In article <d2kpkb$20e$1@tioat.ath.cx>, "QoJ" <justabitch@dodgeit.com> wrote:

Well it has seti in the group name and somebody created this group and there
should have been a charter so now I wonder what the charter says.

First of all it is important to note that Berkeley do not receive alt 
groups by default and and they were not aware of this group until after
they co-sponsored sci.astro.seti, however this is the tag line, charter
and rationale from the orginal creation of the group
<ftp://ftp.isc.org/pub/usenet/control/alt/alt.sci.seti.gz>:

For your newsgroups file:
alt.sci.seti	Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence

Charter:

Discussion about the SETI (Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence)
project and the search for extra terrestrial life in general.

Also, discussion of the "SETI@Home" project which allows individuals
to utilize their computer's idle time to assist SETI in processing its
overwhelming amount of recorded data.

Should discussion about the SETI@Home project and the SETI project in
general begin to crowd eachother, a second newsgroup devoted solely to
SETI@Home will be created with the name "alt.sci.seti.at-home" leaving
"alt.sci.seti" for discussion of the SETI project.

Binaries are not permitted and should instead be posted to the
appropriate binary newsgroup or FTP site where they may be accessed.

Justification:

The SETI project has been going on for some years now and has amassed
a great deal of interest.  A quick search on DejaNews will show that
there are thousands of posts regarding SETI, yet there is no currently
available newsgroup to keep these discussions from getting lost in
numerous other non-specific forums.  "alt.sci.seti" will address this
lacking.

It will also provide a place for the enormous and growing number of
people who have begun to participate in the SETI@Home project to
discuss problems and solutions in assisting SETI to process all of its
raw data.  While the SETI@Home project is expected to end around 2001
or so, it is likely that SETI will seek to call upon the public again
in a similar way.  This newsgroup will therefore continue to be timely
and useful.

This newsgroup was proposed, discussed, and approved in "alt.config"
at the end of May 99.

Created 01 Jun 99