Nan:2007-01-11-laser-printers-lcc

From: The Big-8 Management Board <board@big-8.org>
Subject: 2nd RFD: remove comp.laser-printers moderated (LAST CALL FOR COMMENTS)
Newsgroups: misc.industry.printing, news.announce.newgroups,
 comp.laser-printers, news.groups.proposals, comp.periphs.printers
Followup-To: news.groups.proposals
Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2007 11:05:39 -0600
Organization: http://www.big-8.org/

                      REQUEST FOR DISCUSSION (RFD)
                       remove comp.laser-printers

This is a formal Request For Discussion (RFD) to remove the moderated
newsgroup comp.laser-printers.


PROCEDURE:

The B8MB 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.

All discussion of this proposal should be posted to news.groups.proposals.

The full group removal procedure is documented here:

  http://www.big-8.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=policies:rmgroup


SUMMARY OF DISCUSSION:

The first RFD stated that there was no comp.periphs.printers.  This
was a mistake, since the group does exist, and is the logical place
for discussion of printers of all types, including laser printers.

Another comment was, "[t]his one seems somewhat more resurrectable
than most".  E-mail from the last moderator suggested that the group
be made unmoderated "if there still seems to be a need" or removed.

Since, there already exists an unmoderated group for discussing
printers of all types, it doesn't make sense to convert
comp.laser-printers to an unmoderated status given its irregular name
and long period of inactivity.  If there is a particular interest in
an unmoderated group specific to laser printers (eg
comp.periphs.printers.laser), there is nothing to prevent anyone from
proposing such a group.


RATIONALE: remove comp.laser-printers

The group has not been active since May 1991.  Prior to that, there
were typically 10 to 30 approvals per month.  May 1991 may have been
the end of laser-lovers mailing list which was gated to the newsgroup
(an empty archive has a last update in May 1991).

Between May 1991 and July 1997 there were less than 2 dozen articles
in the Google/DejaNews archive.  Some of these may have self=approved
or unapproved articles that made it into the archive.

While the topic of the group may be suitable for an unmoderated
newsgroup, the current group is poorly named, creating an orphan
sub-hierarchy.  There exists an unmoderated comp.periphs.printers
(converted from Inet in 2002) which can be used for discussion of
laser printers.

Laser printers may also be discussed in groups such as the moderated
misc.industry.printing (currently inactive) and the unmoderated
comp.publish.prepress.


HISTORY: 

The Arpanet mailing list laser-lovers was gated to fa.laser-lovers in
November 1983.  In November 1985, the gateway was changed to the
newsgroup mod.computers.laser-printers.  In April 1987, that group was
renamed to comp.laser-printers as part of the Great Renaming.

Activity on comp.laser-printers and its two predecessors averaged from
10 to 30 articles from November 1983 to May 1991.  In 1991, regular
approvals stopped, which may have also marked the demise of the
laser-lovers mailing list.  There may have been a few (less than 20
approvals after that time).


DISTRIBUTION:

This document has been posted to the following newsgroups:

  news.announce.newgroups
  news.groups.proposals
  comp.laser-printers
  misc.industry.printing
  comp.periphs.printers

The proponent will also post pointers to:

  comp.publish.prepress


CHARTER:

The newsgroup line is:

comp.laser-printers	Laser printers, hardware & software.


PROPONENT: 

Jim Riley <jimrtex@pipeline.com>


CHANGE HISTORY: 

2007-01-11     2nd RFD (Last Call for Comments)
2006-12-04     1st RFD (revised)
2006-11-28     1st RFD