Minutes/2020-06-12

Present: RL, JE, TM, Todd M. McComb (TMM)

B8MB history

Todd M. McComb, one of the original founders of the Big-8 Management Board, was invited to the meeting so that we could get acquainted. TMM explained that the Board was created due to widespread fraud and other disruption in voting on new groups, and out of a desire to move to a model that appeared more accountable to the public. The Board worked well for about a decade until it fizzled out. However, TMM and Russ Allbery have continued to keep the basic machinery running, and have occasionally exercised it in lieu of the Board for non-controversial issues.

Signing key

TM and JE raised the issue of the Board's signing key (notably, the current key is old and weak and does not work with newer versions of GnuPG, which makes it impossible for admins to validate the current group list and other signed communications). TMM agreed to get in touch with Russ to discuss migrating to a new key. They will keep us apprised. In the meantime, they are happy to handle technical requests from us (such as changing moderators), which don't require the key.

Defunct groups

JE enquired about groups without active moderators and TMM promised to send us a list. He can delete such groups, but that requires the key.

TMM left the meeting at this point.

Wiki

TM reported that he had downloaded the 700 GB albasani.net disk image. Disk recovery tools recognize partitions on it, as well as filenames that seem to be backups of the B8MB wiki. However, it remains to be seen whether it is possible to recover these partitions and files.

STUMP

RL said that he has been looking into (Web)STUMP and has been documenting what is needed to install and run it. It was necessary to modify the source code to get it running properly, but he now has a mostly working local installation. As the code is released under the GPL, we could release our modified versions so that others can benefit, though if Igor Chudov is still interested in maintaining the official version, it may be better to submit our changes to him. RL to get in touch with STUMP author Igor Chudov to ask about this, and to report to him problems with the STUMP website (e.g., the mailing list and WebSTUMP demo seem to be broken). RL will also produce documentation on how to install and configure STUMP for the benefit of the rest of us and possibly the public at large.

Misc

JE reported that he has been writing some public tutorials on how to get started with text newsgroups, and will maybe also record some videos.