RFD: Remove comp.software.shareware.announce and comp.software.shareware.authors

[Tristan Miller]

This is a formal Request for Discussion (RFD) to remove the moderated
newsgroups comp.software.shareware.announce and
comp.software.shareware.authors.


Newsgroups Line:

comp.software.shareware.announce Shareware announcements. (Moderated)
comp.software.shareware.authors Creation of shareware. (Moderated)


Distribution:
news.announce.newgroups
news.groups.proposals


Proponent: Tristan Miller <tmi...@big-8.org>


Charters:

CHARTER: comp.software.shareware.authors

This is a moderated newsgroup, intended for discussion related to the
creation and sale of shareware software. Without limitation,
acceptable postings may relate to:

Development issues.
Programming issues.
Marketing techniques.
Distribution techniques.

Binary postings are not acceptable, although pointers to binary
postings in appropriate binaries groups are. Commercial
advertisements are not acceptable except insofar as they are bona
fide one-off announcements of new shareware products. Cross-posting
between this newsgroup and other comp.software.shareware.* newsgroups
is not acceptable.

CHARTER: comp.software.shareware.announce

This is a moderated newsgroup, intended for informational
announcements related to shareware products and resources. Without
limitation, appropriate topics may include:

Announcements of new shareware releases.
Announcements of shareware FTP and WWW archives.
Announcements regarding shareware related services, such as
credit card registration services.

This group is not intended for discussion about shareware, and
follow-ups to articles in this group should be posted elsewhere.
Commercial advertisements are not acceptable except insofar as they
are bona fide one-off announcements of new shareware products or
services. Cross-posting between this newsgroup and other
comp.software.shareware.* groups is not acceptable.


Rationale for removal:

The current moderator of record for the newsgroups, Kathy Morgan, had
taken over moderatorship after the previous moderators had
disappeared. She reports to the Big-8 Management Board that during
her tenure as moderator, the groups were not successful "because they
never again received an adequate number of submissions to make a
viable group". She attributes this to former community members having
moved on to other forums. She furthermore writes, "I posted asking
users if there was any desire to keep the groups and IIRC received
just one response and that was in the negative. I would like to see
them removed, since there is no longer interest in the groups and I no
longer have access to moderate them."

Inspection of the two groups on public servers reveals that no new
articles have been posted since May 2017; in the three years prior to
that, only a handful of articles per year had been posted to either
group.

A third and final group in the comp.software.shareware.* hierarchy,
comp.software.shareware.users, was already deleted without objection
on 2009-12-23, the RFD having established that the group had become
moribund.

In view of this community history, and of the near-extinction of the
shareware model, I believe that further efforts to rescue and
revitalize comp.software.shareware.announce and
comp.software.shareware.authors would be unproductive. (These efforts
include putting the groups under caretaker moderation for the sole
purpose of posting this RFD to them.) For this reason I propose that
the groups simply be deleted.


History of the Groups:

1997-09-15: 1st RFD (create)
1997-09-29: 2nd RFD (create)
1997-10-20: 1st CFV
1997-10-30: 2nd CFV
1997-11-12: Result:
comp.software.shareware.announce fails 119:27
comp.software.shareware.authors fails 108:30
comp.software.shareware.users fails 110:32
1998-07-17: 1st RFD (create; revised)
1998-08-26: 1st CFV
1998-09-08: 2nd CFV
1998-09-22: Result:
comp.software.shareware.announce passes 334:22
comp.software.shareware.authors passes 323:26
comp.software.shareware.users passes 322:29
2009-11-24: 1st RFD (delete comp.software.shareware.users)
2009-12-13: LCC (delete comp.software.shareware.users)
2009-12-20: Result: comp.software.shareware.users to be deleted
2009-12-23: comp.software.shareware.users deleted


Procedure:

Those who wish to comment on this request to remove this newsgroup
should subscribe to news:news.groups.proposals and participate in the
relevant threads in that newsgroup.

To this end, the followup header of this RFD has been set to
news.groups.proposals.

All discussion of active proposals should be posted to
news.groups.proposals.

If desired by the readership of closely affected groups, the
discussion may be crossposted to those groups, but care must be taken
to ensure that all discussion appears in news.groups.proposals as
well.

For more information on the newsgroup removal process, please see
http://www.big-8.org/wiki/Removing_newsgroups


History of this RFD:

2022-02-07: 1st RFD (remove)


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

[Tristan Miller]

No comments were received in response to the first deletion RFD posted
on 2022-02-07.

2022-02-28: 2nd RFD (remove)

[meff]

On 2022-02-07, Tristan Miller <tmi...@big-8.org> wrote:
> This is a formal Request for Discussion (RFD) to remove the moderated
> newsgroups comp.software.shareware.announce and
> comp.software.shareware.authors.
>
>
> Newsgroups Line:
>
> comp.software.shareware.announce Shareware announcements. (Moderated)
> comp.software.shareware.authors Creation of shareware. (Moderated)
>
>
> Distribution:
> news.announce.newgroups
> news.groups.proposals
>
>
> Proponent: Tristan Miller <tmi...@big-8.org>
>
>
> Charters:
>
> CHARTER: comp.software.shareware.authors

I see no reason to keep this group around. What is the procedure like
for these RFDs?

[Grant Taylor]

On 2/7/22 4:39 AM, Tristan Miller wrote:
> Rationale for removal:
>
> The current moderator of record for the newsgroups, Kathy Morgan, had
> taken over moderatorship after the previous moderators had
> disappeared.  She reports to the Big-8 Management Board that during
> her tenure as moderator, the groups were not successful "because they
> never again received an adequate number of submissions to make a
> viable group". She attributes this to former community members having
> moved on to other forums.  She furthermore writes, "I posted asking
> users if there was any desire to keep the groups and IIRC received
> just one response and that was in the negative.  I would like to see
> them removed, since there is no longer interest in the groups and I no
> longer have access to moderate them."

I have qualms with the "I no longer have access to moderate them."
comment. That sounds like a /technical/ /problem/ to me. I believe a
/technical/ /problem/ deserves a /technical/ /solution/. I believe that
a removing a group in response to a technical problem is the wrong thing
to do.

Please clarify if I'm misunderstanding.

> Inspection of the two groups on public servers reveals that no new
> articles have been posted since May 2017; in the three years prior to
> that, only a handful of articles per year had been posted to either
> group.

As a newsmaster, I see virtually no reason to remove a newsgroup from my
news servers. IMHO there is exceedingly little to be gained by removing
a mostly idle group.

Given the nature of the seemingly technical problem, particularly
related to moderation, I would counter with the possibility of removing
moderation from the newsgroups in question.

> A third and final group in the comp.software.shareware.* hierarchy,
> comp.software.shareware.users, was already deleted without objection
> on 2009-12-23, the RFD having established that the group had become
> moribund.
>
> In view of this community history, and of the near-extinction of the
> shareware model, I believe that further efforts to rescue and
> revitalize comp.software.shareware.announce and
> comp.software.shareware.authors would be unproductive. (These efforts
> include putting the groups under caretaker moderation for the sole
> purpose of posting this RFD to them.) For this reason I propose that
> the groups simply be deleted.

I feel like the spirit of what I consider to be the shareware model is
represented in slightly different ways. Mostly in-app-adds with the
option to register to remove said in-app-adds and / or time-limited free
versions that require registration to continue legally using the
software in accordance with it's license.

My opinion is to keep the comp.software.shareware.announce and
comp.software.shareware.authors newsgroups for the time being /and/ to
remove moderation.

I have no opinion regarding the comp.software.shareware.users newsgroup.



--
Grant. . . .
unix || die

[Tristan Miller]

Greetings.

On 28/02/2022 16.30, Tristan Miller wrote:
> No comments were received in response to the first deletion RFD posted
> on 2022-02-07.

Apparently I was mistaken in stating that no comments had been received.
Due to a problem with the moderation system, two replies to the first
RFD got stuck in the moderation queue. The problem has been fixed and
I've now approved these two messages (from Grant Taylor and meff).

Regards,
Tristan

[Tristan Miller]

Greetings.

On 02/03/2022 22.51, meff wrote:
> I see no reason to keep this group around. What is the procedure like
> for these RFDs?

The policies and procedures for removing newsgroups are detailed at
<https://www.big-8.org/wiki/Procedure_to_remove_newsgroups>.

Regards,
Tristan

[Tristan Miller]

Greetings.

On 02/03/2022 22.51, Grant Taylor wrote:
> On 2/7/22 4:39 AM, Tristan Miller wrote:
>> Rationale for removal:
>>
>> The current moderator of record for the newsgroups, Kathy Morgan, had
>> taken over moderatorship after the previous moderators had
>> disappeared.  She reports to the Big-8 Management Board that during
>> her tenure as moderator, the groups were not successful "because they
>> never again received an adequate number of submissions to make a
>> viable group". She attributes this to former community members having
>> moved on to other forums.  She furthermore writes, "I posted asking
>> users if there was any desire to keep the groups and IIRC received
>> just one response and that was in the negative.  I would like to see
>> them removed, since there is no longer interest in the groups and I no
>> longer have access to moderate them."
>
> I have qualms with the "I no longer have access to moderate them."
> comment.  That sounds like a /technical/ /problem/ to me.  I believe a
> /technical/ /problem/ deserves a /technical/ /solution/.  I believe that
> a removing a group in response to a technical problem is the wrong thing
> to do.
>
> Please clarify if I'm misunderstanding.

My understanding is that Kathy long ago determined that the groups were
moribund, and only later lost the technical means to moderate them
herself. So the fact that she can no longer run the moderation software
is irrelevant. Even if she were willing and able to run the moderation
software, the groups wouldn't see any traffic, at least according to her
assessment.

Of course, if you or anyone else thinks that one or both groups could be
revived, and if you are or know someone who is willing to serve as
moderator (and who has the means to set this up technically), then we
could pursue that solution instead.

>> Inspection of the two groups on public servers reveals that no new
>> articles have been posted since May 2017; in the three years prior to
>> that, only a handful of articles per year had been posted to either
>> group.
>
> As a newsmaster, I see virtually no reason to remove a newsgroup from my
> news servers.  IMHO there is exceedingly little to be gained by removing
> a mostly idle group.

The most compelling reason to remove a moderated group without a
moderator (and without any prospects of finding a new moderator) is that
users get confused, frustrated, or angry when their submissions
disappear into the bit bucket.

> Given the nature of the seemingly technical problem, particularly
> related to moderation, I would counter with the possibility of removing
> moderation from the newsgroups in question.

Your proposal is covered by the Board's FAQ "What is 'demoderation'?" at
<https://www.big-8.org/wiki/Moderated_Newsgroups#What_is_.27demoderation.27.3F>.
There's also the somewhat related FAQ "How does one change an
Unmoderated group to a Moderated group?" at
<https://www.big-8.org/wiki/Moderated_Newsgroups#How_does_one_change_an_Unmoderated_group_to_a_Moderated_group.3F>.
Historically, the Board has avoided changing the moderation status of
groups because not all news servers honour the change, resulting in
inconsistent (and therefore confusion-inducing) behaviour. I gather
that this problem is more severe when changing from unmoderated to
moderated, though the present Board members have been advised (by former
Board members and associated technical staff) to avoid changing groups
from moderated to unmoderated.

The Board would certainly be willing to entertain acting against this
advice in this case, though for this to happen we'd probably want to be
satisfied that changing the moderation status would actually result in
the group becoming active again.

Regards,
Tristan

[Tristan Miller]

This is a formal Request for Discussion (RFD) to remove the moderated
newsgroups comp.software.shareware.announce and
comp.software.shareware.authors.

The Big-8 Management Board plans to begin voting on this proposal
after five days. Please offer any final discussion or comments before
the end of this waiting period. Voting may take up to one week (7
days); a result will be posted following the end of the voting period.

Discussion so far:

Only two users (besides the RFD proponent) have posted a comment in
direct response to the RFD. One user sees no reason to keep
comp.software.shareware.authors, and was silent on the matter of
comp.software.shareware.announce. The other user, who identifies as a
newsmaster, views the problem as a technical one which demands a
technical solution, rather than the administrative action of removing
the groups. The user furthermore considers that the spirit of the
shareware model persists today. Summing up, they suggest keeping both
groups and removing moderation.

The RFD proponent has clarified that the moderator of record
recommended deletion not for technical reasons but because she
believes the groups had become dormant, with no prospects for a
revival, before she lost the means to moderate them. The RFD
proponent furthermore noted that the current Board has been repeatedly
advised against changing the moderation status of groups because
implementation across news servers is inconsistent.

2022-03-16: LCC (remove)