There are no specific boundaries for this group. The dfw.* newsgroup hierarchy was designed to serve the region that includes but is not limited to what is commonly known as North Central Texas. dfw.flame roughly encompasses an area from the Louisiana and Oklahoma borders to Eastland TX to the west and Hillsboro TX to the south. This includes (with slight variances to accommodate local dialing areas): Wichita Falls, Archer City, Graham, Breckenridge, Eastland, Stephenville, Glen Rose, Cleburne, Hillsboro, Corsicana, Athens, Jacksonville, Henderson, Joaquin, and all cities in Texas north or east of the listed cities. This includes the Fort Worth and Dallas areas.

Intended Use of dfw.flame

The news group dfw.flame exists for two purposes.

1. One, is a general flame post that would not necessarily fit into other dfw regional groups, all of which specifically exclude flaming, and harassing type messages, yet would still be appropriate for this regional area.

   For instance, a flame that "Joe's Junked Jalopies" treated you badly, or, in a more personal note, Recently I realized that AT&T has been billing me thirteen bucks a month for the right to open their mail, billing me for an international plan and other goodies I am billed for but don't use and never subscribed to. Although ATT is national, this was an attempt to steal from me, locally, and they refuse to refund me for the theft. Although *I* will take this up with the regulatory agencies instead of a flame, it would have been suitable material for dfw.flame.

2. Second, a post regarding another online user, especially when a discussion in another dfw regional group was approaching flame status. More specifically, the purpose of dfw.flame is to have a place to vent frustrations, ridicule where appropriate, and reply, without cluttering the other groups with messages most people would not have an interest in reading. By keeping dfw.flame ready and promoted as a flame group, discussions in the other dfw.* groups can be encouraged, and should draw more users, who tend to be turned off by the flamers.

   The posting of libelous falsehoods and scurrilous messages (including posts forged to appear to be from someone else or some other organization), and other acts viewed as illegal in the State of Texas or in the United States are not permitted. The USA constitutional grant of free speech does not include the right to make Libelous and Scurrilous statements in any public forum or medium.

Cross-posting guidelines for dfw.flame

If cross posting is done, it is to be done only in the originating post, taking a thread *to* dfw.flame. This is done by posting in the original group, with followups set to dfw.flame, (This will be both a written advisory at the top of the post as well as an entry in your posting addresses. If in doubt, ask how to do this the first time. Then just add dfw.flame *ONLY* to the group list. After that, posts are *not* to be continued cross posted, back and forth between the two groups. Under no circumstances should cross posting to dfw.flame include a third news group, regardless of the group hierarchy.

Example.

Subject: dfw.general is wonderful

Followups set to dfw.flame

On ...... someone@somewhere wrote..
<snipped>
OK, "Someone", it is obvious that we cannot agree on this discussion , and the discussion has completely left the original subject area. I am posting a reply to dfw.flame. Please keep this leg of the discussion there.

The above is only an example.

In Agent you would add, "dfw.flame" in the "Followup-to" field in the expanded fields section. Other news readers work in a similar fashion. If your newsreader does not support "followups to", then don't cross post.

Topics Inappropriate for posting in dfw.flame

This group is not for flaming of entities outside of the area covered by the dfw.* hierarchy newsgroups, for instance, national political or religious figures. All normal rules of USENET behavior, especially threats, and trolls apply here the same as any other news dfw.* news group.

The following types of net abuse are severe wastes of bandwidth. As many smaller sites are connected via slow dial-up links, and may by paying per-minute charges, this charter allows for the on-sight cancellation of any of the following abuses.

1. "Make Money Fast" (MMF) chain letters and pyramid/Ponzi schemes. Such schemes are Federal felonies. On Usenet, promoting waste of bandwidth is the equivalent of a crime because the system would break down if such activity was left unchecked.
2. Binaries, such as uuencoding or MIME base 64.
3. MIME/HTML posts, and in particular any posting using a content- encoding other than 7bit, 8bit, or quoted-printable. Most users reading Usenet do not use a Web browser, and HTML is difficult or impossible to read to interpret the content Some posters who post HTML also include a plain text version of the message.This is redundant and wasteful. Please save HTML for the Web.
4. "spew", the reposting of old articles with new Message-ID's.
5. "test" messages, Please post these to a test newsgroup.
6. Excessively multiple-posted articles.
7. Articles cross-posted to or from any other newsgroup.
8. Articles that do not have particular relevance to the D/FW Metro Area.
9. Commercial ads, posts, or advertisements, including URL links to such.

This charter permits the dfw.* Usenet News Administrators to cancel any article posted in the dfw.flame newsgroup which does not have particular relevance to the Dallas/Ft. Worth Area, or is in violation of a relevant dfw.* charter. Any D/FW Metro area resident may send e-mail to the posters news administrators for dfw.flame charter violations.

Article Format

1. Articles posted to dfw.flame MUST be flat-ASCII. This means:
   1. No Binary postings, uuencoded or base64.
   2. No MIME encoded messages. Posts SHOULD be readable by the simplest text-only newsreader.
   3. No HTML, although HTML-like emoticons are acceptable.
   4. No characters with a value greater than 127 in any part of the post.

2. Posts SHOULD be shorter than 30K in size. Longer items SHOULD be made available for FTP or HTTP download and a pointer to that file posted.

3. Posts MUST contain a valid From address, unless the ".invalid" domain is used (see RFC 1036). Spam blocks are acceptable. By definition USENET newsgroups are a broadcast medium. If you have a post that needs to be anonymous, it is not a valid topic for dfw.flame. Post this material elsewhere.

4. ROT13 encoding SHOULD NOT be used on any field in the headers. Nor should any attempts, except minimal spam blocks, be made to obscure the origins of the posting.

5. Posts MUST contain a "Abuse-Reports-To:" or "X-Complaints-To:" header with a valid email address. When RFC1036 is updated, this line SHOULD be adjusted to comply with the latest specifications. Adding or replacing this header is the responsibility of the news server where the article was injected.

Failing to follow the above formatting requirements could result in an article being canceled instantly and without warning by an authorized moderation device (human or otherwise) for the group in question. Articles cross-posted to other groups and dfw.flame must still follow the criteria of dfw.flame and be subject to these rules.

Questions can be posted to the group if you are just unsure and want to know before doing something.

Questions in general and in reference to this Charter can be answered in the FAQ posted to the group once a week.

First written on DEC. 1, 1999