Nan:2007-04-27-comp.sys.mac.announce-rfd

From: Jim Riley <jimrtex@pipeline.com>
Subject: RFD: remove comp.sys.mac.announce moderated
Newsgroups: news.announce.newgroups, comp.sys.mac.misc,
 news.groups.proposals, comp.sys.mac.apps, comp.sys.mac.announce
Followup-To: news.groups.proposals
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2007 17:09:13 -0500
Organization: http://www.big-8.org/

                      REQUEST FOR DISCUSSION (RFD)
                      remove comp.sys.mac.announce

This is a formal Request For Discussion (RFD) to remove the moderated
newsgroup comp.sys.mac.announce.


RATIONALE: remove comp.sys.mac.announce

The last approved article was in March 2000.  Over the last 5 years of
activity, approvals were increasingly infrequent (10, 6, 3, 1, and 1
for the years 1996 to 2000, respectively).

Alternatively to removal, the group could be assigned a new moderator.
Kathy Morgan has volunteered to moderate if there is interest in
reviving the group.

As an announcement group, conversion to an unmoderated status is not
appropriate.


HISTORY:

The newsgroup comp.sys.mac.announce was created as part of a
re-organization of the comp.sys.mac (CSM) hierarchy in March 1990 that
created CSM.announce, CSM.apps, CSM.comm, CSM.games, CSM.system, and
CSM.wanted, and renamed comp.sys.mac to CSM.misc.

The comp.sys.mac hierarchy had its origin with the creation of the
unmoderated net.micro.mac in November 1984, and the moderated
mod.computers.mac in October 1985.  mod.computers.mac was renamed to
mod.mac in March 1986.  During the Great Renaming, net.micro.mac was
renamed to comp.sys.mac and mod.mac was renamed to
comp.sys.mac.digest.

Three groups, CSM.hypercard, CSM.hardware, and CSM.programmer were
added in October 1987, March 1988, and October 1989, respectively.
Frustration with the piecemeal addition of newsgroups led to the
invention of the multi-group re-organization that resulted in creation
of 7 groups, including CSM.announce in March 1990.

Additional hierarchy changes include:

CSM.datatbases created in January 1992.
CSM.advocacy created in September 1992.
CSM.oop.macapp3 and CSM.oop.misc created in November 1992.
CSM.oop.tcl in April 1993.
CSM.portables created in April 1993.
CSM.scitech created in May 1993.
CSM.graphics created in November 1993.
CSM.programmer.codewarrior created in August 1994.
CSM.programmer (CSMP) split into CSMP.help, CSMP.info, CSMP.misc,
   and CSMP.tools in November 1994.
CSM.hardware (CSMH) split into CSMH.misc, CSMH.storage, and
   CSMH.video, and CSM.printing in April 1995.
CSM.games (CSMG) split into CSMG.action, CSMG.adventure,
   CSMG.announce, CSMG.flight-sim, CSMG.marketplace, CSMG.misc, and
   CSMG.strategic in May 1995.
CSM.programmer.games created in October 1995.
CSM.oop.powerplant in March 1996.

>From the time of its creation in March 1990 until late 1995,
comp.sys.mac.announce had roughly 5 to 10 approved articles per month.
Beginning in late 1995, approvals became increasingly infrequent, with
only a total of 5 approvals from 1998 to 2000.  The last approval was
in March 2000.


CHARTER:

The newsgroup line is:

comp.sys.mac.announce	Important notices for Macintosh users.

The charter (extracted from the CFV):

Designed to be a low-volume, high-content group for distribution of
information, regular postings (like the "where to find...", and
"introduction to comp.sys.mac" documents, postings like virus alerts
and other forms of information (product announcements? press
releases?) to be determined.


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.proposals and participate in the relevant threads 
in that newsgroup.

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

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

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.proposals as well.


DISTRIBUTION:

This document has been posted to the following newsgroups:

  news.announce.newgroups
  news.groups.proposals
  comp.sys.mac.announce
  comp.sys.mac.misc
  comp.sys.mac.apps

The proponent will also post pointers to:

  comp.sys.mac.comm
  comp.sys.mac.hardware.misc
  comp.sys.mac.hardware.storage
  comp.sys.mac.hardware.video
  comp.sys.mac.portables
  comp.sys.mac.printing
  comp.sys.mac.programmer.help
  comp.sys.mac.programmer.misc
  comp.sys.mac.system


PROPONENT: 

Jim Riley <jimrtex@pipeline.com>


CHANGE HISTORY: 

2007-04-27     1st RFD