Minutes/2025-01-10

• Administration
  • rec.arts.comics.reviews and rec.arts.comics.info
    • TM posted the LCC. Voting period runs from 2025-01-08 to 2025-01-15.
  • comp.sys.wearables
    • RL informed ISC of new submission address. MM submitted a test message that was (correctly) rejected. Awaiting confirmation from Greg Pfeil that approvals are working again. We can then announce this in news.groups.proposals .
  • comp.protocols.dns.bind
    • Last contact from Dan Mahoney on 2024-10-26. Agreed to defer consideration a while longer.
  • rec.radio.broadcasting
    • TM posted the LCC. Voting period runs from 2025-01-08 to 2025-01-15. The Board received an e-mail asking the group to be converted from moderated to unmoderated. The Board had initiated a discussion on this practice in news.admin.moderation back on 2024-02-23 but it did not attract many responses; however, the recent mass deletion RFD has re-ignited the issue in news.groups.proposals . To summarize the discussions to date, despite the existence of a well-defined mechanism for changing the moderation flag via a control message, it's unclear whether anyone has actually tried to issue such a message, and whether news servers will properly act on it. The meeting therefore considered whether rec.radio.broadcasting , which seems destined for deletion, could serve as a test case. That is, rather than deleting the group, the we could change the moderation submission address to a big-8.org account, send a control message to change the group's moderation flag, and then see if posts made to the group from various news servers go to the submission address or directly to the group. It was agreed to further explore this idea for discussion at the next meeting.
  • comp.os.plan9
    • TM has closed the MVI.
  • comp.lang.asm.x86
    • On 2024-12-08 Terje wrote to the other two volunteers, offering to keep the approval address on his server. RL wrote to Terje and the two volunteers to ask for an update. One message was bounced by an overenthusiastic spam filter; no response yet to the other two.
  • news.groups.proposals
    • The group's signing key uses the e-mail address ngp-approval-key@ngp.big-8.org. Agreed to leave this as-is for now, as this is just an identifier. We can later consider adding a new identity with a new address, and/or upgrading to a GPGv2 key.
  • comp.compression.research
    • TM still to prepare a group removal RFD.
  • Moderated groups without moderators
    • TM posted a revised version of the mass deletion RFD, which is now attracting discussion on news.groups.proposals and news.groups .
    • There was an objection to the removal of rec.arts.movies.reviews on the grounds that it is still in use (despite there being no working submission address registered with ISC). MM to contact the group's most recent user to ask how they are continuing to post and to invite them to respond to the RFD.
    • E-mail received from someone volunteering to moderate soc.genealogy.surnames.britain . RL to follow up.
    • The meeting discussed an issue raised on news.groups.proposals about the potential loss of archived messages (or at least the loss of their availability via NNTP) when groups are deleted. Agreed to consider this matter further, and to reach out various NNTP/HTTP sites that maintain Usenet archives to ask about their current policies and practices for removed groups.
  • news.admin.announce
    • No response yet from Tim Skirvin regarding whether he still wants to moderate the group.
  • misc.test.moderated
    • Confirmed moderation submission address has been switched to Ivo Gandolfo's address.
• Infrastructure
  • Status of cron jobs for offsite backups: No further update from RL.
  • Remote monitoring
    • MM still liaising with Ivo Gandolfo to set up remote monitoring.
  • Monitoring status check warning
    • Yesterday DNS and mail delivery error from big-8 to umanitoba.ca complaining about IPv6 messages sent without DKIM/SPF. MM to fix this.
• Software/funding
  • TM: No update yet on GPG signing best practices on Savannah
  • Thunderbird 128 contact deferred given Julien's comments on INN.
  • TM still to respond to Julien.
  • OTF IFF/NGI0/Sovereign Tech Fund: no further updates
• Misc
  • Paul Schleck proposals: no further progress.
  • BDCAM25: RL applied for a bursary from the conference organizers and is awaiting a response.