Dear all,

The Big-8 Management Board has posted an RFD to remove 99 disused
moderated groups [1]. One of the points raised in the discussion is
whether removing these groups might irretrievably destroy their
contents, which could hinder people doing (historical) research. The
Board is therefore seeking information from server administrators
concerning their article retention and archiving policies for deleted
groups. We're particularly interested in hearing from admins of public
servers (that is, those that allow read access from the general public,
whether for free or for a fee) but would also be happy to hear about
servers operated for personal use or for use within an organization.
What we'd like to know is as follows:

1. Is your server set up to process control messages to remove groups,
or does it automatically ignore them? If it does process them, is this
process automatic or does it require manual intervention?

2. If your server does process control messages, what action does your
server normally take for an rmgroup? For example, does it remove the
group entirely so that users can no longer see and access it, or does it
simply mark the group as read-only so that users can still subscribe and
read but not post to it?

3. How long does your server retain articles in deleted groups, and is
this retention limit any different from that of active groups?

4. Do you make archives of posts in deleted groups that are accessible
other than via NNTP (e.g., via a website)? If so, do these archives
faithfully preserve the article headers and bodies? Do you make these
archives available to your users, enquirers, and/or the general public?

Regards,
Tristan

[1] <news:vqq7tf$ehn$[email protected]>

--
Usenet Big-8 Management Board
https://www.big-8.org/
[email protected]

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Hi Tristan,

The Big-8 Management Board has posted an RFD to remove 99 disused
moderated groups [1].  One of the points raised in the discussion is
whether removing these groups might irretrievably destroy their
contents, which could hinder people doing (historical) research.  The
Board is therefore seeking information from server administrators
concerning their article retention and archiving policies for deleted
groups.

This is always the same debate as soon as we speak about removing
newsgroups from a canonic list of newsgroups (checkgroups).

There had been a mass removal in 2011 (and also earlier) in the
Big-Eight. Does it appear to currently be a problem?

If a news server is intended to be a Usenet archival server, then
naturally it does not honour any removal of newsgroups and does not
expire any article. So they won't be affected by the removals.

Otherwise, well, it can have whatever policy as it does not aim at being
used for historical research.

My two cents,

--
Julien ÉLIE

« Il ne faut jamais pleurer d'avoir perdu la lune car les larmes
empêchent de voir les étoiles. »

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Tristan Miller wrote:

One of the points raised in the discussion is
whether removing these groups might irretrievably destroy their
contents, which could hinder people doing (historical) research.

If those groups have been disused for years, their content will have
expired long ago. Servers with very long retention times for archive
purposes won't remove groups.

1. Is your server set up to process control messages to remove groups,
or does it automatically ignore them? If it does process them, is this process automatic or does it require manual intervention?

Depends on the hierarchy. rmgroups for managed hierarchies with signed
control messages will beprocesd automatically.

2. If your server does process control messages, what action does your
server normally take for an rmgroup?

It will remove the group entirely.

3. How long does your server retain articles in deleted groups, and is
this retention limit any different from that of active groups?

Articles in deleted groups are gone.

-thh

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On 29/03/2025 04:08, Tristan Miller wrote:

1. Is your server set up to process control messages to remove groups,
or does it automatically ignore them?  If it does process them, is this process automatic or does it require manual intervention?

Actually I setup all my server's to send me an email for everything,
except for newgroup (autoprocessed). All is done manually by me. The
removed group I change the status to "n" (closed for posting) in my INN.
All is done manually.

2. If your server does process control messages, what action does your
server normally take for an rmgroup?  For example, does it remove the
group entirely so that users can no longer see and access it, or does it simply mark the group as read-only so that users can still subscribe and
read but not post to it?

See above.

3. How long does your server retain articles in deleted groups, and is
this retention limit any different from that of active groups?

My history on public server the retention it's 5y (+/-). On private
server (registered only, with bin) the text group come back to 2000's.

4. Do you make archives of posts in deleted groups that are accessible
other than via NNTP (e.g., via a website)?  If so, do these archives faithfully preserve the article headers and bodies?  Do you make these archives available to your users, enquirers, and/or the general public?

For future I planning to do a web interface, at this moment only nntp avalaible.


Sincerely


--
Ivo Gandolfo

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