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WADO KARATE FORUM CHARTER

http://www.egroups.com/groups/wadokarate

LAST REVISED: 19 March 2002

MAINTAINED BY: Matthew Witherspoon <mattwitherspoon@...>
David Taylor <wado_dave@...>

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CHARTER:

The purpose of this group shall be to establish and maintain a forum for the
open discussion of topics of interest to the worldwide community of students of
the art of Wado Karate(encompassing students of Wado-Ryu, Wado-Kai, Shindo
Yoshin Ryu Jiu-jitsu, and any other similarly interested groups relating to Wado
as created by the founder, Hironori Ohtsuka).

The discussion is intended to include the sharing of information, opinion, and
ideas between practitioners of Wado Karate. Specific discussions will include,
but are not limited to, technical aspects of the art, teaching methodology and
philosophy, competitive aspects of the art, training discussions, and general
discourse. The group shall be a medium for the free and fair exchange of
information and opinion for students of Wado Karate from all facets of the art.

Commercial advertisement for the sole purpose of promoting a contributor's
particular school, operation, place of business, or products for sale, is
prohibited. This shall not exclude works of a genuinely informational nature
that touch the subject of commercial promotion, such as a discussion of good
business practices needed to successfully operate a for-profit Karate school;
discussion of the merits of available martial-arts equipment, supplies, and
related products; and postings of dates and locations of open seminars and
competitions that would be of interest to the community as a whole.

The discussion shall specifically exclude:

o any and all unsolicited advertisement of products or services

o posts containing binary attachments, with the specific exception of PGP
signatures (alternative opportunities for binary file inclusion are available
using the eGroups Wado Karate Forum's Files Section. If you want to share a
binary or HTML file, go to http://groups.yahoo.com/group/wadokarate and upload
it to our "FILES" section)

o material that cannot be considered to be of interest to the Wado Karate
community as a whole

o obvious flames, trolls, or other messages of an abusive or combative nature
designed to draw readers into unproductive off-topic discussion.

o profanity.

END CHARTER

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>>>>>CHARTER MAINTENANCE

This Charter will be provided to each new poster as they begin to contribute,
and will be posted on a monthly basis to the body of the group itself.



>>>>>TECHNICAL AND STYLE REQUIREMENTS

Binary files should not be posted via message to the Forum. If you have a
binary you'd like to share, place it in a binary-hierarchy newsgroup or a web
page, and then post a text-only pointer in the Forum; or upload it to the
eGroups Wado Karate Forum's Files Section, which is specifically dedicated for
this type of display. Binary files that are uploaded to the File Section must
follow the same guidelines as described above for regular message posts.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/wadokarate/files/

All posts to the Forum are required to be in plain text only. No HTML, no MIME,
no RTF, and no attachments whatsoever. This is a text forum. Some contributors
may still be participating from legacy equipment that cannot handle newer
formats, especially those participating from colleges and universities.

Post in ASCII plain text only. Posters who violate this rule shall be warned
once, politely, and given help if they do not know how to set their mail reader
to text-only mode. After the initial warning, contributors who violate the
plain-text rule will be subject to suspension from the Forum.

PGP signatures are the specific exception to this guideline.



>>>>>MEMBER MAINTENANCE

The listing of your personal information, and the method that you wish to use to
read the Forum messages, may be changed, edited, or updated at any time at:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/wadokarate/members/

Yahoo! Groups maintains a small personal profile of forum members that can be
modified or disabled as you prefer. You also may choose from three methods of
reading the forum - each message as an individual e-mail; a daily summary of
messages to the forum; and reading the messages from the eGroups website.
Messages are maintained on the Web at:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/wadokarate/messages



>>>>>AN APOLITICAL FORUM

The Wado Karate Forum is intended to be, as far as may be possible, an
apolitical forum.

Discussion on political topics should generally be limited to members who have
the knowledge to speak with true authority. No post in the form of "I heard this
from my sensei, therefore you stink" - that is, second- or third-hand
information - can be considered as anything more than inflammatory hearsay and
will be considered as such. Contributors here speak with nothing more than their
own voices at all times, unless and until they can quote reliable and easily
accessible sources, such as in-print books.

This guideline does not prohibit discussion on topics of a political nature that
are of special interest to the community as a whole.



>>>>>ETIQUETTE AND RESPECT

The Forum expects a general level of civility to be maintained at all times.
Those who have differing opinions are expected to be excruciatingly polite to
their adversaries when at all possible (see the 'apolitical' section above.) The
Forum is for civil discourse only.

Personal conflicts and/or vendettas are expected to remain personal and private
unless and until one or more parties can provide exacting proof that the topic
is worth discussion by the whole community. Members who engage in ad hominem
attacks, with or without a perceived cause, shall be sharply censured and
subject to suspension or expulsion from the Forum.

It is an acknowledged and recognized rule in this newsgroup that the first party
or parties in a discussion to resort to insults, name-calling, or threats has
forfeited the argument. You launch the first tomato; you lose the argument, and
your credibility. This is a more specific case of "Godwin's Law", which states:

"As a thread or topic of discussion in a Usenet newsgroup continues, the
probability that one or more participants will bring up Hitler, Nazis, or
Fascism approaches one."

Thus, when the first insult or exchange of personal attacks is launched, the
party attacked should post to invoke Godwin's Law, declare the thread dead, and
'kill file' the topic and the offender.



>>>>>ETIQUETTE AND RESPECT - THREATS

Contributors to this forum are reminded that the issuance of threats to do
physical, bodily harm to another member of the community constitutes an illegal
act in most of the countries and political bodies in which contributors reside,
and your writing can and will be used against you.

If you issue any kind of threat to do physical harm to another contributor, then
we will take any and all steps necessary to identify you to your local
authorities.



>>>>>ETIQUETTE AND RESPECT - CREDENTIALS

"On USENET, no one knows you're a dog."

It is a given that on the Internet, people can and do claim to be anything and
anyone. A troll with an exceptional vocabulary or skill with the written word
can, for a while, represent himself or herself as a dan-ranked practitioner,
until their lack of knowledge gives them away.

o It is considered poor manners to call into question any contributor's
credentials at any time.

o It is also considered poor form to post *your* credentials as a source of
authority, unless you can also provide physical proof to the community in
general. (Internet documents such as personal or club websites are not
considered legitimate proof for this purpose.) Other contributors, who know or
have met you personally, if your credentials are crucial to a point of
discussion taking place, may vouch you for at any time.

o No one is required to speak to their credentials, age, experience, or any
other topic of this nature.

It is expected that you will become known and respected by the content and
quality of the information and arguments you provide in your participation in
the group. No other form of credentialing is worth the electrons it is carried
on.

o Calling into question another contributor's credentials without also being
able to provide physical proof to back your gambit is grounds for the
invocation of the special case of Godwin's Law.



>>>>>TOPICAL MATTER

As from the Charter, appropriate subject matter will be of interest to the
community as a whole. Specifically allowed are the traditional informative,
non-commercial postings announcing special Seminars and Tournament events.
Specifically disallowed is the blatant advertising of a particular commercial
school. We want to know about seminars, tournaments, and events. We don't want
anyone using this Forum as free advertising for their place of business.

No deliberate trolling is allowed. In this context, a troll is defined as a
posting on a subject or topic that the author has no true interest, but has the
motive of drawing the body of members into unproductive and usually inflammatory
discussion. Members are encouraged to read all contributions carefully at all
times, and to consider whether or not any particular work may be a troll.



>>>>>LIVING DOCUMENT

This Charter is a work in progress. It will change and grow. The body of
members is encouraged to make frequent suggestions on how to improve its scope
and breadth.