This is a formal CALL FOR DISCUSSION for a moderated group.  
The formal proposal follows:


NAME OF GROUP:  comp.society.folklore
MODERATOR: Eric S. Raymond  <eric@snark.thyrsus.com>

TOPICS TO BE COVERED:

1. Maintenance and discussion of the Jargon File.

2. Posting/archiving of anecdotes, facetia, and satire illuminating aspects
   of hacker culture, including things like computer filks and war stories
   about famous hacks of the past.

3. Accumulation of serious oral-history material from the early days
   and forgotten but interesting byways of modern computing.

4. Posting/archiving of `retrocomputing' software, that is emulations of
   archaic environments or tools or `code satires' (things like the JCL and
   ADVENT shells, INTERCAL, the 029 card-punch emulating editor,

5. Discussion & criticism of hacker-history compendia  in other media, esp.
   books like Jennings' _The_Devouring_Fungus_, Stoll's _Cuckoo's_Egg_, and
   Steven Levy's _Hackers_.

CHARTER:

   To give the hacker culture an on-line memory. Postings would be carefully
selected but not (in general) edited. An archive would be maintained and
made publicly available.

   A fair percentage of the traffic would probably be humor of various sorts,
but the criterion for inclusion would be primarily its value as carriers for
hacker memes.

   Attempts to pursue religious wars using the group as a forum would be
ruthlessly flushed.

    The group would be open to co-moderation by representatives of important
hacker subcultures past or present, subject to net consensus.


RATIONALE:

  The existing newsgroup with similar name in the ALT heirarchy has a
great deal of volume and a problem with noise.  This proposal would
create a new MODERATED group to cover much of the same material but
would endeavor to reduce the noise.  The existing ALT group would not
be affected in any way by this proposal because USENET and ALTNET are
different and ALT groups are not bound by USENET rules.  Also, the
continuation of the existing ALT group would mean that an unmoderated
forum would also exist.  Also, this new group would become the
preferred forum for discussions of the Jargon File and submissions to
the Jargon File.