Nan:2006-11-07-basic-visual-announce-rfd

From: Jim Riley <jimrtex@pipeline.com>
Subject: RFD: remove comp.lang.basic.visual.announce moderated
Newsgroups: news.announce.newgroups, news.groups,
 comp.lang.basic.visual.announce, comp.lang.basic.visual.misc,
 comp.lang.basic.misc
Followup-To: news.groups
Date: Tue, 07 Nov 2006 14:02:04 -0800

                      REQUEST FOR DISCUSSION (RFD)
                 remove comp.lang.basic.visual.announce

This is a formal Request For Discussion (RFD) to remove the moderated
newsgroup comp.lang.basic.visual.announce.


RATIONALE: remove comp.lang.basic.visual.announce

There have been no messages approved by the moderator of the newsgroup
since May 1997.

In 1998, during discussion of an RFD to add (.16bit, .32bit, and
.internet) groups to the comp.lang.basic.visual.* hierarchy, there was
a suggestion made that either the .announce group should be removed or
a new moderator found.  The RFD for the additional groups was
abandoned and no action with respect to the .announce group.

Most mentions of comp.lang.basic.visual.announce since 1997 have been
either simply including it in a list of Visual Basic groups; or as
part of a complaint about posting an announcement to
comp.lang.visual.basic.misc (even though no announcements had been
approved to the .announce group in several years).

There are at least 63 newsgroups related to Visual Basic in the
microsoft.* hierarchy.  With this level of support by the vendor,
there may simply be little need for a Big 8 announcement group.

Over the past 12 months, there have been more announcements posted to
the non-Visual-Basic comp.lang.basic.* groups (.misc, .powerbasic, and
.realbasic) than to the comp.lang.basic.visual.* groups.  If there is
a revival of the group, consideration should be made of renaming the
group as comp.lang.basic.announce.


HISTORY: 

The newsgroup comp.lang.basic.visual was created in January 1994.  The
newsgroup comp.lang.basic.misc was created at the same time (there was
never a comp.lang.basic newsgroup).

In October 1994, comp.lang.basic.visual was split into 3 unmoderated
newsgroups (.3rdparty, .database, and .misc) and the moderated
newsgroup comp.lang.basic.visual.announce).

There were approvals in comp.lang.visual.announce from October 1994
until January 1997.  There have been rare cross-posted articles
approved by moderators of other groups since then.

The non-Visual-Basic groups, comp.lang.basic.powerbasic and
comp.lang.basic.realbasic were created in August 1998 and December
1998, respectively.


PROCEDURE: 

The full group removal procedure is documented here:

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

Those who wish to comment on this request to remove this newsgroup should
subscribe to news.groups and participate in the relevant threads in that
newsgroup.

To this end, the followup header of this RFD has been set to news.groups.

All discussion of active proposals should be posted to news.groups.

If desired by the readership of closely affected groups, the discussion
may be crossposted to those groups, but care must be taken to ensure that
all discussion appears in news.groups as well.


DISTRIBUTION:

This document has been posted to the following newsgroups:

  news.announce.newgroups
  news.groups
  comp.lang.basic.visual.announce
  comp.lang.basic.visual.misc
  comp.lang.basic.misc

The proponent will also post pointers to:

  comp.lang.basic.powerbasic
  comp.lang.basic.realbasic
  comp.lang.basic.visual.3rdparty
  comp.lang.basic.visual.database


PROPONENT: 

Jim Riley <jimrtex@pipeline.com>


CHANGE HISTORY: 

2006-11-08     1st RFD