2nd RFD: Charter/moderation policy change, news.groups.proposals

[Usenet Big-8 Management Board]

REQUEST FOR DISCUSSION (RFD)
moderated group news.groups.proposals

This is a formal Request For Discussion (RFD) to suspend the charter and
moderation policy of the Usenet newsgroup news.groups.proposals.


BACKGROUND

The unmoderated news.groups newsgroup (formerly known as net.news.group)
historically served as the main venue for discussion of potential new
newsgroups. These discussions were sometimes difficult to follow due to
noise, flames, sporgeries, poorly tagged or structured proposals, etc.
As a result of these issues, the moderated group news.groups.proposals
was created in November 2006. According to its creation RFD, the group
was intended to serve as a "healthy environment where ideas can be
raised, discussed, and developed" without the disruption of "personal
attacks, flames, and other inappropriate content".

news.groups.proposals now serves as the sole "official" venue for all
discussions pertaining to existing or potential proposals to create,
remove, or modify newsgroups in the Big-8 hierarchies (comp, humanities,
misc, news, rec, sci, soc, and talk). What this means in practice is
that while anyone is free to discuss RFDs elsewhere on Usenet, there is
no guarantee that the Big-8 Management Board will monitor those discussions.


PROPOSAL

The Big-8 Management Board proposes to redesignate the unmoderated
news.groups newsgroup as the sole "official" venue for all public
discussions pertaining to existing or potential proposals to create,
remove, or modify newsgroups in the Big-8 hierarchies. (Again, by
"official" we mean only that the Board is guaranteed to monitor
discussions there; users are of course free to hold discussions
elsewhere.) The Board would update its public documentation relating to
Big-8 workflows and policies accordingly, and the charter and moderation
policy for news.groups.proposals would be indefinitely suspended.
Thenceforth all submissions to news.groups.proposals would be
automatically rejected with an explanatory note referring to the outcome
of this RFD and with a suggestion to resubmit to news.groups.

Provided news.groups remains a viable venue, the Board may eventually
issue a subsequent RFD to remove news.groups.proposals. Otherwise, the
Board may issue a subsequent RFD to restore the status quo ante.


RATIONALE

Since 2006, the Big-8 hierarchies have undergone an overall reduction in
their active user base and article traffic. The news.groups newsgroup
has followed this general trend; the past few years have seen some
measure of spam and other off-topic messages, but little of the
acrimonious content that was the main impetus behind the creation of
news.groups.proposals. There is therefore reason to believe that
news.groups could once again function as "a healthy environment" for the
discussion of RFDs.

By contrast, in the past few years news.groups.proposals has had
problems of its own, mostly stemming from its convoluted and antiquated
moderation system. Many submissions have gone missing or unnoticed by
the moderators due to breakdowns in the submission pipeline. While the
current Board members have been working to streamline and modernize the
moderation system they inherited, and to put better fault detection and
prevention measures in place, there is always the risk of further
unexpected technical issues. Technical issues aside, the Board sees no
need to act as gatekeepers for discussions that are, by and large, civil
and constructive.

Although it would be technically possible to designate both news.groups
and news.groups.proposals as "co-official" venues for the discussion of
RFDs, there are obvious benefits to keeping discussions centralized.


DISCUSSION SO FAR

D Finnigan argues that aside from occasional technical difficulties,
news.groups.proposals is working fine, in contrast with news.groups,
which is cluttered with off-topic posts. They recommend that the Board
continue its work on improving the moderation system.

Paul Schleck suspects that the off-topic spam posts to news.groups may
be putting off people from posting there. He also wonders whether
returning configging discussion to news.groups would provide people with
an unrestricted forum to advance fallacious arguments about moderated
newsgroups. Furthermore, he argues that the problems that led to the
creation of news.groups.proposals could emerge again even in a smaller
Usenet, and that the purely technical issues with moderation software
are solvable.

Computer Nerd Kev says that as long as there's still spam on
news.groups, then keeping discussions moderated is worthwhile. They
also draw attention to disruptive troll posting on alt.config.

meff expresses concern about what would happen if the moderators became
unavailable. Given the current posting levels and the ability of current
users to filter messages, they tend to agree with the proposal in the RFD.


PROCEDURE

Those who wish to influence the development of this RFD and its final
resolution should subscribe to news.groups.proposals and participate in
the relevant threads there. To this end, the followup header of this
RFD has been set to news.groups.proposals.

Alternatively, comments may be sent to the Board privately by e-mail at
bo...@big-8.org. The Board may summarize such comments in subsequent
iterations of this RFD but will not disclose the identities of the
commenters without their express permission.


FURTHER INFORMATION

Home page for news.groups.proposals:
<https://www.big-8.org/wiki/News.groups.proposals>

Charter for news.groups.proposals:
<https://www.big-8.org/wiki/Charter_for_news.groups.proposals>

FAQ for news.groups.proposals:
<https://www.big-8.org/wiki/Frequently_Asked_Questions_for_news.groups.proposals>

Moderation policy for news.groups.proposals:
<https://www.big-8.org/wiki/Moderation_policy_for_news.groups.proposals>

RFD for creation of news.groups.proposals:
<https://ftp.isc.org/usenet/news.announce.newgroups/news/news.groups.proposals>

General information on news.groups: <https://www.big-8.org/wiki/News.groups>

History of news.groups:
<https://www.big-8.org/wiki/Big-8_Usenet_hierarchies#History_of_news.groups>


DISTRIBUTION

This document has been posted to the following newsgroups:

news.announce.newgroups
news.groups.proposals
news.groups
news.admin.hierarchies


PROPONENT

Usenet Big-8 Management Board <bo...@big-8.org>


CHANGE HISTORY

2022-05-20 1st RFD
2022-06-13 2nd RFD

--
Usenet Big-8 Management Board
https://www.big-8.org/
bo...@big-8.org

[Paul W. Schleck]

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In <t87ec9$o4b$1...@dont-email.me> Usenet Big-8 Management Board <bo...@big-8.org> writes:

> REQUEST FOR DISCUSSION (RFD)
> moderated group news.groups.proposals

>This is a formal Request For Discussion (RFD) to suspend the charter and
>moderation policy of the Usenet newsgroup news.groups.proposals.

[...]

>DISCUSSION SO FAR

>D Finnigan argues that aside from occasional technical difficulties,
>news.groups.proposals is working fine, in contrast with news.groups,
>which is cluttered with off-topic posts. They recommend that the Board
>continue its work on improving the moderation system.

>Paul Schleck suspects that the off-topic spam posts to news.groups may
>be putting off people from posting there. He also wonders whether
>returning configging discussion to news.groups would provide people with
>an unrestricted forum to advance fallacious arguments about moderated
>newsgroups. Furthermore, he argues that the problems that led to the
>creation of news.groups.proposals could emerge again even in a smaller
>Usenet, and that the purely technical issues with moderation software
>are solvable.

>Computer Nerd Kev says that as long as there's still spam on
>news.groups, then keeping discussions moderated is worthwhile. They
>also draw attention to disruptive troll posting on alt.config.

>meff expresses concern about what would happen if the moderators became
>unavailable. Given the current posting levels and the ability of current
>users to filter messages, they tend to agree with the proposal in the RFD.

[...]

This thread has been awfully quiet, with few replies. In particular,
those who had the strongest opinions about moving back to news.groups
are currently absent in this discussion. If the Board acted on comments
so far, it would appear to favor the status quo of retaining
news.groups.proposals.

I don't wish to overspeculate, but possible explanations for this
include:

- Some may feel that they have already sufficiently commented on this
matter in the past, and it is the Board's responsibility to gather up
all posts on this subject from the deep and noisy past article
history of news.groups, even if they are ambiguous, contradictory,
and/or not clear if they are the individuals' current opinions on
this matter, or even opinions that would be applicable to the
specific context of this current RFD. This could lead to accusations
of, "That's not my current opinion," or, "You took my remarks out of
context," or possibly even, "I was playing devil's advocate."

- Some may not want to give the Board, and the RFD, legitimacy by
participating in this process, especially if they feel that the Board
is likely to make a "wrong" decision.

- Conversely, advocating for change, then getting that change, may
undermine a commenter's ability to criticize the Board for their
actions in the future.

- Some may feel that it doesn't matter, either because they believe
that Usenet is "dead," or that their opinions will not be fairly
considered.

Or perhaps even:

- Some actually want the Board to make a "wrong" decision, to set them
up for future criticism.

If there are better/different explanations, others are certainly welcome
and encouraged to weigh-in here, at this time, and in response to this
specific RFD. Absent that specific, current discussion, there is a good
chance that the Board may choose to make a decision based on current
discussion so far, which appears to favor the current status quo, a
position which I support.

- --
Paul W. Schleck
psch...@panix.com

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[Tristan Miller]

Greetings.

On 20/06/2022 19.27, Paul W. Schleck wrote:
> This thread has been awfully quiet, with few replies. In particular,
> those who had the strongest opinions about moving back to news.groups
> are currently absent in this discussion. If the Board acted on comments
> so far, it would appear to favor the status quo of retaining
> news.groups.proposals.
>
> I don't wish to overspeculate, but possible explanations for this
> include:
>
> - Some may feel that they have already sufficiently commented on this
> matter in the past, and it is the Board's responsibility to gather up
> all posts on this subject from the deep and noisy past article
> history of news.groups

This RFD was prompted in part by suggestions we received from two or
three people in the past couple years. One of these people has
participated in the current discussion, though hasn't repeated or argued
for their suggestion to dispense with news.groups.proposals.

I can't speak for the other Board members, but I certainly won't be
conducting any research into what opinions people have expressed on this
issue in the time between the creation of news.groups.proposals and the
current RFD. My own decision will be based primarily on the discussion
of this RFD, considered against the background of the original reasons
for creating news.groups.proposals (as summarized in the RFD), and
possibly any further facts or arguments raised by the other Board
members during the voting phase.

> If there are better/different explanations, others are certainly welcome
> and encouraged to weigh-in here

You left out another, more charitable, possible explanation, which is
that the proponents of moving back to news.groups have been swayed by
the recent arguments to the contrary, and so have abandoned or changed
their opinions.

In any case, if anyone (still) agrees with the proposal set forth in the
RFD, I would love to hear their views, and particularly what they think
about the arguments raised thus far by opponents of the proposal.

Regards,
Tristan

[Spiros Bousbouras]

None of the above for me. I have been reading carefully all the posts in
the thread and I simply don't have an opinion on the issue. I also don't
have experience with moderation software so I don't know how hard it is
to write from scratch or enhance preexisting software or maintain it.

I most certainly do not feel that usenet is dead and , with the various
complaints that much more popular but centralised online discussion fora have
led to censorship , I believe that usenet may even have a bright future.

[D Finnigan]

On 6/20/22 12:27 PM, Paul W. Schleck wrote:

> Absent that specific, current discussion, there is a good
> chance that the Board may choose to make a decision based on current
> discussion so far, which appears to favor the current status quo, a
> position which I support.
>

It's a logical decision in light of the present conditions of
news.groups; merely some technical difficulties with moderation which
can be overcome.

The other difficulties, namely low participation rate in the
news.groups.* hierarchy and the number of off-topic postings, are not so
easily overcome in comparison.

[Steve Bonine]

Paul W. Schleck wrote:

> This thread has been awfully quiet, with few replies. In particular,
> those who had the strongest opinions about moving back to news.groups
> are currently absent in this discussion. If the Board acted on comments
> so far, it would appear to favor the status quo of retaining
> news.groups.proposals.
>
> I don't wish to overspeculate, but possible explanations for this
> include:

...

> - Some may feel that it doesn't matter, either because they believe
> that Usenet is "dead," or that their opinions will not be fairly
> considered.

Bingo.

I think it's fair to say that I am one of the folks "who had the
strongest opinions". Back in the mists of time, when
news.groups.proposals was established, there was a reason to create it.
Many did not agree with that rationale, and their opinion was justified.
It was a "lesser of two evils" decision. I think that it worked
pretty well in terms of providing a place to have a coherent discussion
on creating newsgroups. As an aside, during the years when I was a part
of the moderation team, we probably rejected less than a dozen
submissions. Flamers and trolls just didn't bother.

But those days are gone. Volume in news.groups is vanishingly low, so
the concerns about the Board not wanting to follow discussions there no
longer exist. These discussions are "make work" anyway; look at what has
been accomplished in the past few years. By my count, one new newsgroup
with marginal volume and a lot of chatter about resurrecting dead
groups. Hell, the submission mechanism to news.groups.proposals was
broken for months if not years, and no one even noticed.

The reason there's no opinion being expressed is that there is no one
left to express them. Or the tiny population who peaks in here from
time to time just doesn't care. My preference would be for the Board to
dissolve itself and find more productive things to do with their time.
Usenet will sink further into oblivion, with or without the "actions" of
the Board; one of these days the folks who are providing news feeds will
lose interest (or the hardware will croak) and then it will all be moot.

[Plain Text]

On Mon, 13 Jun 2022 09:37:05 EDT, Usenet Big-8 Management Board wrote:

> REQUEST FOR DISCUSSION (RFD)
> moderated group news.groups.proposals
>
> This is a formal Request For Discussion (RFD) to suspend the charter and
> moderation policy of the Usenet newsgroup news.groups.proposals.

I support the proposal.

Although news.groups receives spam, I'm able to identify messages where I
would want to follow the discussion.

Generally, I favour a reduction of newsgroups, as I think there are many
groups with hardly any traffic, e. g. comp.infosystems.www.*

Thanks