Minutes/2020-11-13

Present: TM, RL, JE

• Wiki/policy review
  • TM has been reviewing and restructuring the wiki, with many small and large fixes. Highlights:
    • New internal landing page: Board:Private area
    • New wiki editing guide: Board:Wiki editing guidelines
    • Much old material has been archived, removed, or updated. A list of pages that still contain outdated information is available at Category:Outdated pages, and the public-facing ones should be fixed with high priority
    • New/expanded pages for news.groups.proposals, news.announce.newgroups, news.admin.moderation, and news.announce.important (migrated in part from the Panix web hosting)
• Moderation issues
  • news.groups.proposals :
    • TM: The official contact address for this group is ngp-board@ngp.big-8.org, which forwards to ngp-mods, a mailing list that no one told us about. TM assumed ownership of it from Doug Freyburger, added the other Board members, and removed the old moderators. From looking at the archives, the mailing list gets mostly spam (a few messages per month) though there are some old bona fide discussions that we might want to review and/or preserve. Jonathan Kamens operates the ngp-board@ngp.big-8.org forwarder so we need to tell him whether we want to continue having it forward to the list.
      • Decision: Keep forwarder and Google Group as-is for now.
    • TM: Jonathan Kamens has removed everyone but JE, TM, and RL from his .procmailrc/WebSTUMP configuration.
  • news.admin.moderation :
    • TM: Doug Freyburger has stepped down as moderator. I have removed him from WebSTUMP and the .procmailrc.
    • TM: I have removed Kathy Morgan from WebSTUMP.
    • TM: Charles Calvert is listed as moderator, but e-mails to his address are bouncing. I can't find any other contact details for him; his website and his other online accounts (GitHub, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.) seem to have had no activity for 5 to 7 years. I have tentatively removed him from WebSTUMP and the .procmailrc.
    • TM: Tim Skirvin is listed as a moderator on the wiki and in the .procmailrc, but he has no WebSTUMP account. TM to ask Tim about this.
  • news.announce.newgroups :
    • TM: I removed Jeremy Nixon from the group-admin@isc.org list due to loss of contact.
    • TM: I have removed Kathy Morgan from WebSTUMP.
    • TM: I have asked Kathy if she still wants to be on the group-admin@isc.org list; she has responded in the affirmative.
  • news.announce.important :
    • TM: I have removed Kathy Morgan from WebSTUMP.
  • RL: Status of comp.ai
    • RL: The STUMP setup is still not sending rejections properly. I fixed the PGP key, the .procmailrc configuration, and the key request mechanism. Spamcop is sending acknowledgments for outgoing mail, which is strange. RL to consult Paul Schleck about this. RL to check whether the key request problem affects the other groups of ours and fix if necessary. JE to check that the key request mechanism is documented.
  • JE: Status of comp.os.linux.announce
    • JE reports that Dario is still interested but needs assistance with moderation. JE to point him to resources.
• Misc infrastructure/admin
  • TM wrote to Tim Skirvin to ask if he is interested in continuing to volunteer.
  • TM: Kathy has deactivated her outdated Big-8 wiki mirror at TM's suggestion.
  • JE: Status of news.groups.proposals submission re rec.audio.pcdaw:
    • JE to ask whether using an existing newsgroup, such as rec.audio.pro or rec.audio.tech , would be feasible.
  • Status of STUMP and WebSTUMP
    • RL has raised a bug concerning the code that checks for excessive cross-posting.
  • JE saw a request for sci.physics.discrete ; will follow up on this.
• Publicity
  • TM presented the latest draft of the press release. It was agreed to wait for professional feedback which TM has arranged.
  • TM raised the possibility of our submitting a 45-minute presentation and/or 90-minute workshop proposal to LibrePlanet 2021 on 20–21 March (submission deadline: 16 November).
    • Decision: TM to prepare abstracts for one presentation and one workshop. TM to deliver the presentation on Usenet in general. JE and RL to deliver the workshop on the practicalities of getting on Usenet and using a newsreader, configuring and using STUMP and WebSTUMP, and configuring and using INN.
• Other business
  • JE has computed some traffic statistics using his news server; there is a linear growth in new articles across time (i.e., a steady number of posts per day) which is interesting and reassuring.
  • The Board agreed not to meet the last two weeks of December.