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From: Usenet Big-8 Management Board <board@big-8.org>
Newsgroups: news.announce.newgroups,news.groups.proposals,news.groups
Subject: 3rd RfD: Mass-deletion of moderated groups without a moderator
Followup-To: news.groups.proposals
Date: Tue, 11 Mar 2025 17:12:52 EDT
Organization: Usenet Big-8 Management Board
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               REQUEST FOR DISCUSSION (RFD)

This is a formal Request for Discussion (RFD) to remove the following
99 moderated newsgroups.


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:

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

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.

In a separate discussion on news.groups, 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.

Also on news.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 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.

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.


DISTRIBUTION:

news.announce.newgroups
news.groups.proposals
news.groups

Following feedback received from the earlier RFDs, the Board will
attempt to post targeted notices of this proposal in groups topically
related to each one under discussion, such as its parent group, its
sibling *.misc group, and/or the *.misc group of some other ancestor.


PROCEDURE:

This 3rd RFD will run for at least 4 weeks.  The group lists may be
revised during this stage and additional RFDs posted as necessary.
Discussion about candidate groups should take place in the moderated
group news.groups.proposals. Following the conclusion of the final
RFD, we will issue a Last Call for Comments (LCC), after which the
Board will vote. If there are specific reasons to vote individually
for some groups, the Board will do, but the default will be a ballot
covering all groups.

More details can be found here:

   https://www.big-8.org/wiki/Mass_removal_of_groups


NEWSGROUP LINES:

comp.binaries.cbm       For the transfer of 8bit Commodore binaries. 
(Moderated)
comp.doc.techreports    Lists of technical reports. (Moderated)
comp.internet.library   Discussing electronic libraries. (Moderated)
comp.lang.c.moderated   The C programming language. (Moderated)
comp.newprod            Announcements of new products of interest. 
(Moderated)
comp.org.cauce          The Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial 
E-Mail. (Moderated)
comp.robotics.research  Academic, government & industry research in 
robotics. (Moderated)
comp.simulation         Simulation methods, problems, uses. (Moderated)
comp.soft-sys.math.mathematica  Mathematica discussion group. (Moderated)
comp.sources.games      Postings of recreational software. (Moderated)
comp.std.announce       Announcements about standards activities. 
(Moderated)
comp.sys.amiga.announce Announcements about the Amiga. (Moderated)
comp.sys.sun.announce   Sun announcements and Sunergy mailings. (Moderated)
humanities.philosophy.objectivism       The ideas of Ayn Rand. (Moderated)
misc.activism.progressive       Information for Progressive activists. 
(Moderated)
misc.business.consulting        The business of consulting. (Moderated)
misc.business.marketing.moderated       Roundtable for marketing topics. 
(Moderated)
misc.business.moderated Roundtable for general business topics. (Moderated)
misc.entrepreneurs.moderated    Entrepreneur/business topics. (Moderated)
misc.invest.financial-plan      Financial planning in general. (Moderated)
misc.transport.air-industry     Airlines, airports, commercial aircraft. 
(Moderated)
misc.writing.screenplays.moderated      Craft/business of screenwriting. 
(Moderated)
news.admin.net-abuse.policy     Discussion of net abuse policy. (Moderated)
news.announce.conferences       Calls for papers and conferences. 
(Moderated)
rec.arts.anime.creative Original works by fans, related to anime/manga. 
(Moderated)
rec.arts.anime.info     Announcements about Japanese animation. (Moderated)
rec.arts.ascii          ASCII art, info on archives, art, & artists. 
(Moderated)
rec.arts.drwho.moderated        Discussion of "Doctor Who". (Moderated)
rec.arts.erotica        Erotic fiction and verse. (Moderated)
rec.arts.movies.erotica Aspects of erotic films and videos. (Moderated)
rec.arts.sf.announce    Major announcements of the SF world. (Moderated)
rec.arts.sf.starwars.info       General information pertaining to Star 
Wars. (Moderated)
rec.autos.sport.f1.moderated    Discussion of Formula One racing. 
(Moderated)
rec.autos.sport.nascar.moderated        NASCAR and Stockcar Racing. 
(Moderated)
rec.boats.marketplace   Boating products for sale and wanted. (Moderated)
rec.crafts.jewelry      Jewelry making and gemology. (Moderated)
rec.drugs.announce      Announcements about drugs and related issues. 
(Moderated)
rec.food.cuisine.jewish All matters concerning Jewish cuisine. (Moderated)
rec.food.recipes        Recipes for interesting food and drink. (Moderated)
rec.gardens.ecosystems  Ecosystems and organic gardening. (Moderated)
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