ANNOUNCEMENT: Change of Moderators
news.announce.newgroups Moderation Team
"Tale" is unable to continue in his public role, as he will be
dedicating more time to his private life. We hope the entire Usenet
community joins us in wishing him well, and thanking him for his
years of service.
The PGP key to issue control messages in the Big 8 (comp, humanities,
misc, news, sci, soc, talk) hierarchies has been passed to Russ
Allbery. Russ's long association with Tale and dedication to the
Usenet community serves to insure that there will be no disruption
to the affairs of the Big 8 or news.announce.newgroups.
In fact, some elements of Usenet administration which had been
unavoidably neglected in the recent past will be returned to a
healthier footing. For instance, checkgroups will be issued shortly.
In order to improve the administration of the Big 8, more teamwork
and team decision-making have been instituted. Immediately joining
Russ in overseeing the Big 8 process are Group Advice members
piranha and Todd M. McComb. A broader group of volunteers will
be collected in order to better cover the needs of news.announce.newgroups
and the various Big 8 databases during periods when any one volunteer
might be overwhelmed.
This plan has the explicit approval of Tale and will be undertaken
with continued cooperation and support from ISC.org, as per his
desire. At this time, the formerly-unofficial group creation
guidelines prepared by Russ Allbery will appear as the new official
guidelines, also with the full consent of Tale.
Further revisions to streamline the group creation process are
planned, with an eye toward making it less frustrating for all
concerned. These will proceed according to 1) Time needed to update
scripts created by Tale, 2) Public sentiment, and 3) Desire not to
change too much too quickly.
In this time of transition, we are sad to see Tale go, as well as
heartened and optimistic about our new ability to fix those portions
of the process which had fallen into neglect. We hope that the
Usenet community joins us in that enthusiasm, while retaining
patience for the unavoidable problems which will occur along the
way.
Russ Allbery
piranha
Todd McComb