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Incorporation/UnitedStates

2014-03-28T23:29:00Z

Foobar Bazbot: More spelling fixes

'''NOTE: ''' This is a simple overview for those not hugely familiar with the United States legal system to understand how its organized. It is also a good refresher for those who had US Politics many many years ago

The United States is subdivided into 50 states, 4 unincorporated organized territories, several unincorporated unorganized territories, and the District of Colombia. In a legal sense, it operates as fifty independent nations bound together under a federal government, similar in relation of the European Union and its member states. Territories are directly administrated by the federal government, and do not have representation in either the Congress or the Senate.

Separation between the federal government and the states is defined by the US Constitution, defining which powers is reserved by the federal government and those by the individual states. Unlike the European Union, the federal government can levy taxes across the union (under the concept of "Taxation equals Representation") and represent the states collective in international matters. Powers not granted to the federal government remain in the hands of the states. All states are bound to the US Constitution which operates as the highest law in the land.

With the exception of the State of Louisiana, both the federal government and the states operate under a system of common law. Common law is built on a combination of statute and case law, with case law in redefining, narrowing or widening statutes. Due to the relationship between the federal and state governments, case law is only binding to the jurisdiction in which it was founded. In short, a decision is only binding in the jurisdictions in which it was decided. Court jurisdiction are based on the laws being contested. For instance, copyright laws are incorporated on a federal level, which means matters of copyright are to be decided in the federal courts system. As incorporation is handed on a state level, issues relating to it would be heard in that state's local courts.

State courts are organized by the constitution of the state, which defines there local system of courts. For the most part, states such as New York and California operate on the concept of a district court and and appellate court (sometimes referred to as a supreme court, such as the New York Supreme Court). A specific state's court structure will be covered on an overview of that state

== Understanding Case Law ==
'''FIXME: Insert picture of the courts layout'''

Federal courts are organized under various circuits, which are a collection of states in a geographic area. There are three levels of courts from lowest to highest: district, appellate, and the Supreme Court.

=== District Courts ===

=== Appellate Courts ===

=== Supreme Courts ===

== Legal Protections for Freedom of Press ==
=== First Amendment to the US Constitution ===

=== Near v. Minnesota (1931) ===

=== New York Times Co. v. United States (1971) ===

=== Miami Herald Publishing Co. v. Tornillo (1974) ===

=== Nebraska Press Association v. Stuart (1976) ===

=== The Mortgage Specialists, Inc. v. Implode-Explode Heavy Industries, Inc. (2010) ===

=== Obsidian Finance Group, LLC v. Cox (2011) ===

== Requirements for Incorporation ==

=== 501(c)(3) ===

== References ==
* US Constitution Article I, § 8
* Article III of the Constitution (courts organization)
* Ninth Amendment
* 14th amendment
<references />

Incorporation/UnitedStates

2014-03-28T23:27:06Z

Foobar Bazbot: various spelling fixes

'''NOTE: ''' This is a simple overview for those not hugely familiar with the United States legal system to understand how its organized. It is also a good refresher for those who had US Politics many many years ago

The United States is subdivided into 50 states, 4 unincorporated organized territories, several unincorporated unorganized territories, and the District of Colombia. In a legal sense, it operates as fifty independent nations bound together under a federal government, similar in relation of the European Union and its member states. Territories are directly administrated by the federal government, and do not have representation in either the Congress or the Senate.

Separation between the federal government and the states is defined by the US Constitution, defining which powers is reserved by the federal government and those by the individual states. Unlike the European Union, the federal government can levy taxes across the union (under the concept of "Taxation equals Representation") and represent the states collective in international matters. Powers not granted to the federal government remain in the hands of the states. All states are bound to the US Constitution which operates as the highest law in the land.

With the exception of the State of Lousiana, both the federal government and the states operate under a system of common law. Common law is built on a combination of statue and case law, with case law in redefining, narrowing or widening statutes. Due to the relationship between the federal and state governments, case law is only binding to the jurisdiction in which it was founded. In short, a decision is only binding in the jurisdictions in which it was decided. Court jurisdiction are based on the laws being contested. For instance, copyright laws are incorporated on a federal level, which means matters of copyright are to be decided in the federal courts system. As incorporation is handed on a state level, issues relating to it would be heard in that state's local courts.

State courts are organized by the constitution of the state, which defines there local system of courts. For the most part, states such as New York and California operate on the concept of a district court and and appellate court (sometimes referred to as a supreme court, such as the New York Supreme Court). A specific states court structure will be covered on an overview of that state

== Understanding Case Law ==
'''FIXME: Insert picture of the courts layout'''

Federal courts are organized under various circuits, which are a collection of states in a geographic area. There are three levels of courts from lowest to highest: district, appellate, and the Supreme Court.

=== District Courts ===

=== Appellate Courts ===

=== Supreme Courts ===

== Legal Protections for Freedom of Press ==
=== First Amendment to the US Constitution ===

=== Near v. Minnesota (1931) ===

=== New York Times Co. v. United States (1971) ===

=== Miami Herald Publishing Co. v. Tornillo (1974) ===

=== Nebraska Press Association v. Stuart (1976) ===

=== The Mortgage Specialists, Inc. v. Implode-Explode Heavy Industries, Inc. (2010) ===

=== Obsidian Finance Group, LLC v. Cox (2011) ===

== Requirements for Incorporation ==

=== 501(c)(3) ===

== References ==
* US Constitution Article I, § 8
* Article III of the Constitution (courts organization)
* Ninth Amendment
* 14th amendment
<references />

Historic:FeatureList

2014-02-07T15:07:41Z

Foobar Bazbot: moderation/threadjacking

* UTF-8 clean for anything that doesn't end up in a URL (i.e. tags, titles, channel names, user names)
** Of course, some combining marks would have to be filtered, and the resulting text round-tripped through NFD->NFC to prevent certain types of attacks against users or making text difficult to index.
* Channels (like yro, politics, apple) as first class objects
** "Primary" channels that have DNS shorthand (http://apple.altslash.org/ being equiv to http://altslash.org/ch/apple/)
** "Secondary" channels that users could create and play editor that use the more verbose syntax (http://altslash.org/ch/baseball/) that is reminiscent of subreddits
** User channels (i.e. journals) as we've always had

* Submission queues for all channels with membership at the discretion of the channel owner; being able to submit also implies up/downvoting submissions and tagging
** Editors/channel owners only
** List of users who can submit
** All of my friends (for user journals)
** All users with mod status
** All registered users
** Everyone

* Articles are also first class objects
** Perma-link independant of channel
** Articles can be cross-posted to other channels by a channel owner (built into the UI if the editor manages more than one channel)
* Comment key features
** Comments are first class objects, just as before, just like articles
** Comments can be edited for a short period of time by owner
*** HOWEVER: Edited comments get a new ID and it links to older versions in the new one. This detail is made prominent to viewer if a comment reply happened before an edit.
** Allow alternate markup options (bbcode, markdown, wiki markup)
*** Provide a mapping to actual div and styles that will be applied, or HTML equivalent codes

* Allow moderation in same article that you've posted in; only disallow moderation '''to your own reply chain'''.
** You're obviously not allowed to moderate in your own accepted or posted article (treating all comments as replies)
** Does "reply chain" include parent? If not, how do we deal with threadjacking:
**# AC posts first comment on a new article (let's presume it's an upmod-worthy comment, not fristpsot)
**# I post my unrelated comment as a reply to AC's FP, in order to achieve greater visibility
**# I downmod the AC to -1
**# Now AC is invisible to anyone with threshold != -1 (including many with mod points and threshold=0, who would have modded AC up on his own merits)
**# Unless/until users with threshold=-1 and mod points happen by to rectify things, my comment is now the first thing most users see.
**# ??? ''(sorry, can't resist...)''
**# Profit!
***Actually, not just the immediate parent like I said, but 'all' ancestor comments. Otherwise as step 1.5 I just reply with an AC troll (which someone else will rightfully downmod), then in step 2 I reply to ''that''; now that the original AC first post is my comment's gp, so I can still downmod it.

* Moderation Engine
** Moderation tags only (default scores)
*** Overrated -1
*** Underrated +1
*** Offtopic -1
*** Interesting +1
*** Troll -1
*** Insightful +1
*** Flamebait -0.5
*** Funny +0.5
** Users assign own weights to tags in the range -2.0 -> 2.0 with 0.5 increments
** System rounds x.5 towards 0 in comment spill / threshold logic, display capped at -1 and 5.
** A score for the default weights is saved for the comment for use by article spill (for googlebot or "load all comments" from anonmyous user)

* Moderation strategy
** Chops instead of Karma
** Chops are derived from:
*** Articles accepted for submission
**** But NOT articles self-authored on a channel you're an editor of
*** Comments that are replied to by others without a troll modifier
*** Positive moderation (as judged by the mod action with respect to their own point value weights... so if they think funny is bad, it counts against you)
*** Positive metamoderation outcome (see below)
** Registered users that have used the site > [threshold] days, posted > [threshold] times, and have positive chops get moderation duty
*** The more chops, the more mod points per day, with a total cap for unused
** Meta-moderation is available to users that have used the site > [big threshold] days and have > [threshold] chops
*** Metamoderation is not "special", a meta-mod capable user can see a random selection of recent mods at any time and metamod.
*** Metamod takes 2 mod points
*** Metamod can spend a mod point to "re-roll" and see a new set of random moderations
*** A moderation is undone when it's "score" goes is negative. It is "reapplied" when it goes positive. If the score dips to -3, the moderation is removed entirely.
*** A user is not rewarded or punished for the metamod specifically.
**** A running total of positive and negative meta-moderations against them is calculated
**** Certain threshold for positive and negative meta-mod counts result in fixed deltas in chops
***** Having > 5 positive metamod could be +1 chop score. >10 +2, >20 +3; > 3 negative is -1, > 5 is -2, > 10 is -3