Minutes/2025-03-14

Present: RL, MM, TM

• Administration
  • comp.lang.asm.x86
    • No response yet to RL's message to three volunteers asking for an update. RL 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.) MM offered to prepare the RFD instead, time permitting.
  • Moderated groups without moderators
    • TM posted and publicized the 3rd RFD. TM been posting pointers to the RFD in various groups, but our news server has been throttling these. TM has raised the issue with the support staff.
    • RL has been continuing to correspond with with the user who volunteered to to moderate soc.genealogy.surnames.britain .
    • Re rec.humor.funny , TM sent RL information about the group and details of his past correspondence with Brad Templeton. RL wrote to the moderators, Brad Templeton and Jim Griffith, to discuss the future of the group. Brad wrote back acknowledging that the group is not currently in operation but expressing interest in finding a new moderator. There has also been discussion on the 3rd RFD regarding the group. RL to solicit volunteers in the 3rd RFD thread; TM to solicit volunteers from the International Society for Humor Studies, which has a SIG for computers and humour.
  • MM reported that soc.sexuality.general also has non-functioning moderation. Agreed that the Board could revisit the issue after the current mass deletion RFD has been dealt with.
  • Re news.admin.announce, ISC has now changed the submission address. RL to post an announcement about the new moderators to news.admin.announce, news.groups.proposals, and news.announce.newgroups.
• Infrastructure
  • MM to raise a ticket with Contabo regarding the IPV6 downtime for our web and mail server.
  • Status of cron jobs for offsite backups: No further update from RL.
  • A Whois query shows that big-8.org has been renewed for a year.
  • RL readjusted our procmailrc in an effort to reduce spam to comp.ai . TM reported that he's still receiving about one spam submission per day, compared with one or two per month in the past. MM to look into applying server-wide spam filtering.
• 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 to prepare an outline/draft of the talk.