Minutes/2022-04-08

Present: RL, TM

Infrastructure/wiki
- TM: Apache redirect from http://www.big-8.org/~ngp to news.groups.proposals has been added
- TM: New (private) wiki page documenting the News.groups.proposals STUMP setup, including the new uptime checker
- TM: When making an ssh connection shell.panix.com, the load balancer automatically redirects one of panix{1,2,3}.panix.com. Note that the crontab command can be run only from panix2, so if you need to edit a cron job, log into this machine directly. (Panix has said that this setup is by design and will be documented there soon. Apparently we had already documented this quirk ourselves at Board:Panix account and STUMP setup#Editing the crontab file but I had overlooked it.)
- TM: Failed cron job today for $HOME/scripts/pgpmoose -g news.announce.important: Couldn't connect to server news.panix.com at /net/u/10/n/nan/scripts/pgpmoose line 156.
  - The meeting noted that this cron job runs every hour, but there have been no further failures, so the problem was probably a transient one.
- TM: I've removed what I believe is Bill Horne's key from .ssh/authorized_keys on panix, since he's no longer involved in technical or administrative tasks
- Moderator notices for news.groups.proposals
  - TM: JK says he has fixed the notifications for moderator accept/reject notices so that they are sent to the Board's e-mail address instead of the ngp-mods Google Group.
  - No report yet from JE on his investigation into why the mail server is not forwarding the ngp moderator notices to our individual big-8 addresses. Agreed that TM would send JE a reminder by e-mail. In the meantime, all Board members are encouraged to visit JK's WebSTUMP instance once per day to check for pending messages to ngp.
Administration
- TM: Mail to ISC's group-admin address bouncing; problem has been reported to ISC, who have promised to fix it.
- TM: TMM says he has sent out control messages removing comp.software.shareware.authors and comp.software.shareware.announce. These appear (in at least five copies!) in control.rmgroup . The groups remain available on Panix and Eternal September as of 2022-04-08. The meeting agreed that TM would write to the ISC to ask about the duplicate messages to ask whether this is by design or if the messages are malformed in some why which has prevented their use by news sites.
- JE was to have made a new draft of Adding Members to the Board; this had not been received so agreed to defer to next meeting. TM to remind JE.
- TM: Should the Board continue to require RFDs to be discussed in news.groups.proposals? Agreed to defer discussion until the next meeting.
- Draft revisions to How to volunteer
  - RL added some suggestions for how to volunteer for Usenet generally
  - TM has not yet applied his changes to the task forces, but aims to do so by next meeting.
  - It was agreed to defer consideration of the revisions to the next meeting.
Publicity
- TM: My LibrePlanet 2022 talk is now available via MediaGoblin and Framatube.
- TM: E-mail from PS (2022-04-06) re Usenet discussion/possible interview on "Off the Hook" radio show/podcast. Agreed to defer discussion until the next meeting.
- JE had reported by e-mail (2022-03-29) that a reporter at The Register would like to do a story on the Board. TM had replied suggesting that the reporter check out our press release and Open Collective blog post. Agreed to ask JE for an update at next meeting.
Misc
- Reminder: 15 April meeting cancelled due to Easter holiday