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.


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

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

[D Finnigan]

Except for the occasional technical difficulties with moderation, this
newsgroup is working fine. Moderation ensures that the off-topic posts
which clutter news.groups and many other newsgroups do not appear in
news.groups.proposals.

Would recommend that Big-8 continue their work on streamlining and
modernizing the moderation system.

Also important is to consider the objective of Usenet: to facilitate
discussion. Everything else is just overhead.

Finally, I wonder if there are enough users posting to news.groups and
news.groups.proposals to generate any meaningful discussion on what
course of action should be taken: new groups, removing old groups, etc.

A lot of the discussion is repetitive and predictable, coming from the
same small group of users.

[Paul W. Schleck]

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In <t680m4$pgt$2...@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.

[...]

>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.

I am reminded of what is considered the worst sequel in a movie
franchise. The classic 1941 movie "The Maltese Falcon" with Humphrey
Bogart was later followed up in 1975 with "The Black Bird" with George
Segal as Sam Spade, Jr. Intended as as a spoof, at best it falls into
the "so bad, it's good" category, and its politically-incorrect elements
including midget Nazi's (shades of Godwin's Law!) also help ensure it
won't be seen again, save for an old VHS copy (never released on DVD) or
maybe a rare 3 AM showing on the Turner movie channel.

In one scene, George Segal is seeking help from a prim, slightly
frustrated librarian to translate some ancient texts about the black
bird. She does so, but also notes that one of the texts is about
"fornication." He asks, is there anything else in the text besides the
fornication? No, she replies, just fornication. However, she has
helpfully translated the fornication and put it an envelope for him to
read later.

The lesson here appears to be that the wisdom of the ancients holds that
we should have some "fornication" in the sacred texts, but in the
present day, helpful librarians will translate the fornication for you,
and put it in an envelope to read later. Analogously, for Usenet, the
potential messiness of an unmoderated configging newsgroup like
news.groups is considered by some to be a feature, not a bug. If you
don't understand, we would be happy to translate this wisdom for you, to
put in an envelope to read later.

Even without the past run-on, often ad-hominem, arguments about
newsgroups from a small number of individuals, there are other current
problems with news.groups, including many articles advertising illegal
drugs and sex trafficking. If the intention is to grow participation
and increase article activity on Usenet, how many serious-minded
individuals would want to post alongside such content?

Even without the problem off-topic content, I wonder if the intention of
some advocates for returning configging discussion to news.groups is to
have an unrestricted forum to argue along the lines of common fallacious
arguments against moderated newsgroups:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ClassicUsenet/comments/udu379/common_fallacious_arguments_against_moderated/

especially arguments 14, 15, and 16:


14: The proponents of a moderated newsgroup represent only "one side" of
an argument, where all participants in the argument are assumed to be
all at the same level of rationality and moral justification. A
moderated newsgroup will just allow this "one side" to establish an echo
chamber or bunker where they can ignore, or even actively ridicule
without rebuttal, other sides of the argument and the individuals who
make them. Corollary: What you call trolls are just posting "facts and
truth" and you just don't want to listen to them. (A troll could very
well say, "The sky is blue" but also say a lot of other things,
including attacks against others, that are inappropriate and offensive
by objective standards. Trolls are also well capable of asserting, "The
sky is red" then ridiculing those who reply that the sky is blue with,
"Of course, I meant on Mars.")

15: This well-written and edited Request for Discussion (RFD) for a
proposed moderated newsgroup, with a clear charter and sensible
moderation policies, named moderators, and practical plans for
moderation software, that seemingly sprang out of "nowhere," is
suspicious. Must be a conspiracy, likely enabled by outside
agitators. Corollary: The planning should have been conducted out in the
open, in an unlimited "Battle Royale" of argument, overwhelming the
unmoderated newsgroup(s), so that we could criticize it into oblivion,
get nowhere with consensus-building, and run off the proponents so that
they would learn not to submit such foolish ideas again.

16: There is "Standard Advice" not published anywhere, but with which
(of course) all sane and sensible people agree, that all newsgroups
should be unmoderated, anyway. If you can't succeed with wildly
impractical suggestions to make them better, you should just live with
their shortcomings.


The moderated news.groups.proposals newsgroup was created for very
specific reasons to solve very specific problems. Some of these
problems were discussed in Russ Allbery's farewell article from 2006:

https://groups.google.com/g/news.groups/c/7U9Up4l_7MY/m/ibm4-XJAUPwJ

There's no assurance that these problems won't emerge again even in a
smaller Usenet.

>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.

[...]

The technical issues are solvable. The moderation system for
news.groups.proposals can run in a stable and reliable fashion, with
prompt error detection and notification, if it is installed on reliable
hosting, such as Panix.com, and with many software improvements made to
the version of moderation software used there. Several other
newsgroups, including news.announce.newgroups, use this option. If
independence of this team from the Big-8 Board is desired, it can be ran
from a separate account.

[...]

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

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[Computer Nerd Kev]

So long as there's still spam going to news.groups then I think the
moderation is worthwhile, if maintaining it is at all possible.

More recent 'noise' in alt.config from troll posting is also worth
considering.

--
__ __
#_ < |\| |< _#

[meff]

On 2022-05-23, Computer Nerd Kev <n...@telling.you.invalid> wrote:
> So long as there's still spam going to news.groups then I think the
> moderation is worthwhile, if maintaining it is at all possible.
>
> More recent 'noise' in alt.config from troll posting is also worth
> considering.
>

I think this all comes down to what the "succession plan" for
Moderation is. What happens if a moderator just becomes unavailable?
Do we have a "dead man's switch" which kicks in and bumps the group to
unmoderated? Given current posting levels and the sophistication of
current users with using kill/scorefiles, I find myself agreeing with
the RFD, unless there's a contingency in place for absent moderators.

[Jason Evans]

On Thu, 26 May 2022 14:54:19 CST, meff wrote:

> I think this all comes down to what the "succession plan" for Moderation
> is. What happens if a moderator just becomes unavailable?

We have a procedure for finding new moderators if a moderator just quits
without notice. To become a moderator to begin with, we do suggest that a
group has a "moderation team" so that others can take off.

> Do we have a "dead man's switch" which kicks in and bumps the group to
> unmoderated?

No, newsgroups can not realistically be converted from moderated to
unmoderated or vice versa. The reason for that is that it would require
the deletion of the moderated group and then have that group replaced with
an unmoderated group. Many news server do not honor control messages for
the deletion of groups and therefore it would not be possible for users of
those servers to participate in that group at all.

> Given current posting levels and the sophistication of current users
> with using kill/scorefiles, I find myself agreeing with the RFD, unless
> there's a contingency in place for absent moderators.

If the current board were to step down tomorrow, and we lost access to the
moderation server that we use, all of the groups that we moderate would
stop working.

A little history:

Around 2013 the board did go away. All of the members stepped down or let
their memberships lapse. In 2020, the new board stepped in with approval
from the members of the previous board and we started moderating again. We
try to be as transparent as we can. That's why this article was sent. We
don't want to just make changes to how we operate without getting the
Usenet community involved and if one of us needed to step down, there
would be a public announcement and we would work hard to keep the board
going.