Nan:2022-03-28-result-comp.software.shareware

From: Tristan Miller <tmiller@big-8.org>
Newsgroups: news.announce.newgroups,news.groups.proposals
Date: Mon, 28 Mar 2022 10:25:49 EDT
Subject: RESULT: comp.software.shareware.announce and comp.software.shareware.authors will be removed
Followup-To: news.groups.proposals
Archive-Name: comp.software.shareware
Message-ID: <t1sfa6$362$1@dont-email.me>

Result:

comp.software.shareware.announce and comp.software.shareware.authors
will be removed.


The Last Call for Comments (LCC) on 2022-03-16 initiated a five-day
period for final comments.  Following this comment period, the Big-8
Management Board has decided by a vote to remove the groups
comp.software.shareware.announce and
comp.software.shareware.authors. The vote was 2 in favour of deletion
and 1 abstaining.


Newsgroups Line:

comp.software.shareware.announce	Shareware announcements. (Moderated)
comp.software.shareware.authors	Creation of shareware. (Moderated)


Distribution:

	news.announce.newgroups
	news.groups.proposals


Proponent: Tristan Miller <tmiller@big-8.org>


Charters:

CHARTER: comp.software.shareware.authors

This is a moderated newsgroup, intended for discussion related to the
creation and sale of shareware software.  Without limitation,
acceptable postings may relate to:

  Development issues.
  Programming issues.
  Marketing techniques.
  Distribution techniques.

Binary postings are not acceptable, although pointers to binary
postings in appropriate binaries groups are.  Commercial
advertisements are not acceptable except insofar as they are bona
fide one-off announcements of new shareware products.  Cross-posting
between this newsgroup and other comp.software.shareware.* newsgroups
is not acceptable.

CHARTER: comp.software.shareware.announce

This is a moderated newsgroup, intended for informational
announcements related to shareware products and resources. Without
limitation, appropriate topics may include:

  Announcements of new shareware releases.
  Announcements of shareware FTP and WWW archives.
  Announcements regarding shareware related services, such as
  credit card registration services.

This group is not intended for discussion about shareware, and
follow-ups to articles in this group should be posted elsewhere.
Commercial advertisements are not acceptable except insofar as they
are bona fide one-off announcements of new shareware products or
services.  Cross-posting between this newsgroup and other
comp.software.shareware.* groups is not acceptable.


Rationale for removal:

The current moderator of record for the newsgroups, Kathy Morgan, had
taken over moderatorship after the previous moderators had
disappeared.  She reports to the Big-8 Management Board that during
her tenure as moderator, the groups were not successful "because they
never again received an adequate number of submissions to make a
viable group". She attributes this to former community members having
moved on to other forums.  She furthermore writes, "I posted asking
users if there was any desire to keep the groups and IIRC received
just one response and that was in the negative.  I would like to see
them removed, since there is no longer interest in the groups and I no
longer have access to moderate them."

Inspection of the two groups on public servers reveals that no new
articles have been posted since May 2017; in the three years prior to
that, only a handful of articles per year had been posted to either
group.

A third and final group in the comp.software.shareware.* hierarchy,
comp.software.shareware.users, was already deleted without objection
on 2009-12-23, the RFD having established that the group had become
moribund.

In view of this community history, and of the near-extinction of the
shareware model, I believe that further efforts to rescue and
revitalize comp.software.shareware.announce and
comp.software.shareware.authors would be unproductive. (These efforts
include putting the groups under caretaker moderation for the sole
purpose of posting this RFD to them.) For this reason I propose that
the groups simply be deleted.


Discussion so far:

Only two users (besides the RFD proponent) have posted a comment in
direct response to the RFD.  One user sees no reason to keep
comp.software.shareware.authors, and was silent on the matter of
comp.software.shareware.announce.  The other user, who identifies as a
newsmaster, views the problem as a technical one which demands a
technical solution, rather than the administrative action of removing
the groups.  The user furthermore considers that the spirit of the
shareware model persists today.  Summing up, they suggest keeping both
groups and removing moderation.

The RFD proponent has clarified that the moderator of record
recommended deletion not for technical reasons but because she
believes the groups had become dormant, with no prospects for a
revival, before she lost the means to moderate them.  The RFD
proponent furthermore noted that the current Board has been repeatedly
advised against changing the moderation status of groups because
implementation across news servers is inconsistent.


History of the Groups:

1997-09-15: 1st RFD (create)
1997-09-29: 2nd RFD (create)
1997-10-20: 1st CFV
1997-10-30: 2nd CFV
1997-11-12: Result:
            comp.software.shareware.announce fails 119:27
            comp.software.shareware.authors fails 108:30
            comp.software.shareware.users fails 110:32
1998-07-17: 1st RFD (create; revised)
1998-08-26: 1st CFV
1998-09-08: 2nd CFV
1998-09-22: Result:
            comp.software.shareware.announce passes 334:22
            comp.software.shareware.authors passes 323:26
            comp.software.shareware.users passes 322:29
2009-11-24: 1st RFD (delete comp.software.shareware.users)
2009-12-13: LCC (delete comp.software.shareware.users)
2009-12-20: Result: comp.software.shareware.users to be deleted
2009-12-23: comp.software.shareware.users deleted


History of this RFD:

2022-02-07: 1st RFD (remove)
2022-02-28: 2nd RFD (remove)
2022-03-16: LCC (remove)
2022-03-28: Result:
            comp.software.shareware.announce to be deleted
            comp.software.shareware.authors to be deleted

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