Moderator Vacancy Announcement: news.admin.announce
Tim Skirvin
news.admin.announce
This is a formal Moderator Vacancy Announcement (MVA), initiated after the
moderator of the above-listed moderated newsgroup has been found to be
absent. The goal of this process is to find a new moderator for the group.
RATIONALE:
Besides crossposted announcements to the group, the last real traffic
in news.admin.announce was in 2000, and the current moderators (Brian
Edmonds, Dave Sill, and Tim Skirvin) do not see this changing in the near
future. Rather than just removing it, however, we feel that it may be
appropriate to hand the group off to somebody else rather than simply
remove it.
HISTORY:
news.admin.announce was created in 1996 as part of the news.admin.net-abuse.*
reorganization. It was intended to offer a forum for general news-admin
related announcements.
A few relevant links:
http://groups.google.com/group/news.admin.announce/about
ftp://ftp.isc.org/pub/usenet/news.announce.newgroups/news/news.admin.announce
PROCEDURE:
The Big-8 Management Board has determined that the above listed newsgroup
needs a new moderator, and has decided to proceed with a Moderator Vacancy
Announcement. This process is documented here:
http://www.big-8.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=policies:mvi
In short, the Board plans to either appoint a new moderator, unmoderate
the newsgroup, or remove the newsgroup entirely.
The followup header of this post has been set to news.groups.proposals.
To discuss the issues affecting the group, to propose a new moderator, or
to provide information regarding the current moderator, please respond to
this thread in news.groups.proposals. If you are interested in the
continued existence of this newsgroup, please also indicate that interest
in the news.groups.proposals. If you would like to volunteer to moderate
this newsgroup, please post your credentials in response to this message.
For more information on the Big-8 Management Board, please see:
CHARTER:
The current charter for the group is at:
http://wiki.killfile.org/projects/usenet/nana/charter/naa/
The original charter:
News.admin.announce is a forum for important announcements for news
administrators. It is a moderated forum, watched over by a team
of moderators for added speed. Possible topics for messages include
announcements regarding news transport or browsing software, Frequently
Asked Questions lists, announcements of new EMP cancellers, announcements
of new cancellation criteria, reports that directly relate to the future
of Usenet, reports on legal issues that directly affect news
administrators such as the Communications Decency Act, and so forth.
News.admin.announce is moderated by a team of moderators. The moderators
will approve any message that they feel fits the following criteria:
1. The message is an announcement that the moderators feel is important
for most or all news administrators.
2. The message is formatted for 78 or less characters per line, and
is easily human readable.
3. The message is not a binary, nor will it break standard Usenet
readers.
4. Followups for the message are set appropriately.
Unapproved posts will be cancelled. At any time, moderators can be added
or removed by a majority vote of the then-current moderators.
PROPONENT:
Tim Skirvin <tski...@killfile.org>
DISTRIBUTION:
This document has been posted to the following newsgroups:
news.announce.newgroups (moderated)
news.groups.proposals (moderated)
news.admin.announce (moderated)
CHANGE HISTORY:
2009-04-18 MVA
Kathy Morgan
news.admin.announce.
Aatu Koskensilta, <aatu.kos...@uta.fi>
Adam H Kerman, <a...@chinet.com>
dvus, <do...@dvenator.com>
Kathy Morgan, <kmo...@aptalaska.net>
Peter J Ross, <peadar...@gmail.com>
We'd like to arrange a simple handover of the existing robomod.net
interface, if the existing moderators are willing. Our discussions
have progeressed far enough to need some feedback from the current
moderation team and NAA readers. Comments?
--
Kathy
Tim Skirvin
> The following five people propose to take over as moderators of
> news.admin.announce.
> Aatu Koskensilta, <aatu.kos...@uta.fi>
> Adam H Kerman, <a...@chinet.com>
> dvus, <do...@dvenator.com>
> Kathy Morgan, <kmo...@aptalaska.net>
> Peter J Ross, <peadar...@gmail.com>
Frankly, I am uncomfortable with Peter Ross in this position.
He has consistently stepped aside from the responsibilities that he has
volunteered for in the past, generally at an extremely inconvenient time,
and has proceeded to use his retained authority as a cudgel against his
former allies.
Also, do you have any concrete plans to increase traffic? I'm not
looking at this as a barrier, but more of a leaping-off point to
understand why you're going for a large moderation team...
- Tim Skirvin (tski...@killfile.org)
--
http://wiki.killfile.org/ Skirv's Homepage <FISH>< <*>
http://wiki.killfile.org/projects/software/ Skirv's Software
Kathy Morgan
> kmo...@spamcop.net (Kathy Morgan) writes:
>
> > The following five people propose to take over as moderators of
> > news.admin.announce.
>
> > Aatu Koskensilta, <aatu.kos...@uta.fi>
> > Adam H Kerman, <a...@chinet.com>
> > dvus, <do...@dvenator.com>
> > Kathy Morgan, <kmo...@aptalaska.net>
> > Peter J Ross, <peadar...@gmail.com>
>
> Frankly, I am uncomfortable with Peter Ross in this position.
> He has consistently stepped aside from the responsibilities that he has
> volunteered for in the past, generally at an extremely inconvenient time,
> and has proceeded to use his retained authority as a cudgel against his
> former allies.
Peter believes that he may be able to drum up more traffic for the group
but that he would have a problem being available for day-to-day post
approvals and rejections. With such a large team for a low-traffic
announce group, that shouldn't be a problem.
Assuming that Brian Edmonds is willing, we propose to continue using
Robomod. If any of us were to go rogue, Brian would be able to shut
that moderator out, so that's an additional safeguard for the group.
> Also, do you have any concrete plans to increase traffic? I'm not
> looking at this as a barrier, but more of a leaping-off point to
> understand why you're going for a large moderation team...
Peter feels that he may be able to increase the traffic, but I don't
know what if any concrete plans he may have for that.
Part of the reason for the large moderation team is because that's how
many volunteered to serve. Also, there have been some legitimate
concerns expressed in news.groups about my ability to work with Adam on
a moderation team. I think I can, but if I'm mistaken and one or both
of us were to quit, there would still be at least three left on the
team.
Peter pointed out in n.g. that there's a possibility that some kook
running n?wsAg?nt might have noticed the discussion and decide to try
out his strength in news.admin.announce. In that case having a large
group of moderators to start with might be a good idea. Later, the team
can just not replace the first two or three who drop out.
--
Kathy, speaking for myself but repeating much that was first written by
PJR