Deutsch English Français Italiano |
<vm6vum$35c$1@reader2.panix.com> View for Bookmarking (what is this?) Look up another Usenet article |
Path: ...!eternal-september.org!feeder3.eternal-september.org!panix!.POSTED.panix6.panix.com!nan.users.panix.com!robomod!not-for-mail From: pschleck@panix.com (Paul W. Schleck) Newsgroups: news.groups.proposals Subject: Re: 2nd RFD: Remove rec.radio.broadcasting - LAST CALL FOR COMMENTS (REDUX) Date: Tue, 14 Jan 2025 23:55:40 EST Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and UNIX, NYC Approved: NGP Approval Key <ngp-approval-key@ngp.big-8.org> Message-ID: <vm6vum$35c$1@reader2.panix.com> References: <vl9bss$u25$2@dont-email.me> Injection-Info: reader2.panix.com; posting-host="panix6.panix.com:166.84.1.6"; logging-data="29364"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@panix.com" User-Agent: nn/6.7.3 X-NGP-Policy: http://www.big-8.org/~ngp X-NGP-Info-1: Send submissions to ngp@nan.users.panix.com X-NGP-Info-2: Send technical/policy queries to ngp-admin@nan.users.panix.com X-Comment: Moderators do not necessarily agree or disagree with this article. X-Robomod: STUMP <https://savannah.gnu.org/projects/stump> X-Spam-Relay-Country: DE US US Authentication-Results: mail2.panix.com; dkim=pass (Good 1024 bit rsa-sha256 signature) header.d=panix.com header.a=rsa-sha256 Authentication-Results: mail2.panix.com; dmarc=pass (p=none dis=none) header.from=panix.com Authentication-Results: mail2.panix.com; spf=fail smtp.mailfrom=panix.com DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=simple/simple; d=panix.com; s=panix; t=1736901399; bh=hAF2Is88UtoErxzC+Dn4/b+i8Cw0zKiU407EUf9XdNQ=; h=To:From:Subject:Date:References; b=YN+q8V686WC5piaWB2zuDOUlRmVdr/XELkbcx9T0CopbFi3QuMzzYUxsL4OxABqQ9 umXFOXjXGbinPLWRLD5I2RE6wgwE1XmVloUqdn+aCpL84XRNkBV1TjHdn+GnkTxODS 3cZTlL6uW0IMMqbdaMMUXYqTf2OTunYJAur4k5Hs= X-Auth: PGPMoose V2.0 PGP news.groups.proposals iEYEARECAAYFAmeHP8wACgkQrPkQbuk9hdtO2QCg0z8ivUPLzHdvYQ9crwmZU4JY iC0Aniy7VUxlCLuHDcJzeqYbCdrn2iAD =4cX+ Bytes: 7917 Lines: 120 In <vl9bss$u25$2@dont-email.me> Tristan Miller <tmiller@big-8.org> writes: >This is a formal Request for Discussion (RFD) to remove the moderated >newsgroup rec.radio.broadcasting. >The Big-8 Management Board plans to begin voting on this proposal >after five days. Please offer any final discussion or comments before >the end of this waiting period. Voting may take up to one week (7 >days); a result will be posted following the end of the voting period. [...] >2025-01-03: Final RFD / Last Call for Comments (redux) Five days after this LCC was posted would be January 8th as the start of voting, then until the 15th for the end of the voting period, according to the above. However, the following item appeared in the Big-8 Management Board for Usenet minutes for January 10th: "rec.radio.broadcasting TM posted the LCC. Voting period runs from 2025-01-08 to 2025-01-15. The Board received an e-mail asking the group to be converted from moderated to unmoderated. The Board had initiated a discussion on this practice in news.admin.moderation back on 2024-02-23 but it did not attract many responses; however, the recent mass deletion RFD has re-ignited the issue in news.groups.proposals news.groups.proposals on Google Groups. To summarize the discussions to date, despite the existence of a well-defined mechanism for changing the moderation flag via a control message, it's unclear whether anyone has actually tried to issue such a message, and whether news servers will properly act on it. The meeting therefore considered whether rec.radio.broadcasting, which seems destined for deletion, could serve as a test case. That is, rather than deleting the group, the we could change the moderation submission address to a big-8.org account, send a control message to change the group's moderation flag, and then see if posts made to the group from various news servers go to the submission address or directly to the group. It was agreed to further explore this idea for discussion at the next meeting." (excerpted above from https://www.big-8.org/wiki/Minutes/2025-01-10) Note that you did get at least one reply on news.admin.moderation, from me, objecting to the idea. See: https://news.admin.moderation.narkive.com/Mtfy21b8/practical-experiences-of-demoderating-a-moderated-group The next meeting of the Board would be January 17th, two days after the conclusion of voting on this LCC. What is the Board's intentions on this MVI and LCC? Is it confined to just voting yes/no on deleting the newsgroup? If the vote is no (do not delete), does the Board intend to spring on the readership a previously undiscussed (at least for rec.radio.broadcasting specifically) intention to convert this newsgroup to unmoderated? This strikes me as unprecedented, potentially out of order, and ultimately, a bad idea. I would hope that there would be further public discussion about this, as it seems to be substantially "new business," to be debated on its own merits. The former moderators and I had sought to cooperate with the Board as much as possible to notify them of the moderators' resignations, to help find new moderators, or failing that, to ensure an orderly shutdown of the newsgroup, out of respect for the contributions of the past moderation teams, including its founder, William Pfeiffer (RIP). My comments below are excerpted from private e-mail exchange with the Board. I had understood that the Board had already voted on this proposal last January, based on reading the minutes. I had not commented on the proceedings, not just because I wanted someone else to step forward, but because the moderation team and I had taken all reasonable steps to notify others of the shutdown (Usenet, Facebook groups, Reddit subreddits, web forums, mailing lists, etc.) and concluded that the newsgroup had just come to the end of its natural life due to loss of audience. The near universal response to these notifications was that they didn't know that the newsgroup was still alive. They weren't interested in participating in it, let alone moderating it. I did get a couple of replies to the Usenet announcements from readers of the newsgroup. One noted that news items typically appeared on the newsgroup a day or two sooner than other sources. I asked if they were willing to pre-fund the Panix moderation account to get it up and running again. I did not get any replies. The last two viable use cases for the newsgroup were: - Abstracting news articles from RSS feeds - Followup nostalgia/threadomancy from the archives about radio stations and talent from years ago, and discussing "Where are they now?" The first one went away when Google Feedburner stopped supporting e-mail feeds. I did not find a replacement solution that didn't involve a lot of scratch programming or registering with a commercial service. The second one will be more difficult without a long retention news site that allows posting. One of the major free ones, Google Groups, recently went away. But now we have the possibility of unmoderating the newsgroup. It may not work, it may partially work enough to theoretically allow propagation of unmoderated submissions to at least some of Usenet. However, without a realistic audience, this article propagation will likely be off-topic content and SPAM, if at all. For example, see the unmoderated alt.radio.broadcasting, which already exists, and for which an unmoderated rec.radio.broadcasting would be a duplicate. In summary, the former moderation team and I had sought an adoption or a decent burial. I'm not sure that we consented to donate the body to science for experimentation of questionable value. I'm also not sure that the readership of Usenet had reasonably understood that this was a possible outcome of this MVI and LCC. -- Paul W. Schleck pschleck@panix.com