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From: Usenet Big-8 Management Board <board@big-8.org>
Newsgroups: news.announce.newgroups,news.groups.proposals,news.groups
Subject: RESULT: Mass-deletion of moderated groups without a moderator
Followup-To: news.groups.proposals
Date: Wed, 21 May 2025 16:33:44 EDT
Organization: Usenet Big-8 Management Board
Approved: Moderator of news.announce.newgroups <newgroups-request@isc.org>, NGP Approval Key <ngp-approval-key@ngp.big-8.org>
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RESULT:

The 89 moderated newsgroups listed below will be removed.

The Last Call for Comments (LCC) on 2025-05-05 initiated a five-day
period for final comments.  Following this comment period, the Big-8
Management Board has decided by a vote to remove the 89 groups listed
below.  The vote was 3 in favour of deletion and 1 not voting.


RATIONALE:

Currently, these groups cannot be used for discussion because of the
lack of a moderator. Most of these groups haven't had a moderator for
a long time and have been unused for years. We consider it unlikely
that they will ever be revived with a new moderator. Nonetheless,
anyone interested in becoming a moderator for a group listed in this
RFD is invited to contact the Big-8 Management Board.


DISCUSSION SO FAR:

The following summary collates discussion from various venues,
including news.groups.proposals, news.groups, news.admin.misc, and
e-mails to the Big-8 Management Board.

On changing the moderation flag for the groups:

noel, Christian Schumacher, Vasos Panagiotopoulos,
vjp2.at@at.BioStrategist.dot.dot.com, and Dan Cross argued for having
at least some groups' moderation flags unset rather than deleting the
groups.  Ivo Gandolfo countered that many servers would not properly
apply the change in moderation flag.

On making it easier to find active groups:

Marco Moock said that cleaning up unused groups will make it easier
for users to find active groups; he acknowledged that some servers
don't process control articles but wondered why he should care about
these servers.  Julien ÉLIE said that people will appreciate a
cleaned-up newsgroups list and that it doesn't matter if some servers
don't process the control articles.  Julius Bernotas said that groups
should be deleted when they no longer fulfill their purpose.
Jean-Paul agreed with Marco that cleaning up unused groups will make
it easier for users to find active groups.  Christian Schumacher said
that he looks for newsgroups by name, not by traffic.

noel argued that deleting a few hundred groups will not make it
significantly easier to find active groups. Julien ÉLIE agreed and
said that unmoderated groups should also be cleaned up.

On the distribution of the RFD:

Adam H. Kerman said that the RFD was not being distributed widely
enough, including to potential moderators of the specific groups in
the RFD.  To the argument that removing unused groups makes active
groups easier to find, he responded that users can find these via
keyword search and by attempting to post to them.  D expressed "no
objections your honour" to the RFD, later noting that 10% of currently
active newsgroups are moderated, but that the remaining 90%
unmoderated active newsgroups are overrun by trolls and spam.  Paul
Schleck suggested a mechanism for crossposting a pointer to RFD to the
affected groups.

As a result of this discussion, the Board posted targeted pointers to
the RFD in groups topically related to each one under discussion --
see the section DISTRIBUTION below.

On losing the history associated with the groups:

Steve Bonine warned that when groups are removed, the history
associated with the contents of the group will disappear, which could
hinder people doing (historical) research.  He agreed that removing
the unused groups in the RFD would prevent users from wasting their
time posting into the void, but said that at this time it's not worth
the effort to delete them.  Winston and Keith Thompson shared Steve
Bonine's concern about the contents of deleted groups disappearing.
Computer Nerd Kev said that converting the groups to unmoderated ones
may work around this problem.

As a result of these discussions, Tristan Miller polled admins in
news.admin.misc about how they handle rmgroup control messages and
whether they retain postings in deleted groups.  Ivo Gandolfo
responded that he manually reviews most control messages, and for
rmgroup messages simply converts the group to read-only.  Thomas
Hochstein responded that rmgroup messages are processed automatically
by removing the group and all its posts.  Thomas Hochstein and Julien
ÉLIE indicated that servers set up as archival will not honour rmgroup
messages and will not expire articles.

On using a robomoderator to auto-approve posts:

Rayner Lucas raised the possibility of placing some of the affected
groups under automated robo-moderation, as a temporary measure.  D
Finnigan posted in support of this idea.  Paul Schleck and noel
expressed concerns that this could lead to auto-approval of spam or
off-topic/illegal material, and therefore that setting this up would
be too much effort for little reward.

On specific groups:

Computer Nerd Kev pointed out that rec.arts.movies.reviews has seen
recent activity and sees a chance to revive it.  (The Board
subsequently investigated this and confirmed that the group has no
moderation address registered; the sole active poster, who they were
unable to reach for comment, seems to be circumventing this by posting
articles with an Approved header to a lenient server.)  The Board also
received an e-mail from someone volunteering to moderate
soc.genealogy.surnames.britain and is currently in correspondence with
them.  In light of these developments, rec.arts.movies.reviews and
soc.genealogy.surnames.britain were excluded from the 2nd RFD.

vjp2.at@at.BioStrategist.dot.dot.com, Marco Moock, and Dan Cross
suggested converting comp.soft-sys.math.mathematica to an unmoderated
group.  It is therefore excluded from the LCC.

Keith Thompson suggested that retaining comp.lang.c.moderated in order
to preserve its posting history and/or to revive the group, provided
there were enough demand.  Keith Thompson contacted the previous
moderator of comp.lang.c.moderated, who confirmed that he is too busy
to resume moderating the group but is willing to hand it over to
another moderator.  Keith indicated that he would be willing to
somehow help out with a revived group, and referred to discussions on
comp.lang.c where other posters expressed interest in participating.
Richard Heathfield likewise expressed interest.  Dan Cross opined that
the group should either be given a new moderator or deleted.
comp.lang.c.moderated is therefore excluded from the LCC.

Keith Thompson suggested retaining rec.humor.funny.  Rayner Lucas
contacted the most recent moderators, one of whom replied to express
interest in keeping that group and/or rec.humor.funny.reruns going.
Rayner Lucas and Tristan Miller both offered help with this.
rec.humor.funny and rec.humor.funny.reruns are therefore excluded from
the LCC.

Florian Rehnisch indicated that comp.binaries.cbm would not be a big
loss since the vast majority of Commodore binaries are archived on the
web.  Tristan Miller reported that someone has now volunteered to
moderate the group, and that the current moderator has consented to
the handover.  comp.binaries.cbm is therefore excluded from the LCC.

Ivan Shmakov expressed interest in moderating comp.newprod,
comp.std.announce, rec.photo.moderated, and comp.simulation, and in
participating in rec.arts.ascii, sci.bio.evolution,
sci.bio.phytopathology, sci.chem.organic.synthesis, soc.politics, and
soc.politics.marxism, were they to be somehow revived.  Ivan also
noted that soc.politics has been active recently, albeit with a forged
Approved header.  comp.newprod, comp.std.announce,
rec.photo.moderated, and comp.simulation are therefore excluded from
the LCC.

tidux expressed interest in robomoderating rec.arts.anime.creative,
and so it is excluded from the LCC.

No comments were received in response to the LCC.


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