Nan:2007-04-19-comp.windows.news-rfd

From: Jim Riley <jimrtex@pipeline.com>
Subject: RFD: remove comp.windows.news moderated
Newsgroups: news.announce.newgroups, news.groups.proposals,
 comp.windows.news, comp.windows.misc
Followup-To: news.groups.proposals
Date: Thu, 19 Apr 2007 14:05:48 -0500
Organization: http://www.big-8.org/

                      REQUEST FOR DISCUSSION (RFD)
                        remove comp.windows.news

This is a formal Request For Discussion (RFD) to remove the moderated
newsgroup comp.windows.news.


RATIONALE: remove comp.windows.news

The last approved article was in March 2000.  Sun Microsystems
announced the end of life for the Network extensible Window System
(NeWS) in the early 1990's.

During the early 1990's, traffic in the then unmoderated
comp.windows.news was fairly light, less than 10 articles per week. In
December 1995, the group was moderated in place in order to exclude
misplaced articles related to "news" about MS-Windows.  After the
moderation, fewer than 20 articles were approved to the newsgroup.

Because of its name, conversion to an unmoderated status is not
practical.  An unmoderated newsgrooup would be overrun by MS-Windows
traffic (see comp.windows.misc).


HISTORY:

The unmoderated newsgroup comp.windows.news was created in April 1987,
soon after the Great Renaming.  comp.windows.misc and comp.windows.x
are of similar vintage.

The newsgroup comp.windows.ms was created in November 1988 for
discussion of early versions of MS-Windows.  Because of continued off
topic posting to the other newsgroups in the comp.windows.* hierarchy,
comp.windows.ms was re-organized into comp.os.ms-windows.* in 1992.

Despite creation of an entire hierarchy dedicated to MS-Windows,
off-topic posting continued in the comp.windows.* hierarchy.  The
newsgroup comp.windows.news had the additional burden of a name that
suggested it was for "news" about (MS)-Windows, rather than being
about the NeWS.

In December 1995, comp.windows.news was converted to a moderated group
in order to exclude off-topic discussion, as well as "debate" about
the group name.

Over the next 5 years less than 20 articles were approved.  The last
approval was in March 2000.


CHARTER:

The newsgroup line is:

comp.windows.news	The Network extensible Windowing System.

The charter (extracted from the CFV for moderating the group):

comp.windows.news is dedicated to the discussion of the Network
extensible Windowing System developed and marketed by Sun Microsystems
during the late 80's and early 90's. Topics include the NeWS server,
NeWS-specific issues relating to the X/NeWS server, the NeWS dialect
of PostScript, and any efforts to produce NeWS-compatible systems.


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.windows.news
  comp.windows.misc


PROPONENT: 

Jim Riley <jimrtex@pipeline.com>


CHANGE HISTORY: 

2007-04-19     1st RFD