Minutes/2025-03-07

Present: RL, MM, TM

• Administration
  • comp.lang.asm.x86
    • No response yet to RL's message to three volunteers asking for an update. RL has pinged the volunteers again on 2025-02-21; awaiting a response.
  • 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. (TM can do this probably in mid- to late April at the earliest)
  • Moderated groups without moderators
    • TM prepared, and RL reviewed, a draft 3rd RFD and pointers to it to be posted in newsgroups related to the ones under discussion. TM to post these now. RL offered comments on the options for dealing with the groups, including alternatives to deletion, and TM suggested that much of this could be posted as a response to the 3rd RFD.
    • RL has been continuing to correspond with with the user who volunteered to to moderate soc.genealogy.surnames.britain . RL also discovered that the various soc.genealogy.surnames.* had originally been split off from a parent group that was seeing too much traffic. The groups were robomoderated and were active only from 1997 to 2000, making the prospect of resurrecting any of the unlikely. Agreed that RL would continue to communicate with the volunteer for now.
    • Given the importance of rec.humor.funny in Internet history, RL proposed discussing the future of the group with the former moderator, Brad Templeton. TM indicated that he had already been discussing the group in the context of an MVI in 2022, and had been in touch with Brad Templeton around or before then (possibly regarding an unrelated matter). TM to dig up the old correspondence and provide details to RL, who will then contact contact Brad Templeton if it still seems appropriate.
  • news.admin.announce
    • RL has updated our wiki page about the group. RL to inform the ISC about the change in submission address and to post an announcement about the new moderators to news.admin.announce, news.groups.proposals, and news.announce.newgroups.
• Infrastructure
  • MM noticed that our web and mail server has been experiencing IPv6 downtime. He checked the configuration on our end, which looks fine. MM to continue investigating and contact Contabo support if necessary.
  • Status of cron jobs for offsite backups: No further update from RL.
  • RL changed the e-mail notifications sent by our STUMP instance so that they direct users to the https version of our site.
  • RL has confirmed that the big-8.org domain name registration is still being billed to JS. RL to check after the renewal date that the payment has gone through.
  • RL fixed an apparent bug in our procmailrc file that occasionally prevented submissions from reaching STUMP, including comp.ai. TM reported a significant uptick in spam submissions to comp.ai in the last few days. RL to investigate whether there is any connection.
• 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 and TM scheduled a meeting to discuss their talk.