"sci.space.news" - Moderetad and Abandoned

[Internetado]

sci.space.news seems completely abandoned.

No new messages since 2018 because has no moderator, I think.

Most moderated groups are empty because the moderator was gone. They
are important groups covering interesting subjects.

Any idea?

[]s

--

Eduardo
Arte-Cultura-Lusofonia
www.alt119.net

[Jason Evans]

On Sat, 04 Jul 2020 20:53:49 -0300, Internetado wrote:

> sci.space.news seems completely abandoned.
>
> No new messages since 2018 because has no moderator, I think.
>
> Most moderated groups are empty because the moderator was gone. They are
> important groups covering interesting subjects.
>
> Any idea?

First of all, if someone wants to moderate the group, we can change the
moderation over to them. We could also possibly unmoderate it.

How Moderation Is Supposed to Work:
- A new post is sent via the News Net Transfer Protocol (NNTP) to a news
server.
- If it is correctly configured, the news server sees the group is
moderated, and relays the post via e-mail to ISC.org via the Simple Mail
Transfer Protocol (SMTP).
- ISC.org sends the message via SMTP to the email (SMTP) address used by
the moderator(s).
- The email server passes the post to the moderator(s) or the moderation
software.
- If the post is approved, either automatically by software or by a human
decision, the "approved" header is added to the post.
- The post is then injected via NNTP into a news server, which then
shares it with its peers.

The main issue for a new moderator is that moderation is a lot of work to
get set up. You will need to set up your own moderation software so that
when you received messages to be moderated, you can easily pass or fail
the messages so they move on to the newsgroup.

If you and some friends are interested in taking it or any other
abandoned newsgroup over as moderators, take a look at the following
links and submit a RFD (Request for Discussion).

Also, feel free to email us directly if you have questions:
bo...@big-8.org

https://www.big-8.org/wiki/
Content_and_Format_of_a_Request_for_Discussion_(RFD)

https://www.big-8.org/wiki/Moderated_Newsgroups

https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/faqs/mod-pitfalls.html

[Adam H. Kerman]

Jason Evans <jse...@big-8.org> wrote:

>First of all, if someone wants to moderate the group, we can change the

>moderation over to them. We could also possibly unmoderate it. . . .

No, you really cannot change the moderation status of a newsgroup. Not
every News server accepts your checkgroups. You'll end up with some
servers with the moderated flag set and some with an unmoderated group.

[Rink]

Op 5-7-2020 om 11:52 schreef Adam H. Kerman:

Maybe Jason does not mean that the group will be unmoderated, but that
every message is automatically accepted. (as long there is no moderator)
Then it still is a moderated group.

Rink

[Adam H. Kerman]

That's nice, but I can have a discussion with someone on Usenet based on
what he's written, not what someone else is going to assume what he
really meant.

Even with what you suggest, which is NOT unmoderated, the moderator
still has to maintain the mechanism. It's still going to have to perform
syntax checks and have working email spam filters like any other gateway.

It's work for somebody, which nobody has volunteered to do.

[Jason Evans]

On Sun, 2 Aug 2020 19:22:52 +0200, Rink wrote:

> Maybe Jason does not mean that the group will be unmoderated, but that
> every message is automatically accepted. (as long there is no moderator)
> Then it still is a moderated group.
>
> Rink

Hi Rink,

The most recent moderator of sci.space.news was Ron Baalke. Since the
group appears to be abandoned, the easiest thing would be for someone to
attempt to contact Ron and ask him to change the moderator to a new
person. If it is not possible to reach him, then the B8MB can request
that ownership be transferred to someone else.

If the new moderator wants to auto-approve all messages making it
effectively unmoderated, that's possible. This is what I was referring
to. In the past changing a group from moderated to unmoderated and vice
versa is pretty difficult because some news servers will honor that
change and some won't so you will have some people will moderation and
some without. In other words, we're not really interested in making those
kinds of changes but changing moderators is pretty easy on our end.

The biggest problem with that is for someone to know how to set up
moderation software and have access to a news server that will allow you
to inject the approved messages in.

JE