Minutes/2021-05-28

Present: TM, JE, RL

Publicity
- Reddit AMA
  - JE advertised on Usenet, Reddit, and Twitter; TM on Facebook; RL and TM promoted on social media
  - Agreed that JE to use his account to respond; RL and TM to send him text to post. Everyone should preface their comments with their identity.
  - Text of thread: TM to draft and circulate; will link to JE's wiki page as "proof"
- T-shirts
  - JE reported that spreadshirt.com seems promising and that he will follow up on whether/how their European bank transfers work.
- Open Collective newsletter: JE still to do
Infrastructure
- TM reported that submissions have been disappearing from comp.ai after arriving in (Web)STUMP but before being approved/rejected. RL to investigate and report back tonight.
- RL: Re warnings we received about the "forged" list of newsgroups, RL prodded Russ Alberry again as the messages are apparently coming from his site; no response so far. Will write to Todd if no response.
- RL reported that he wrote to the maintainers of the UK STUMP fork but received no response. From examining the many changes, much seems specific to their setup, but others are of general interest and candidates for merging into our official version. TM noted that we can do this without further notice/request because the code is GPL-licensed.
Misc
- JE reported that he has heard back from Ronda Hauben and is starting a discussion
Administration
- Dead groups removal
  - JE reported on the procedure used by a previous iteration of the Board: they identified 1000 newsgroups with no on-topic activity in past year. Normally removal is voted for or against on a group-by-group basis, with unanimity required for removal.
  - JE noted that many news servers these days don't honour rmgroup control messages, though apparently newgroup messages are still honoured.
  - The Board agreed to indefinitely defer any further discussion or action on dead groups removal, and that if the matter were ever revisited, to hold a public consultation before taking any action.