In <vl9bss$u25$[email protected]> Tristan Miller <[email protected]> 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
[email protected]

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On 14.01.2025 23:55 Uhr Paul W. Schleck wrote:

What is the Board's intentions on this MVI and LCC?

Getting rid of the currently non-functioning group, either by finding a moderator, changing to unmoderated or delete it.

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 is one possible outcome.

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.

I agree with that. We though that this group could be a test case
because it is currently unused anyway. We also discussed that we need
to change the moderation address to our inbox first, so if the change
to unmoderated won't be processed by a news server, we will notice that
if somebody tries to post.

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).

There were possible candidates, but they didn't reply anymore and I
suggested not to postpone that indefinitely and either delete it or
change it to unmoderated to make it usable again.

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.

Agreed, that would be a duplicate, but that exists for many topics. As
long as those groups are being used, I don't see a big problem here,
even when I prefer to bring this together.

--
kind regards
Marco

Send spam to [email protected]

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Hi Paul,

Facebook groups, Reddit subreddits, web forums, mailing lists, etc.

[...]

the newsgroup had just come to the end of its natural life due to loss of audience.

[...]

They weren't interested in participating in it, let alone moderating
it.

:(

- Abstracting news articles from RSS feeds

There are some nntp2rss scripts in the wild, but unfortunately I do not
know any still running instance on a news server. It could be a useful enhancement to existing free news services, if of course users of these services are interested. The main problem is that it is read-only;
newsgroups need posters to keep being alive, and not only silent readers.

--
Julien ÉLIE

« Quelles sont les nouvelles de Pharaon-Soir ? » (Astérix)

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Julien ÉLIE <[email protected]d> writes:

Hi Paul,

Facebook groups, Reddit subreddits, web forums, mailing lists, etc.

[...]

the newsgroup had just come to the end of its natural life due to loss of
audience.

[...]

They weren't interested in participating in it, let alone moderating
it.

:(

- Abstracting news articles from RSS feeds

There are some nntp2rss scripts in the wild, but unfortunately I do
not know any still running instance on a news server.

I’m still doing RSS to NNTP within a private network. It’s customized to Dreamwidth’s particular RSS but could probably be used for a wider set
of sources.

https://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/nntptools/

--
https://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/

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In article <vm6vum$35c$[email protected]>, [email protected] says...

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;

[snip]

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

Yours was the sole response.

I had hoped to get replies from people who had previously been involved
with converting a newsgroup to unmoderated, to get some idea of how well
it had actually worked in practice rather than relying on speculation. Unfortunately, I had no such luck.

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?

Correct.

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?

Two people, to my knowledge, have proposed unmoderating the newsgroup:
one in an email to the Board, the other in the original RFD thread (https://news.groups.proposals.narkive.com/zutWjRkx/rfd-remove-rec- radio-broadcasting). As such, we've given the idea due consideration,
since part of the point of an RFD is to allow people to raise and
discuss such possibilities.

However, given that this RFD is specifically about whether to delete the
group, I would say that converting the group to unmoderated would need
to be a subsequent discussion, contingent on the Board first voting not
to delete the group (as deleting it would render the point moot).

I had understood that the Board had already voted on this proposal
last January, based on reading the minutes.

IIRC we planned to announce the result following the next Board meeting
after the voting period. However, before we made an announcement, we
were approached by a prospective moderator. We therefore decided to
pause the process while we were corresponding with them.

However, despite the Board reaching out to the prospective moderator
multiple times with offers to help, our recent messages have gone
unanswered. As it's been a long time since the original voting period
and the Board now has a new member, we decided it would be best to
repost the LCC rather than abruptly announcing a final decision.

[snip description of lack of interest in using or moderating r.r.b]
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.

I wouldn't pay a couple of hundred bucks up front to moderate a
newsgroup either, tbh.

[snip: r.r.b lacking remaining purpose]
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.

It's a reasonable point that there is already an unmoderated group on
this topic, though on the other hand there are plenty of alt.* groups
that have duplicates in the Big 8. On the third hand, a.r.b also appears
to have little traffic, so there's not much reason to think r.r.b would
fare any better.

Regards,
R

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Hi Rayner,

I had hoped to get replies from people who had previously been involved
with converting a newsgroup to unmoderated, to get some idea of how well
it had actually worked in practice rather than relying on speculation. Unfortunately, I had no such luck.

We converted in June 2023 two moderated newsgroups in the fr.* hierarchy
to unmoderated newsgroups (fr.misc.handicap and fr.soc.homosexualite).
The change was reflected by 2 dedicated "newgroup" control articles and subsequent "checkgroups" control articles.

It permitted postings to be allowed again in these newsgroups, as the moderation was no longer working. It worked, as some discussions then
took place in these newsgroups. But if you look at them now, you'll see
they are still empty, due to the lack of interest and contributors,
which is a global issue on Usenet-fr and Usenet in general, not specific
to these 2 newsgroups.

In 2011, 2 newsgroups were similarly unmoderated: fr.bienvenue and fr.comp.lang.php. These newsgroups are still more or less active, so it
proves to work.


So to respond to your question, in works in practice though you
shouldn't count on that action to magically revive newsgroups. We
checked at that time that the groups were properly made unmoderated in
the servers mostly used by fr.* contributors, and it was the case.

If you wish to check on the news servers you have access to, feel free
to do that and no longer rely on speculation :-)

I would also like to add that if a news server does not reflect the unmoderation status, it won't do any harm anyway. The newsgroups were
empty before the change, and they will remain empty after the change
because they expect approved messages. The news servers which reflect
the change will work as expected and the unmoderated newsgroups may have postings. So basically, it is a better situation than before!

However, given that this RFD is specifically about whether to delete the group, I would say that converting the group to unmoderated would need
to be a subsequent discussion, contingent on the Board first voting not
to delete the group (as deleting it would render the point moot).

I may be wrong but I really doubt that unmoderating newsgroups will
revive them, so if their topics no longer seem relevant to the Usenet
audience, just deleting them would be fine.

In 2023 in fr.*, we wanted to give a last chance to these 2 newsgroups
by first unmoderating them. The next step will certainly be their
removal the next time some cleaning and simplification are done.

--
Julien ÉLIE

« – Nous voyageons plus vite que la lumière !
– Alors comment y voir clair dans tout ça ? » (Astérix)

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In article <[email protected]>, iulius@nom-de-mon- site.com.invalid says...

We converted in June 2023 two moderated newsgroups in the fr.* hierarchy
to unmoderated newsgroups (fr.misc.handicap and fr.soc.homosexualite).
The change was reflected by 2 dedicated "newgroup" control articles and subsequent "checkgroups" control articles.

It permitted postings to be allowed again in these newsgroups, as the moderation was no longer working. It worked, as some discussions then
took place in these newsgroups. But if you look at them now, you'll see
they are still empty, due to the lack of interest and contributors,
which is a global issue on Usenet-fr and Usenet in general, not specific
to these 2 newsgroups.

In 2011, 2 newsgroups were similarly unmoderated: fr.bienvenue and fr.comp.lang.php. These newsgroups are still more or less active, so it proves to work.

Hi Julien,

Thank you, this is very helpful! It's particularly good to have some
recent examples.

So to respond to your question, in works in practice though you
shouldn't count on that action to magically revive newsgroups. We
checked at that time that the groups were properly made unmoderated in
the servers mostly used by fr.* contributors, and it was the case.

If you wish to check on the news servers you have access to, feel free
to do that and no longer rely on speculation :-)

This is useful information, and suggests that servers not processing the
change of status may not be as much of a problem as we feared.

I would also like to add that if a news server does not reflect the unmoderation status, it won't do any harm anyway. The newsgroups were
empty before the change, and they will remain empty after the change
because they expect approved messages. The news servers which reflect
the change will work as expected and the unmoderated newsgroups may have postings. So basically, it is a better situation than before!

A convincing point :-)

Just in case, occasional messages could be posted with an "Approved"
header to inform users of the change of status, so that anyone reading
the group on a server that did not process the change would know that a
problem existed.

I may be wrong but I really doubt that unmoderating newsgroups will
revive them, so if their topics no longer seem relevant to the Usenet audience, just deleting them would be fine.

True, unmoderating a group doesn't mean there will be people who want to
post there, so deleting the group is likely to be preferable if there's
no reason to think anyone would use it anyway.

If it's not clear whether there is still interest in a group, I suppose
there'd be the possibility of unmoderating it and then deleting it later
if it remains unused.

Thank you again for the insights!

Kind regards,
R

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Hi Rayner,

Just in case, occasional messages could be posted with an "Approved"
header to inform users of the change of status, so that anyone reading
the group on a server that did not process the change would know that a problem existed.

Yes, that's an interesting idea. I would suggest to only post such
occasional Approved messages to unmoderated newsgroups where new
discussions take place. I doubt it is useful on still empty unmoderated newsgroups. (Not that it will do any harm, but it takes a bit of time
that could be best employed to other tasks.)

If it's not clear whether there is still interest in a group, I suppose there'd be the possibility of unmoderating it and then deleting it later
if it remains unused.

Yes, it is a possibility if you believe it would be a safer intermediary
step to do.

--
Julien ÉLIE

« Je connais des sourds qui s'entendent très bien ! » (Philippe Geluck)

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