Nan:2022-07-08-result-news.groups.proposals
From Usenet Big-8 Management Board
From: Usenet Big-8 Management Board <board@big-8.org> Date: Fri, 8 Jul 2022 16:37:20 +0200 Newsgroups: news.groups.proposals,news.announce.newgroups,news.groups,news.admin.hierarchies Archive-Name: news.groups.proposals Followup-To: news.groups.proposals Message-ID: <ta9ff1$o61p$1@dont-email.me> Subject: RESULT: no change to news.groups.proposals RESULT No change will be made to the charter or moderation policy of news.groups.proposals. The Last Call for Comments (LCC) on 2022-06-27 initiated a five-day period for final comments on the proposal to suspend the charter and moderation policy of the Usenet newsgroup news.groups.proposals. Following this comment period, the Big-8 Management Board has decided by unanimous vote not to change the charter or moderation policy of news.groups.proposals. BACKGROUND The unmoderated news.groups newsgroup (formerly known as net.news.group) historically served as the main venue for discussion of potential new newsgroups. These discussions were sometimes difficult to follow due to noise, flames, sporgeries, poorly tagged or structured proposals, etc. As a result of these issues, the moderated group news.groups.proposals was created in November 2006. According to its creation RFD, the group was intended to serve as a "healthy environment where ideas can be raised, discussed, and developed" without the disruption of "personal attacks, flames, and other inappropriate content". news.groups.proposals now serves as the sole "official" venue for all discussions pertaining to existing or potential proposals to create, remove, or modify newsgroups in the Big-8 hierarchies (comp, humanities, misc, news, rec, sci, soc, and talk). What this means in practice is that while anyone is free to discuss RFDs elsewhere on Usenet, there is no guarantee that the Big-8 Management Board will monitor those discussions. PROPOSAL The Big-8 Management Board proposes to redesignate the unmoderated news.groups newsgroup as the sole "official" venue for all public discussions pertaining to existing or potential proposals to create, remove, or modify newsgroups in the Big-8 hierarchies. (Again, by "official" we mean only that the Board is guaranteed to monitor discussions there; users are of course free to hold discussions elsewhere.) The Board would update its public documentation relating to Big-8 workflows and policies accordingly, and the charter and moderation policy for news.groups.proposals would be indefinitely suspended. Thenceforth all submissions to news.groups.proposals would be automatically rejected with an explanatory note referring to the outcome of this RFD and with a suggestion to resubmit to news.groups. Provided news.groups remains a viable venue, the Board may eventually issue a subsequent RFD to remove news.groups.proposals. Otherwise, the Board may issue a subsequent RFD to restore the status quo ante. RATIONALE Since 2006, the Big-8 hierarchies have undergone an overall reduction in their active user base and article traffic. The news.groups newsgroup has followed this general trend; the past few years have seen some measure of spam and other off-topic messages, but little of the acrimonious content that was the main impetus behind the creation of news.groups.proposals. There is therefore reason to believe that news.groups could once again function as "a healthy environment" for the discussion of RFDs. By contrast, in the past few years news.groups.proposals has had problems of its own, mostly stemming from its convoluted and antiquated moderation system. Many submissions have gone missing or unnoticed by the moderators due to breakdowns in the submission pipeline. While the current Board members have been working to streamline and modernize the moderation system they inherited, and to put better fault detection and prevention measures in place, there is always the risk of further unexpected technical issues. Technical issues aside, the Board sees no need to act as gatekeepers for discussions that are, by and large, civil and constructive. Although it would be technically possible to designate both news.groups and news.groups.proposals as "co-official" venues for the discussion of RFDs, there are obvious benefits to keeping discussions centralized. DISCUSSION SO FAR D Finnigan argues that aside from occasional technical difficulties, news.groups.proposals is working fine, in contrast with news.groups, which is cluttered with off-topic posts. They recommend that the Board continue its work on improving the moderation system. Paul Schleck suspects that the off-topic spam posts to news.groups may be putting off people from posting there. He also wonders whether returning configging discussion to news.groups would provide people with an unrestricted forum to advance fallacious arguments about moderated newsgroups. Furthermore, he argues that the problems that led to the creation of news.groups.proposals could emerge again even in a smaller Usenet, and that the purely technical issues with moderation software are solvable. Computer Nerd Kev says that as long as there's still spam on news.groups, then keeping discussions moderated is worthwhile. They also draw attention to disruptive troll posting on alt.config. meff expresses concern about what would happen if the moderators became unavailable. Given the current posting levels and the ability of current users to filter messages, they tend to agree with the proposal in the RFD. Steve Bonine feels that the creation of news.groups.proposals was a "lesser of two evils" decision and that the group worked well for its intended purpose, but nowadays the volume in news.groups is vanishingly low, and so the concerns about the Board not wanting to follow discussions there no longer exist. Plain Text supports the proposal, since they find it easy to filter out the spam from news.groups, and in any case they favour a reduction in the number of newsgroups. Matija Nalis supports preserving the status quo because changing it (or more specifically, documenting and publicizing that change, and getting everyone to comply with it) is time-consuming and error-prone. He suggests technical improvements to avoid the previous moderation issues. FURTHER INFORMATION Home page for news.groups.proposals: <https://www.big-8.org/wiki/News.groups.proposals> Charter for news.groups.proposals: <https://www.big-8.org/wiki/Charter_for_news.groups.proposals> FAQ for news.groups.proposals: <https://www.big-8.org/wiki/Frequently_Asked_Questions_for_news.groups.proposals> Moderation policy for news.groups.proposals: <https://www.big-8.org/wiki/Moderation_policy_for_news.groups.proposals> RFD for creation of news.groups.proposals: <https://ftp.isc.org/usenet/news.announce.newgroups/news/news.groups.proposals> General information on news.groups: <https://www.big-8.org/wiki/News.groups> History of news.groups: <https://www.big-8.org/wiki/Big-8_Usenet_hierarchies#History_of_news.groups> DISTRIBUTION This document has been posted to the following newsgroups: news.announce.newgroups news.groups.proposals news.groups news.admin.hierarchies PROPONENT Usenet Big-8 Management Board <board@big-8.org> CHANGE HISTORY 2022-05-20: 1st RFD 2022-06-13: 2nd RFD 2022-06-27: LCC 2022-07-08: Result: no change to news.groups.proposals -- Usenet Big-8 Management Board https://www.big-8.org/ board@big-8.org
