Moderator Vacancy Investigation: rec.humor.funny and rec.humor.funny.reruns
Steve Bonine
moderated groups rec.humor.funny and rec.humor.funny.reruns
This is a formal Moderator Vacancy Investigation (MVI), begun because
moderated newsgroups rec.humor.funny and rec.humor.funny.reruns are not
functioning and may have been abandoned by their moderators.
This investigation will attempt to verify the reasons for non-function,
and may result in the removal of the group or the selection of a new
moderator. The Big-8 Management Board considers the alternative of
changing the status of the group from moderated to unmoderated as likely
to cause more harm than good.
RATIONALE:
According to Google's archive the last post approved to rec.humor.funny
was on 30 July 2009 and for rec.humor.funny.reruns the last post was
April 7, 2008 (excluding automatic submissions). Probe messages resulted
in no response for either newsgroup.
NEWSGROUPS LINES:
rec.humor.funny Jokes that are funny (in the moderator's opinion).
(Moderated)
rec.humor.funny.reruns Reposts of rec.humor.funny archive material.
(Moderated)
HISTORY OF THE GROUPS:
Web site http://www.netfunny.com/ chronicles the history of
rec.humor.funny, indicating that it was created on August 7, 1987 by
Brad Templeton.
Rec.humor.funny.reruns passed its vote 390:19 on 12 December 1996.
CHARTER OF REC.HUMOR.FUNNY.RERUNS
Rec.humor.funny.reruns is intended to be an auto-moderated newsgroup
in which the contents of the RHF archive are posted. The moderator
determines the selection policy to ensure minimum repetition, and he
sets the posting rate as he sees fit.
Jokes which appeared in RHF but were subsequently identified as being
copyrighted will be excluded from rec.humor.funny.reruns. Further,
users who have had jokes accepted to RHF in the past may request that
their jokes be excluded from RHFR.
In addition to the standard daily postings, the moderator will identify
a selection of classic seasonal jokes in the archives (Christmas,
Thanksgiving, Easter, etc.), and those jokes will appear at the
appropriate time every year. Examples of such seasonal humor includes
the twelve days of Christmas correspondence joke and the Easter joke
about Jesus seeing his shadow.
Any submissions to rec.humor.funny.reruns are automatically bounced
back to the submitter, with an explanation of the newsgroup's nature
and the suggestion that the material be resubmitted to RHF.
Followups are automatically directed to rec.humor.d.
DISTRIBUTION:
news.announce.newgroups
news.groups.proposals
rec.humor.funny
rec.humor.funny.reruns
PROPONENT:
Steve Bonine <s...@pobox.com>
PROCEDURE:
Those who wish to comment on this moderator vacancy investigation should
subscribe to news.groups.proposals and participate in the relevant
threads in that newsgroup.
To this end, the followup header of this MVI has been set to
news.groups.proposals.
For more information on the MVI process, please see
http://www.big-8.org/wiki/Moderator_Vacancy_Investigations
CHANGE HISTORY:
2011-12-26 Moderator Vacancy Investigation
Keith F. Lynch
From: "Keith F. Lynch" <k...@KeithLynch.net>
To: Brad Templeton <4b...@templetons.com>
Subject: Re: RHF moderator update
Date: Wed, 10 Nov 2010 23:06:44 -0500 (EST)
One year ago today, I emailed you:
As you may recall, I applied for the position of rec.humor.funny
moderator last year. You gave me a test and told me I scored well.
But you gave the position to someone else.
That someone else seems to have resigned, as no posts have appeared
on rec.humor.funny since July. I again volunteer.
You promptly replied:
Yes, I'm going to fire him but right now am awaiting somebody else
ahead of you in line -- I will keep you in mind though.
It's a year later, and there have still been no rec.humor.funny posts,
so I renew my offer.
He just replied to this email a few minutes ago (!), to tell me he'll
give me a Skype interview.
--
Keith F. Lynch - http://keithlynch.net/
Please see http://keithlynch.net/email.html before emailing me.
Brad Templeton
Steve Bonine <s...@pobox.com> wrote:
> MODERATOR VACANCY INVESTIGATION (MVI)
> moderated groups rec.humor.funny and rec.humor.funny.reruns
>
Just a note for those who saw this false "MVI" posting. The poster of
the message, in contraditction to almost all the MVI guidelines, did
not make any attempt to contact me or other RHF editors before posting this
message with a forged approval to the group. It is not abandoned.
That doesn't excuse the lack of activity in the group. Sadly, the new
moderator appointed last year simply flaked out and vanished. Then, a former
moderator offered to take over, and that person also did nothing for many
months. Finally a reader applied for the job, complaining about the lack
of action and got approved -- and then again did nothing for many months.
I have another applicant other consideration at this time but any who
saw this are welcome to contact me. As outlined before, the prime
qualifications are a good sense of humour and ideally some history with the
newsgroup to know what has been done before and how it operates. Skill with
linux and the newsreader is a very good idea, and if you have further skill
with perl, web scripting and HTML to help improve the web interfaces and
submission system that would be great. (The old e-mail system is so spam
ridden it needs replacement.)
You can reach me by reply to b...@templetons.com (that address is C/R spam
filtered, you will later get a better one.)
The archives remain available at www.netfunny.com
--
Visit Burning Man 2000 in my photojournals
http://www.templetons.com/brad/photo/bm00
Mark Kramer
> moderated groups rec.humor.funny and rec.humor.funny.reruns
This article appeared (according to the headers) in rec.humor.funny and
.reruns, but was not approved by the moderator of either group.
Shall I assume that the forgery has been reported to the sender's ISP
and his access to the Internet and Usenet, as well as any official status
within Usenet, has been pulled, or do I need to start the process?
I refer all interested parties to the discussion regarding forged approvals
in ngp just this past few days.
Jon Ribbens
> According to Google's archive the last post approved to rec.humor.funny
> was on 30 July 2009 and for rec.humor.funny.reruns the last post was
> April 7, 2008 (excluding automatic submissions). Probe messages resulted
> in no response for either newsgroup.
Computer Nerd Kev
rec.humor.funny.reruns had ceased in 2015. He said:
"I may take a while to get to it, but thanks for the note"
It's been quite a while...
--
__ __
#_ < |\| |< _#
Jon Ribbens
Mind you, my post above allegedly dated 2nd March was actually posted
8th January and took two months to get approved, so maybe there is
some sort of time dilation effect going on here ;-)
Tristan Miller
On 03/03/2022 15.37, Jon Ribbens wrote:
> Mind you, my post above allegedly dated 2nd March was actually posted
> 8th January and took two months to get approved, so maybe there is
> some sort of time dilation effect going on here;-)
some further issues with the moderation software that resulted in four
posts submitted since October 2021 not appearing. Yesterday I rescued
these four posts, one of which was yours, but with the side-effect of
timestamping these posts with the new moderation approval date rather
than the original submission date.
Regards,
Tristan
--
Usenet Big-8 Management Board
https://www.big-8.org/
bo...@big-8.org
Steve Bonine
my opinion was that there was justification for removing dead newsgroups
because it might funnel traffic into the ones that were left. Today,
removing dead newsgroups is busy work. I realize that by posting this
article I am including myself in this comment ... but really, are you
folks so desperate for something to do that the best you can come up
with is going through a convoluted and time-consuming process, the end
result of which is the issuance of an RMGROUP that no one will notice?
And, FWIW, yes, a decade ago I actually did contact Brad.
Jon Ribbens
> Jon Ribbens wrote:
>> On 2010-12-26, Steve Bonine <s...@pobox.com> wrote:
>>> According to Google's archive the last post approved to rec.humor.funny
>>> was on 30 July 2009 and for rec.humor.funny.reruns the last post was
>>> April 7, 2008 (excluding automatic submissions). Probe messages resulted
>>> in no response for either newsgroup.
>>
>> Have you tried to contact Brad at btm at templetons dot com?
>
> The article you're replying to is more than a decade old.
newsreader showed me the article as new. It probably doesn't help that
'slrn' thinks that the Date: header isn't worth displaying, but this
has finally prompted me to care enough to work out how to configure
it to be more sensible.
> A decade ago, my opinion was that there was justification for removing
> dead newsgroups because it might funnel traffic into the ones that
> were left. Today, removing dead newsgroups is busy work. I realize
> that by posting this article I am including myself in this comment ...
> but really, are you folks so desperate for something to do that the
> best you can come up with is going through a convoluted and
> time-consuming process, the end result of which is the issuance of an
> RMGROUP that no one will notice?
through that process, not me... albeit in the rather distant past ;-)
> And, FWIW, yes, a decade ago I actually did contact Brad.
Tristan Miller
On 11/03/2022 10.59, Steve Bonine wrote:
> but really, are you folks so desperate for something to do that the best
> you can come up with is going through a convoluted and time-consuming
> process, the end result of which is the issuance of an RMGROUP that no
> one will notice?
procedures, and thereby exercise the associated machinery, to find out
what does and doesn't still work, and then to fix the stuff that's
broken. We recently did a group creation RFD that passed successfully;
we've been monitoring which news servers have implemented the NEWGROUP
and have been getting in touch with some of those who haven't to find
out why. And the current deletion RFD has turned up various bugs and
incompatibilities in the STUMP moderation software that have since been
fixed.
Steve Bonine
you can convince yourself (royal "yourself") that there will be activity
in a new group, creating it makes sense.
But removing groups? Why? There are hundreds of dead newsgroups in the
big-8 hierarchies. Issuing removal RFDs and going through the process
to remove some subset of them is just silly. It was dubious even years
ago when there was potential for redirecting people to the remaining
groups; these days it is pointless.
As for "exercise the associated machinery" . . . for how many months, or
perhaps years, was the moderation broken for news.groups.proposals? It
does not take a removal RFD to see that submissions are not reaching the
group ... it just takes giving a damn. Why does the group even need to
exist now? There was a time when separating the discussion of new
newsgroups from news.groups made sense (although even then it was
contentious to move it to a moderated newsgroup). These days, with the
level of activity like it is, making the discussion easier is a goal,
and a moderated newsgroup doesn't do that. Especially when the
moderation software is nonfunctional.
But OK; if this is how you want to spend your time, have a ball.
Spiros Bousbouras
Steve Bonine <s...@pobox.com> wrote:
> Jon Ribbens wrote:
> > On 2010-12-26, Steve Bonine <s...@pobox.com> wrote:
> >> According to Google's archive the last post approved to rec.humor.funny
> >> was on 30 July 2009 and for rec.humor.funny.reruns the last post was
> >> April 7, 2008 (excluding automatic submissions). Probe messages resulted
> >> in no response for either newsgroup.
> >
> > Have you tried to contact Brad at btm at templetons dot com?
>
> The article you're replying to is more than a decade old. A decade ago,
> my opinion was that there was justification for removing dead newsgroups
> because it might funnel traffic into the ones that were left.
means that people aren't interested in posting in it so its existence
doesn't act as a distraction from posting in or reading other groups.
> Today, removing dead newsgroups is busy work.
might be revived again so why eliminate the possibility ? If it's dead ,
it's not harming anyone.
--
vlaho.ninja/prog
Computer Nerd Kev
> On Fri, 11 Mar 2022 03:59:44 CST
> Steve Bonine <s...@pobox.com> wrote:
>> Jon Ribbens wrote:
>> > On 2010-12-26, Steve Bonine <s...@pobox.com> wrote:
>> >> According to Google's archive the last post approved to rec.humor.funny
>> >> was on 30 July 2009 and for rec.humor.funny.reruns the last post was
>> >> April 7, 2008 (excluding automatic submissions). Probe messages resulted
>> >> in no response for either newsgroup.
>> >
>> > Have you tried to contact Brad at btm at templetons dot com?
>>
>> The article you're replying to is more than a decade old. A decade ago,
>> my opinion was that there was justification for removing dead newsgroups
>> because it might funnel traffic into the ones that were left.
>
> I don't understand the logic behind this. If a group is a dead then it
> means that people aren't interested in posting in it so its existence
> doesn't act as a distraction from posting in or reading other groups.
moderated groups where the moderator is no longer accepting any
posts (or, since the thread started, even posting their previously
regular automated posts to rec.humor.funny.reruns themselves).
This makes the group precisely a distraction from others because
anyone who wants to post something to rec.humor.funny may still do
so, but their post will never appear there. So they'll have wasted
their time, and if they're new to Usenet then it might discourage
them entirely if they don't understand why their post didn't work.
They also might otherwise have found a working group to post in if
rec.humor.funny hadn't distracted them.
I agree that there is little point in deleting unmoderated groups,
but leaving these non-functional moderated groups around as little
black holes swallowing up new posts will only serve to force people
(especially new users) to the conclusion that Usenet is not only
dead, but also broken. Of couse the ideal would always be to find a
new moderator.
So I, for one, thank the board for doing this work. Though with
this thread it's a bit of a moot point to make a decade later.
Steve Bonine
> On Fri, 11 Mar 2022 03:59:44 CST
> Steve Bonine <s...@pobox.com> wrote:
>> Jon Ribbens wrote:
>>> On 2010-12-26, Steve Bonine <s...@pobox.com> wrote:
>> The article you're replying to is more than a decade old. A decade ago,
>> my opinion was that there was justification for removing dead newsgroups
>> because it might funnel traffic into the ones that were left.
>
> I don't understand the logic behind this. If a group is a dead then it
> means that people aren't interested in posting in it so its existence
> doesn't act as a distraction from posting in or reading other groups.
point, with lots of activity, it made sense to provide separate groups
for different aspects of the topic. As time passed, there were no
longer enough people to maintain a critical mass of conversation in any
of the subgroups. It might be that if you removed the subgroups that it
would concentrate the discussion into one newsgroup, thus creating
enough discussion to make it a viable newsgroup.
This logic was weak a decade ago, and today is silly because there
aren't enough users to concentrate. Back then it seemed worth a shot
since the effort required was small, but it did not work.
Spiros Bousbouras
n...@telling.you.invalid (Computer Nerd Kev) wrote:
> Spiros Bousbouras <spi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Fri, 11 Mar 2022 03:59:44 CST
> > Steve Bonine <s...@pobox.com> wrote:
> >> The article you're replying to is more than a decade old. A decade ago,
> >> my opinion was that there was justification for removing dead newsgroups
> >> because it might funnel traffic into the ones that were left.
> >
> > I don't understand the logic behind this. If a group is a dead then it
> > means that people aren't interested in posting in it so its existence
> > doesn't act as a distraction from posting in or reading other groups.
>
> On the contrary, if you read more closely you'll see that these are
> moderated groups where the moderator is no longer accepting any
> posts (or, since the thread started, even posting their previously
> regular automated posts to rec.humor.funny.reruns themselves).
general , including unmoderated ones , rather than just the 2 groups
which are the subject of this thread. So my comment was about newsgroups
in general.
> This makes the group precisely a distraction from others because
> anyone who wants to post something to rec.humor.funny may still do
> so, but their post will never appear there. So they'll have wasted
> their time, and if they're new to Usenet then it might discourage
> them entirely if they don't understand why their post didn't work.
> They also might otherwise have found a working group to post in if
> rec.humor.funny hadn't distracted them.
>
> I agree that there is little point in deleting unmoderated groups,
> but leaving these non-functional moderated groups around as little
> black holes swallowing up new posts will only serve to force people
> (especially new users) to the conclusion that Usenet is not only
> dead, but also broken. Of couse the ideal would always be to find a
> new moderator.
Spiros Bousbouras
> Spiros Bousbouras wrote:
> > On Fri, 11 Mar 2022 03:59:44 CST
> > Steve Bonine <s...@pobox.com> wrote:
> >> Jon Ribbens wrote:
> >>> On 2010-12-26, Steve Bonine <s...@pobox.com> wrote:
>
> >> The article you're replying to is more than a decade old. A decade ago,
> >> my opinion was that there was justification for removing dead newsgroups
> >> because it might funnel traffic into the ones that were left.
> >
> > I don't understand the logic behind this. If a group is a dead then it
> > means that people aren't interested in posting in it so its existence
> > doesn't act as a distraction from posting in or reading other groups.
>
> It does if there are several groups on the same general topic. At one
> point, with lots of activity, it made sense to provide separate groups
> for different aspects of the topic. As time passed, there were no
> longer enough people to maintain a critical mass of conversation in any
> of the subgroups. It might be that if you removed the subgroups that it
> would concentrate the discussion into one newsgroup, thus creating
> enough discussion to make it a viable newsgroup.
there is 0 conversation. So , even considering the worst case of 0
conversation for a long amount of time , what's the harm ? The only harm I
can imagine is poor first impression to someone who has recently come
across usenet. This is a factor but are there others ?
The danger with removing groups is that say there are groups A and B with
some common ground but low amounts of discussion in each group. Still , some
people may prefer A and others B so if one of the two were to be removed , it
would create a winners and losers mentality and might lead to flamewars or
passive aggression in the one remaining group , whichever that might be. So
it would be better to let the users gravitate to one of the 2 groups on their
own as opposed to forcing the matter by removing one of the two. If they
don't gravitate , then they must have their reasons for preferring one of the
two so I believe it would be best to let the situation as it is.
> This logic was weak a decade ago, and today is silly because there
> aren't enough users to concentrate. Back then it seemed worth a shot
> since the effort required was small, but it did not work.
subjective what counts as "a critical mass of conversation".
Tristan Miller
On 12/03/2022 22.16, Steve Bonine wrote:
> Creating new newsgroups is rather different than removing dead ones. If
> you can convince yourself (royal "yourself") that there will be activity
> in a new group, creating it makes sense.
>
> But removing groups? Why?
gone AWOL or is no longer willing or able to carry out their duties. It
can be frustrating for users when their submissions to such groups
disappear into a black hole with no explanation. Obviously we would
prefer in such cases to appoint a different moderator, but that isn't
always practical. Converting the group to unmoderated status is an
option but one that we have been repeatedly advised against.
> As for "exercise the associated machinery" . . . for how many months, or
> perhaps years, was the moderation broken for news.groups.proposals? It
> does not take a removal RFD to see that submissions are not reaching the
> group ... it just takes giving a damn.
October 2021. We did not immediately notice the breakage in part due to
the somewhat convoluted setup we inherited, which relies on two
different third-party services. (Boring technical details are
available, as always, in our published meeting minutes.) We're now
working on simplifying the setup and putting some monitoring systems in
place to ensure that the system doesn't go down without our being
actively warned.
> Why does the group even need to
> exist now? There was a time when separating the discussion of new
> newsgroups from news.groups made sense (although even then it was
> contentious to move it to a moderated newsgroup). These days, with the
> level of activity like it is, making the discussion easier is a goal,
> and a moderated newsgroup doesn't do that.
didn't want to make any changes to the existing procedures without
having run through them a few times ourselves to assess the technical
and operational issues. Our postmortem of the current RFD (that is, the
one for comp.software.shareware.*, discussed in another thread) will
include a discussion of whether there is any sense in keeping
news.groups.proposals as the discussion venue for RFDs.
Tristan Miller
On 14/03/2022 00.25, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
> On the contrary, if you read more closely you'll see that these are
> moderated groups where the moderator is no longer accepting any
> posts (or, since the thread started, even posting their previously
> regular automated posts to rec.humor.funny.reruns themselves).
>
> So I, for one, thank the board for doing this work. Though with
> this thread it's a bit of a moot point to make a decade later.
currently moot, though there's another thread active here [1] where we
are discussing the removal of two other moderated groups:
comp.software.shareware.authors and comp.software.shareware.announce.
I'm about to post (somewhat belatedly, due to illness) the Last Call for
Comments (LCC) but there's still time to contribute to the discussion.
Regards,
Tristan
[1] news:str09s$2k1$1...@dont-email.me