Fwd: Please chip in (or ask your readers to) to help keep moderated newsgroups working

[Jonathan Kamens]

Greetings,

I am hoping that this is the correct address to reach the moderator(s)
of the Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.anime.info.

I sent the email message below to the moder...@isc.org mailing list
several weeks ago. I don't know how many group moderators are actually
on that list, and unfortunately the response to the email has been
rather anemic, so I'm reaching out to moderators directly in the hope of
garnering more support.

The TL;DR of the message below is that I've recently had to move the
moderator email relay server I maintain from a free hosting provider to
one that costs money, and furthermore I want to set up a third relay
server (which will also cost money) because the two we have now aren't
enough redundancy, so I'm asking moderators to chip in a dollar a month
toward the cost of the two servers.

If this is something you might be able to do, then please read on below
for additional details.

Thanks,

Jonathan Kamens

-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject: Please chip in (or ask your readers to) to help keep moderated
newsgroups working
Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2018 14:34:16 -0400
From: Jonathan Kamens <j...@kamens.us>
To: moder...@isc.org


Hi,

I've been maintaining one of the moderated newsgroup relay servers,
i.e., the email servers that route moderated newsgroup postings to
moderators, since 2010.

There used to be three relays, but one was having technical difficulties
so it was removed from the rotation. Furthermore, the hosting
infrastructure I was using has had reliability issues, so not
infrequently we've been at only one active, working relay. In short,
there isn't enough redundancy to ensure that there's a working relay all
the time.

To improve things, I've moved the relay I maintain from its old
infrastructure, which was free for me, to Linode, which costs money. I
also want to set up a third relay on a different hosting provider
(probably Vultr) in a different geographic location, for maximum redundancy.

I am happy to donate my time to this, but I would rather not also have
to pay for it out-of-pocket, given that I'm paying school tuition for
five children and I rarely even read any moderated newsgroups nowadays.
Therefore, I've set up a Patreon page at
https://www.patreon.com/usenetmoderatorrelays, and I'm asking people to
chip in to help pay for the relay servers I'm maintaining.

If you're willing to chip in $1 a month to help ensure that posters will
continue to be able to get submissions reliably to your newsgroup,
and/or you're willing to make a posting to your newsgroup asking readers
to chip in, I'd appreciate it. I only need ~20 patrons to pledge $1 a
month to provide enough funding to support two highly available and
redundant relays.

I don't want to annoy people by asking too often, so once I have enough
money banked to last for the next two years, I will disable the Patreon
page and not ask again until the money runs out.

Please feel free to email me if you have any questions.

Again, the URL of the Patreon page is
https://www.patreon.com/usenetmoderatorrelays.

Thanks,

Jonathan Kamens

P.S. For /maximum/ redundancy, I'd actually prefer for someone else to
maintain the third relay, rather than maintaining two myself. That way,
there would be full redundancy in terms of maintainer as well as hosting
provider and location. Setting up and maintaining a relay is pretty
easy, since I can provide an Ansible playbook which completely builds
out a relay from scratch. Of course if you don't have VM infrastructure
to host on and end up paying for a VM like I am, I will share any
donations I get with you to help cover the costs. Please get in touch
with me if you are interested.