Nan:2006-06-15-apple2-bin-lcc

From: board@big-8.org (Big-8 Management Board)
Subject: 2nd RFD: remove comp.binaries.apple2 (LAST CALL FOR COMMENTS)
Newsgroups: news.announce.newgroups, news.groups, comp.binaries.apple2,
 comp.sys.apple2, comp.sys.apple2.usergroups
Followup-To: news.groups
Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2006 07:58:20 -0700

                      REQUEST FOR DISCUSSION (RFD)
                      remove comp.binaries.apple2

This is a formal Request for Discussion (RFD) to remove the unmoderated
Usenet newsgroup comp.binaries.apple2.


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.

The full (draft) group removal procedure is documented here:

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


RATIONALE: comp.binaries.apple2

Right now, there is only one unmoderated binary group in the Big Eight,
namely comp.binaries.apple2.  There are three major reasons to remove this
newsgroup:

  * The Apple ][ platform is fairly obsolete, and while binaries for that
    platform may still be of interest to emulator buffs, there are lots of
    web sites from which one can obtain such binaries or even upload new
    ones.  There really doesn't seem to be much point in having a Usenet
    newsgroup for the distribution of such binaries.

  * Because the group is unmoderated, it is used for all sorts of binaries
    that have nothing to do with the Apple ][.  Because it's a Big Eight
    group, it's widely propagated and therefore is a useful place for
    binary posters who want to get their binaries to systems that don't
    carry alt.binaries.*.  This is an obvious abuse of what the Big Eight
    is for.

  * As an unmoderated binary group, the traffic in this group has from time
    to time exceeded the combined traffic of the entire rest of the
    hierarchy and is often a substantial percentage of the rest of the
    hierarchy.  Andrew Gierth from Supernews has posted statistics to
    news.groups in the past.

A 1992 vote to moderate the group failed 99:64:2.  Some additional history
of the group, as reported by Jim Riley:

  It was created in April 1988.  Voting concluded on 8 April 1988
  (185:21), and it appeared on Spaf's list on April 28.

  It is possible that its unmoderated status was an accident.  The 5 or
  so comp.binaries.* groups at the time were all moderated.  A week after
  the result was posted, the proponent/votetaker posted a question to
  news.admin asking about how he c/would become the moderator of the group
  so that all postings would come to him.

  Note that creation pre-dates news.announce.newgroups, so the votetaker
  simply posted his "CFV" in news.groups and then sent them off to the
  backbone for consideration.

  There appears to have been some problems with people posting binaries
  to comp.sys.apple (later renamed to comp.sys.apple2), and perhaps the
  conclusion was that having the group in a separate sub-hierarchy was
  sufficient for traffic control at that time.

The relevant isc.org archives regarding this group are available here: 

ftp://ftp.isc.org/pub/usenet/news.announce.newgroups/comp/comp.binaries.apple2
ftp://ftp.isc.org/usenet/control/comp/comp.binaries.apple2.gz


EXISTING CHARTER:

The group has no charter other than the newsgroups line.

END CHARTER.


DISTRIBUTION:

This RFD has been posted to the following newsgroups:

  news.announce.newgroups
  news.groups
  comp.binaries.apple2
  comp.sys.apple2
  comp.sys.apple2.usergroups


PROPONENT:

Dave Sill <de5@big-8.org> and the Deadwood Task Force


CHANGE HISTORY:

2006-06-15      LCC posted.
2006-06-06      RFD drafted by Martin Moleski and Tim Skirvin.
2006-06-02      Draft submitted to DGTF and Big-8.