[ADMIN] Stepping down as moderator

[Tim Skirvin]

I am considering stepping down as moderator of HPO. Would anybody
be interested in picking up the group if/when I do so?

- Tim Skirvin (tski...@killfile.org)
Moderator, humanities.philosophy.objectivism
--
http://www.killfile.org/~hpo/ humanities.philosophy.objectivism

[Tom S.]

"Tim Skirvin" <tski...@killfile.org> wrote in message
news:tskirvin.20120601200621$6f...@vulture.killfile.org...

This group has been esentially dead for a couple years now.

RIP

[Charles Bell]

On Jun 1, 10:43 pm, "Tom S." <tmsw...@cox.com> wrote:
> This group has been esentially dead for a couple years now.
>

As rated by Google Groups, activity for this group is "high". And
what is lacking in number of posts has been made up by the large
number of (unquoted) words in most posts. And what has been killing
activity periodically has been the moderator's modbot going down or
awry.

And the point of "moderating" hpo has always that modbot, a completely
objective method for moderating by clear standards -- irrespective of
the moderator's opinions. This takes skill and machinery that rather
makes Skirvin's question a rhetorical one, and otherwise everyone is
left to join spammers and anti-semites in a.p.o. or the O'ist bigots-
moderators of web-based discussion boards.

There is a clear free-speech advantage to keeping an Objectivism
Usenet group going as opposed to any other kind -- owing to the easy
censorship ability within all those other kinds.

The attrition of posters in hpo since about 2001, aside from the
distracting and obsessive Bush Derangement Syndrome, has a lot to do
with the fact that most never wanted to discuss very much about
Objectivism as a philosophy, the actual title of the group, and that
attrition was a good thing. It is harder to explain why those who did
want to discuss Objectivism would rather have opted for the safe
confines of the O'ist bigot-moderator limited access discussion boards
or simply give up, but I think purported Objectivist thinkers who
cannot stand the heat of an unprotected environment do not have a lot
of depth to their thinking or personal character or both.

[Tim Skirvin]

Tim Skirvin <tski...@killfile.org> writes:

> I am considering stepping down as moderator of HPO. Would anybody
> be interested in picking up the group if/when I do so?

I am planning to step down as of the end of the month. Given
the lack of response to my original message, I'm going to assume that
nobody wants to pick up the moderation duties, and I will ask the Big-8
Moderation Board to remove the group.

[Charles Bell]

On Jun 26, 1:50 pm, Tim Skirvin <tskir...@killfile.org> wrote:
>
>         I am planning to step down as of the end of the month.

Do you have a reason -- like you plan to stop moderating all the
groups you moderate, too?

[Tim Skirvin]

Charles Bell <cbe...@bellsouth.net> writes:

>>         I am planning to step down as of the end of the month.

> Do you have a reason -- like you plan to stop moderating all the
> groups you moderate, too?

Yes, I'm dropping the rest of my groups, too. I found someone
to handle one of the groups; another has a bunch of co-moderators who
will be picking things up; a third will have its traffic moved off to
an un-moderated group. The last two - HPO and comp.std.announce - will
be left without a moderator, and I'll probably request that the Big-8
Management Board delete them shortly.

The reason for the short deadline is simple: I need to turn off my
second home network connection and its associated, aging Linux box. I've
already migrated everything off that can be reasonably migrated, including
email, web, monitoring services, and so forth. All that's left to do is
change some DNS settings and call my DSL company.

The longer term problem is that I haven't had the time to touch my
modbot code base for a while now, and the code has not aged well enough
to cleanly migrate to the cloud (which is where it belongs). When I
investigated this migration, I realized that the time had come to throw
out my existing 17-year-old code base and start over, and that prospect
was daunting.

I will miss this job; it's been satisfying in a not-readily-
explainable way. But it's time for me to retire. It would still be nice
if somebody else stepped up and took over, but all I have to offer that
individual would be some general technical advice and maybe some code
fragments.

So long, and thanks for all the flames!

[Charles Bell]

On Jun 26, 7:23 pm, Tim Skirvin <tskir...@killfile.org> wrote:
> The last two - HPO and comp.std.announce - will
> be left without a moderator, and I'll probably request that the Big-8
> Management Board delete them shortly.
>

Okay, then why can't hpo be left as is with Big-8 but unmoderated?
Why does it necessarily have to be dropped from Usenet? And would all
posts remain with google groups as a defacto dejanews or would
googlegroups erase it completely?

[Tim Skirvin]

Charles Bell <cbe...@bellsouth.net> writes:

>> The last two - HPO and comp.std.announce - will be left without a
>> moderator, and I'll probably request that the Big-8 Management Board
>> delete them shortly.

> Okay, then why can't hpo be left as is with Big-8 but unmoderated?
> Why does it necessarily have to be dropped from Usenet?

It doesn't work that way. Un-moderating a group is more
technically difficult than moderating it!

If a moderator could be identified, he or she could probably use
something like this to moderate the group, but it would cost money:

http://www.algebra.com/~ichudov/stump/

> And would all posts remain with google groups as a defacto dejanews or
> would googlegroups erase it completely?

This is unclear. The old archives will probably remain, but I
don't know what Google will do for sure. (They're not a great steward of
Usenet in recent years.)

- Tim Skirvin (tski...@killfile.org)
--
http://wiki.killfile.org/ Skirv's Homepage <FISH>< <*>
http://delicious.com/tskirvin Skirv's Bookmarks

[Paul Robinson]

On Jun 1, 4:06 pm, Tim Skirvin <tskir...@killfile.org> wrote:
>         I am considering stepping down as moderator of HPO.  Would anybody
> be interested in picking up the group if/when I do so?

As I noted in my mail to you, I am willing to pick up moderating this
group even if I have to pay the cost out of my own pocket. We need to
keep this group available with some form of neutral moderation system
in effect. Anyone's comments here that are relevant to Objectivism
should be posted on the same terms as anyone else's, even if I
disagree with the person's opinion.

----
Why isn't the word written as "socialist" rather than "Socialist"? I
thought they weren't interested in Capitalism!