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FIRST CALL FOR VOTES (of 2)
unmoderated group rec.sport.freediving

Newsgroups line:
rec.sport.freediving   The sport of Freediving and Apnea and related topics.

Votes must be received by 23:59:59 UTC, 29 Aug 2003.

This vote is being conducted by a neutral third party. Questions
about the proposed group should be directed to the proponent.

Proponent: Chris Engelbrecht <chrisengeldk@dkik.dk>
Votetaker: David E. Smith <dave@technopagan.org>


RATIONALE: rec.sport.freediving

Freediving is expanding worldwide in numbers of practitioners. The sport
of freediving is related to scuba diving, but is deemed as old as
humankind. The freediver dives without the use of compressed air
supply. Freediving is also called apnea, which relates to the Greek
phrase for holding one's breath. Freediving is also called snorkelling,
skin diving and breathhold diving.
Freedivers conducts a number of activities under water, such as deep
dives with flippers or assisted by weights and inflatable balloons, they
shoot fish with harpoons, they dive long distances in pools, they hold
their breath for time or they play underwater team sports in pool such
as UW hockey and UW rugby. Using weights and inflatable balloons, it is
possible to freedive to more than 500 feet depth.
Deep freediving derived as an organized competition sport in the early
1990's after having been a series of deep diving record attempts since
the early 1950's. The modern day deep diving competitions only allows
the use of flippers. Pool competitions are frequent, particularly
across Europe and the Americas. The first freediving world championship
was held in 1996 and returns every 2 years with participants from all 5
continents. Harpooning fish, or Spearfishing, as well as the team sports
have their own international events, UW rugby across Europe, UW hockey
across the Americas. There is estimated to be some 10000 freedivers
around the world practising the above mentioned activities.

Currently there is no specific group to discuss freediving issues.
Though an obvious choice of forum, posting freediving topics in scuba
groups is most often considered inappropriate by the regular users of
these groups, due to the activity differences between scuba and
freediving (breathing compressed air under water vs. holding one's
breath under water). This discourages some people from using Usenet as a
medium for discussion of this area, causes others to cross/multi-post
throughout various groups meant for scuba diving, and means that
newcomers have no obvious place to search for relevant answers or
discussions. Also, because the elements of freediving is a cross mix
between swimming and scuba elements, the discussion topics of freediving
are most often not related to traditional scuba topics, nor traditional
swimming topics.

In addition, much current discussion of freediving and apnea is
conducted on fragmented mailing lists and web-based forums. For example,
the Freedivelist and Apneadiver mailing lists as well as the
DeeperBlue.net forums are frequently recommended to newcomers within the
web community asking about freediving topics, due to the lack of
relevant forums within Usenet.

CHARTER: rec.sport.freediving

Rec.sport.freediving is an unmoderated newsgroup for discussing the
sport of freediving and apnea and various related topics herein.
Freediving and apnea is the sport of underwater diving without the use
of breathing gear. Apnea is a Greek word for 'no breath' that is
generally used about freediving. Freediving and apnea is also called
snorkelling, skin diving and breathhold diving.

Examples of welcomed topics include, but are not limited to:

o Recommended techniques
o Discussions on equipment
o Training tips
o Diet experiences
o Discussions on safety procedures
o Discussions on education of freedivers
o Discussions on environment issues
o Discussions on sports governing and other political issues
o News and stories from competitions, including announcing competitions
to the competitors
o Stories from dives, folk tales in general

Examples of inappropriate topics include:

o Cross posting about scuba diving, unless it is related to freediving
safety issues. (Use the specific group.)
o Cross posting and spam of any other kind
o Personal attacks or accusations aimed at individuals

Standard language for the group is English. However, one can post
messages in other languages for specific groups of people if the topic
line is clearly labeled with the language, f.i. [Francais], [Espanol],
etc.

Encoded binaries (e.g. pictures, compressed files, etc.) are not
allowed. Such material belongs on a web or FTP site to which a pointer
may be posted. Cryptographic signatures (e.g. PGP) may be used where
authentication is important and should be as short as possible.

It is asked to keep posts somewhat short and to the point, and to be
civil and constructive in the wording of the posts. Particularly in
political discussions one is asked to be polite in his/her criticism
towards the relevant parties.

Relevant commercial posts are acceptable, but should be limited to one
per month per product.

END CHARTER.


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Please direct any questions to the votetaker at <dave@technopagan.org>


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======== BEGINNING OF BALLOT: Delete everything before this line =======
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| 1ST CALL FOR VOTES: rec.sport.freediving
| Official Usenet Voting Ballot [RSF-42-1] (Do not remove this line!)
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Voter Name:

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Your Vote Newsgroup
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[ ] rec.sport.freediving

======== END OF BALLOT: Delete everything after this line ==============


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