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Welcome to the soc.religion.bahai website! This website
concerns the newsroup soc.religion.bahai and its equivalent mailing
list, bahai-faith@bcca.org. The newsgroup acts as a non-threatening forum for discussing and
sharing information about the tenets, history, and texts of the Bahá'í
Faith.
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Welcome To Soc.Religion.Bahai
Posting-Frequency: monthly
Last-modified: March 23, 2006
Welcome to soc.religion.bahai
SPECIAL NOTE
Occasionally people receiving soc.religion.bahai via the bahai-faith mailing
list have complained that they are unable to correctly identify the
original sender of articles. Please provide a signature with your name
and correct e-mail address (preferably in Internet format) at the end
of your article; do not rely on the article header's From: field to
identify you, as this will not necessarily contain your correct e-mail
address.
WELCOME
Welcome! to the soc.religion.bahai newsgroup and its equivalent mailing
list, bahai-faith@bcca.org. This article is one of several that shall be
posted periodically. The current list of periodically posted articles is
Welcome
Introduction to the Bahá'í Faith
Bahá'í Resources on the Internet
[Up to date versions of these postings can be obtained via the web at
http://www.bcca.org/services/srb/
PURPOSE
The newsgroup will act as a non-threatening forum for discussing and
sharing information about the tenets, history, and texts of the Bahá'í
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 Bahá'í Faith's relation to other religions
Relevance of Bahá'í 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 Bahá'í 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.
The moderators will weigh the guidance available from the Bahá'í Institutions
such as the Universal House of Justice, National Spiritual Assemblies,
Continental Counselors, and Auxiliary Board members in determining the
appropriateness of postings to the newsgroup. However, it should be
understood that the moderators are an independent group not reporting
to, or directed by any of those institutions.
To avoid confusion, postings which contain unpublished, personal,
unauthorized or provisional translations of Bahá'í texts must be
clearly identified as such to distinguish them from the
authorized approved translations provided by the Bahá'í World Center.
Posts which argue for or promote a succession of authority outside the
Covenant of Bahá'u'lláh will not be posted. This does NOT preclude posts
which ask about, explain or elucidate the Covenant of Bahá'u'lláh .
Repetitive postings (such as multiple responses to one request for a
book reference) may also be rejected.
The moderators will not intentionally accept posts from individuals who can
not be reached by email. Note that this policy does not preclude anonymous
mailers, but a back-channel must exist.
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.
In order to maintain a high signal-to-noise ratio, the moderators will
not accept "me too" posts. In general, the new material should be at
least 50% of the length of the quoted material. Please snip your
quoted material to limit it to that portion you are replying to.
SRB accepts top posts, interspersed posts, and bottom posts, but if you
bottom post, (that is, if your new material is after the old material,)
we ask that you place the comment "AT BOTTOM" at the top of the post.
SUBSCRIPTIONS
At USENET sites, one is subscribed to all available 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.
The soc.religion.bahai newsgroup is gatewayed to USENET from the moderated
Internet mailing list, bahai-faith, which shares soc.religion.bahai's
policies. Those without USENET access should address subscription and
unsubscription requests to
bahai-faith-request @ bcca.org
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.
SRB is also available for both reading and posting at
http://groups.google.com. Google provides a complete archive of all
posts in soc.religion.bahai to date.
SUBMISSIONS
Readers of bahai-faith submit articles to the moderators via usenet, by
posting at google, or by mailing them to
bahai-faith @ bcca.org
Please note that the distinction between the bahai-faith and
bahai-faith-request addresses is that administrivia is handled at the latter.
(This distinction applies to most other mailing lists as well.) The
distinction is significant in that the moderators do not administer
bahai-faith; the two addresses denote entirely distinct recipients.
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-faith @ bcca.org
The moderators attempt to handle each incoming article in a timely manner,
either posting it publicly or responding to its author privately within four
days of receipt. If a post has resulted in neither of these actions after four
days, it should be assumed that one's site is not configured to support
submissions to moderated groups, and the article should be resubmitted by
mail to the above address.
Please provide a signature with your name and correct e-mail address
(preferably in Internet format) at the end of your article; do not rely on
the article header's From: field to identify you, as this will not necessarily
contain your correct e-mail address.
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 That is to say "article in reply to" threading
is NOT RELIABLE in soc.religion.bahai. PLEASE include a short quotation of the
article you are responding to in order to facilitate following threads.
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. In general, SRB will not accept posts which
exceed 200 lines.
Many readers' terminals are limited to 80 character lines
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.
Please use line lengths of no more than 75. This keeps your text within the 80
character per line limit of most terminals, in both your initial article and
in any followup articles, where it is customary to prefix each line of
quotation from another article with a few additional characters to indicate
the material is quoted.
Please be merciful to small mail systems by limiting articles to 50 KiloBytes
in length. Posts that exceed this limit should either be pared down or
subdivided; or one could submit an announcement of the item instead, asking
that readers respond via private mail in order to obtain the actual 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!
In the spirit of sharing ideas rather than wrangling over same, please
consider the following two contrasting quotations and the questions that
appear after them.
The shining spark of truth cometh forth only after the clash of differing
opinions.
`Abdu'l-Bahá , in Bahá'í Administration, p. 21
If two souls quarrel and contend about a question of the Divine questions,
differing and disputing, both are wrong. The wisdom of this incontrovertible
law of God is this: That between two souls from amongst the believers of God,
no contention and dispute might arise; that they may speak with each other
with infinite amity and love. Should there appear the least trace of
controversy, they must remain silent, and both parties must continue their
discussions no longer.
`Abdu'l-Bahá , in Bahá'í World Faith, pp. 428-429
In my article, is an idea being offered, expanded or clarified, or its
implications being explored?
Has it been stated previously? Or is it mostly being reiterated and/or
defended?
Have others indicated a desire to move on to another topic?
If responding to an earlier article, is it best in this case to respond to
each paragraph therein? Or is there one statement that succinctly summarizes
the earlier viewpoint? Or should a paraphrase be attempted?
Does the article express facts, or opinions? More important, is it easy to
discern which is which?
Our thanks for your help in maintaining a good "signal to noise" ratio.
With best wishes,
--The Moderation Staff:
boatright @ cjnetworks.com (Rick Boatright)
Rabia1844 @ aol.com (Susan Maneck)
albert @ verbrugh.net (Albert Verbrugh)
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