Moderator Vacancy Investigation: comp.os.plan9

[Big-8 Management Board]

This is a formal Moderator Vacancy Investigation (MVI), begun
because the moderated newsgroup comp.os.plan9 is not functioning,
and has been abandoned by its moderator. This investigation
will attempt to verify the reasons for non-function, and may result
in the removal of the group or the selection and installation of a
new moderator. In practice, the Big-8 Management Board considers
the third alternative - changing the status of the group from
moderated to unmoderated - as likely to cause more harm than good.


RATIONALE:

The previous moderator, Dennis Davis, announced his retirement on the
newsgroup in <news:***@bath.ac.uk>,
also available from the 9fans mailing list archive at
<https://9fans.topicbox.com/groups/9fans/T006c21482b03b016-M919ff8a9206abb04947cd41a>.
This post also contains technical information about how the newsgroup
was administered.

comp.os.plan9 stopped receiving posts shortly after the above
announcement, and the group currently has no moderation address on
file with the ISC.

It is therefore clear that the group currently has no moderator and
cannot be used.


NEWSGROUPS LINE:

comp.os.plan9 Plan 9 from Bell Labs. (Moderated)


ORIGINAL CHARTER:

comp.os.plan9 is a moderated newsgroup for discussion of the Plan 9
operating system from Bell Labs. It's a forum to ask questions and
share information about installing, administering, and using Plan 9
systems. The newsgroup will be bidirectionally gatewayed with the
Plan 9 mailing list <***@cse.psu.edu>


ORIGINAL MODERATION POLICY:

Icarus Sparry <***@bath.ac.uk> has volunteered to be moderator; Tim
Goodwin <***@pipex.net> has volunteered to be backup moderator. Both
are participants on the Plan 9 mailing list. Moderation is intended
to keep discussion on charter topics, which we hope will encourage the
Plan 9 developers to participate.


DISTRIBUTION:

comp.os.plan9
news.groups.proposals
news.announce.newgroups


PROPONENT:

Marco Moock <***@dorfdsl.de>


PROCEDURE:

Those who wish to comment on this moderator vacancy investigation
should subscribe to news.groups.proposals and participate in the
relevant threads in that newsgroup.

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

For more information on the MVI process, please see
<https://www.big-8.org/wiki/Moderator_Vacancy_Investigations>.

For more information on moderated newsgroups, including a list of
moderation software and considerations for prospective moderators,
please see <https://www.big-8.org/wiki/Moderated_Newsgroups>.


CHANGE HISTORY:

2024-10-28 Moderator Vacancy Investigation

[Dan Cross]

[snip] In practice, the Big-8 Management Board considers
the third alternative - changing the status of the group from
moderated to unmoderated - as likely to cause more harm than good.
[snip]

I've passed this on to some folks at the Plan 9 Foundation to
see if they'd like to chime in.

I think, in this case, it would likely be harmless to remove
moderation. I was there when comp.os.plan9 became moderated,
and the impetus at the time was a) the influx of spam (which
largely seems to have disappeared) and b) a few disruptive
personalities, who are no longer with the community. The old
9fans list at PSU is gone (or, rather, has moved) and a new
gateway is unlikely to be created.

Moderation, in this case, is serving no effective purpose.

- Dan C.

[Steve Bonine]

Post by Big-8 Management Board
This is a formal Moderator Vacancy Investigation (MVI), begun
because the moderated newsgroup comp.os.plan9 is not functioning,
and has been abandoned by its moderator.

I am sincerely curious.

The moderator announced his retirement in July 2013.

According that font of all knowledge, Wikipedia, the last release of
plan9 was in early 2015.

With dozens of dead newsgroups, why this one? There is no hint in the
MVI that there is any interest in this OS, much less in a newsgroup.

[Tristan Miller]

Dear Steve,

Post by Steve Bonine
I am sincerely curious.
The moderator announced his retirement in July 2013.
According that font of all knowledge, Wikipedia, the last release of
plan9 was in early 2015.
With dozens of dead newsgroups, why this one?  There is no hint in the
MVI that there is any interest in this OS, much less in a newsgroup.

The MVI was prompted by one of the directors of the Plan 9 Foundation,
who had written to the Board with the intention of reviving the
newsgroup, perhaps via a bidirectional gateway to the 9fans mailing
list. He suggested converting the group to unmoderated, but as this is
a rather experimental solution, we proposed running an MVI, at least as
a first step, to see if the group could remain moderated.

Yes, perhaps we should have mentioned this in the MVI. I have written
to the director in question to let him know about the MVI so that he can
weigh in.

Regards,
Tristan

[Anthony]

Post by Tristan Miller
Dear Steve,

Post by Steve Bonine
I am sincerely curious.
The moderator announced his retirement in July 2013.
According that font of all knowledge, Wikipedia, the last release of
plan9 was in early 2015.
With dozens of dead newsgroups, why this one?  There is no hint in the
MVI that there is any interest in this OS, much less in a newsgroup.

The MVI was prompted by one of the directors of the Plan 9 Foundation,
who had written to the Board with the intention of reviving the
newsgroup, perhaps via a bidirectional gateway to the 9fans mailing
list. He suggested converting the group to unmoderated, but as this is
a rather experimental solution, we proposed running an MVI, at least as
a first step, to see if the group could remain moderated.
Yes, perhaps we should have mentioned this in the MVI. I have written
to the director in question to let him know about the MVI so that he can
weigh in.
Regards,
Tristan

Hi, I am the director in question. :-)

Steve, that does not give a adequate picture of the activity around Plan 9.
In the last few years, the Foundation has been formed, recently got its
501(c)(3) status, and has hosted two instances of the International
Workshop on Plan 9, after a hiatus of (from memory) eight years. There are
two active public forks/distributions, as well as a number of smaller or
one off projects using it as a base.

My conversation with the Big 8 board stalled mostly because I was
indecisive about what to do about the bridge to our old mailing list. Since
then, we have been moving farther and farther away from it, and it seems
pretty certain re-creating the bridge would be a bad idea at this point.

I don’t know what the right answer is about moderation. I read several
unmoderated news groups which are great, but I’ve also had to abandon a
couple which had turned into trash fires. Simply naming a new moderator is
certainly the simplest path. I am interested, but also don’t wanna be a
single point of failure. I’ve asked on her mailing list if anybody’s
willing to work with me on it. I was hoping to get farther with that before
responding to the MVI, but since I was (obliquely) mentioned… :-)

[Jon Ribbens]

Post by Anthony

Post by Tristan Miller
Dear Steve,

Post by Steve Bonine
I am sincerely curious.
The moderator announced his retirement in July 2013.
According that font of all knowledge, Wikipedia, the last release of
plan9 was in early 2015.
With dozens of dead newsgroups, why this one?  There is no hint in the
MVI that there is any interest in this OS, much less in a newsgroup.

The MVI was prompted by one of the directors of the Plan 9 Foundation,
who had written to the Board with the intention of reviving the
newsgroup, perhaps via a bidirectional gateway to the 9fans mailing
list. He suggested converting the group to unmoderated, but as this is
a rather experimental solution, we proposed running an MVI, at least as
a first step, to see if the group could remain moderated.
Yes, perhaps we should have mentioned this in the MVI. I have written
to the director in question to let him know about the MVI so that he can
weigh in.
Regards,
Tristan

Hi, I am the director in question. :-)
Steve, that does not give a adequate picture of the activity around Plan 9.
In the last few years, the Foundation has been formed, recently got its
501(c)(3) status, and has hosted two instances of the International
Workshop on Plan 9, after a hiatus of (from memory) eight years. There are
two active public forks/distributions, as well as a number of smaller or
one off projects using it as a base.
My conversation with the Big 8 board stalled mostly because I was
indecisive about what to do about the bridge to our old mailing list. Since
then, we have been moving farther and farther away from it, and it seems
pretty certain re-creating the bridge would be a bad idea at this point.
I don’t know what the right answer is about moderation. I read several
unmoderated news groups which are great, but I’ve also had to abandon a
couple which had turned into trash fires. Simply naming a new moderator is
certainly the simplest path. I am interested, but also don’t wanna be a
single point of failure. I’ve asked on her mailing list if anybody’s
willing to work with me on it. I was hoping to get farther with that before
responding to the MVI, but since I was (obliquely) mentioned… :-)

Regarding Usenet<->mailing list gateways, I think there's benefits and
not much down-side if the Usenet group is moderated, but if the group
is not moderated then the it is likely to contain messages that do not
make it to the list, thus confusing list users who see replies to
messages they have not seen.

(c.f. comp.lang.python, where from time to time you see messages from
the moderators of the mailing list announcing that xyz person has been
banned/suspended from posting, apparently blissfully unaware that xyz
is still merrily posting away in the group from which they are
supposedly barred. And, of course, spam.)

[Byrl Raze Buckbriar]

On Mon, 28 Oct 2024 23:30:36 CST

Post by Anthony

Post by Tristan Miller
Dear Steve,

<snip>

Post by Anthony
I don’t know what the right answer is about moderation. I read several
unmoderated news groups which are great, but I’ve also had to abandon a
couple which had turned into trash fires. Simply naming a new moderator is
certainly the simplest path. I am interested, but also don’t wanna be a
single point of failure. I’ve asked on her mailing list if anybody’s
willing to work with me on it. I was hoping to get farther with that before
responding to the MVI, but since I was (obliquely) mentioned… :-)

I suggest to the Big8 board to establish a fallback moderator pool consisting of every registered moderator and a trio or quartet of 'super mods'. This pool would consist of fallback moderators who would begin moderating a group if it falls dormant or its registered moderator goes dormant or incommunicado. In this way, any and every moderated group would always have fallback moderation.

Such dual moderation would require multiple signing keys and multiple recipients for each group, including the registered moderators and a private, non-public inbox for the fallback moderators to monitor. When a registered moderator approves a message, a signature flag should be automatically sent to the fallback pool inbox, clearing the linked message from the fallback queue. Messages can be held in abbeyance from the fallback queue for 3, 7, 14, 30 days or whatever before being presented to the fallback moderators.

A scheme like this would return all moderated newsgroups to active status and Usenet authors could begin posting to them immediately. Or the scheme can select which groups are in or out of the fallback pool. If a moderator disappears a config flag would move their group to fallback moderation. It doesn't have to be an either/or matter but can be selective if desired.

Another method would be to require a sysop owning a domain with a news host thereon for any group to be marked moderated with that news host as the default 'super mod'.

A vital part of moderation is filtering spam by each author having a valid and active email account. Leaving moderated groups in limbo does stop spam but also kills the group. Fallback moderation can even be automated with intelligent filters and even LLM filters, and if anyone notices spam getting through the filters can be updated and NoCems can be issued. This way the groups can function again and missing moderators won't have the harsh impact as at present.

Sysops and moderators can download and train a LLM such as 'ollama' to automate spam filtering. It can be nearly a 'set it and forget' it operation.

P.S. I had to send this message twice because your moderation rejects PGP-MIME signatures. Why?

- --
Byrl Raze Buckbriar . OCTADE . < https://octade.net >
Hacker Hotline . voice & SMS . (781) OCT-AGON
KeyOxide . < https://keyoxide.org/***@octade.net >

[Anthony]

Byrl Raze Buckbriar <***@octade.net> wrote:

<snip an interesting proposal>

I think a collective pool of backup moderators would be a great idea. There
are significant organizational challenges to address, mostly born out of
the fact that moderation is decentralized, but it might be worth it. This
is an interesting proposal… But it’s also well outside the scope of this
MVI. :-)

Back on track, on our mailing list I got one confirmed backup moderator,
and I think I have another interested. I’m now comfortable putting my name
forward as perspective successor moderator.

[Marco Moock]

Post by Byrl Raze Buckbriar
P.S. I had to send this message twice because your moderation rejects
PGP-MIME signatures. Why?

Was that an attachment?

[Byrl Raze Buckbriar]

On Tue, 29 Oct 2024 17:08:01 CST

Post by Marco Moock

Post by Byrl Raze Buckbriar
P.S. I had to send this message twice because your moderation rejects
PGP-MIME signatures. Why?

Was that an attachment?

<snip>

Affirmative. I was having a prolonged derp moment. I got a message from the moderator eventually. The system automatically rejects messages with any attachment, including detached PGP signatures, even though I assumed MIME sigs were okay since they are supposed to be text. 'Assume' ... makes ... It was not registering in my foggy brain until Tristan explained it. Inline signature works and gets through.

[candycanearter07]

Post by Byrl Raze Buckbriar
On Mon, 28 Oct 2024 23:30:36 CST

Post by Anthony

Post by Tristan Miller
Dear Steve,

<snip>

Post by Anthony
I don’t know what the right answer is about moderation. I read several
unmoderated news groups which are great, but I’ve also had to abandon a
couple which had turned into trash fires. Simply naming a new moderator is
certainly the simplest path. I am interested, but also don’t wanna be a
single point of failure. I’ve asked on her mailing list if anybody’s
willing to work with me on it. I was hoping to get farther with that before
responding to the MVI, but since I was (obliquely) mentioned… :-)

I suggest to the Big8 board to establish a fallback moderator pool consisting of every registered moderator and a trio or quartet of 'super mods'. This pool would consist of fallback moderators who would begin moderating a group if it falls dormant or its registered moderator goes dormant or incommunicado. In this way, any and every moderated group would always have fallback moderation.

[snip]

At the very least, I wouldn't imagine it would be too much effort since
a lot of the unmoderated newsgroups have no activity anyways

[Marco Moock]

Post by Steve Bonine

Post by Big-8 Management Board
This is a formal Moderator Vacancy Investigation (MVI), begun
because the moderated newsgroup comp.os.plan9 is not functioning,
and has been abandoned by its moderator.

I am sincerely curious.
The moderator announced his retirement in July 2013.
According that font of all knowledge, Wikipedia, the last release of
plan9 was in early 2015.
With dozens of dead newsgroups, why this one? There is no hint in
the MVI that there is any interest in this OS, much less in a
newsgroup.

If there is no interest in reviving the group, it will be deleted, but
we decided to ask the community first.

[Scott Dorsey]

Post by Steve Bonine

Post by Big-8 Management Board
This is a formal Moderator Vacancy Investigation (MVI), begun
because the moderated newsgroup comp.os.plan9 is not functioning,
and has been abandoned by its moderator.

I am sincerely curious.
The moderator announced his retirement in July 2013.
According that font of all knowledge, Wikipedia, the last release of
plan9 was in early 2015.
With dozens of dead newsgroups, why this one? There is no hint in the
MVI that there is any interest in this OS, much less in a newsgroup.

Would a complete revote be required in order to make this group
unmoderated?
--scott

[Tristan Miller]

Greetings.

Post by Scott Dorsey
Would a complete revote be required in order to make this group
unmoderated?

No, that's something the Board could simply ask the ISC to do. We'd
just rather not do this as it's possible some servers carrying the group
might not pick up on the change in status. A while back we polled
news.admin.moderation for comments on how likely a problem this would
be, but didn't get much in the way of responses.

Regards,
Tristan

[yeti]

I mentioned this in <irc://irc.libera.chat/plan9> and got one (!)
positive reaction.

SDF has a bit of life on their 9front system where they run their 9front
bootcamps and the users may keep their account afterwards. So I've
dropped a copy of this proposal into SDF's main internal infosystem
"bboard".

While I'd like to see life in comp.os.plan9, I'm deeply sceptic about
the amount we can expect, if any at all, but sure would love to be
proven wrong about this.

[morena]

Plan 9 code is licensed under permissive MIT license.
Nobody gave a cucumber about comp.os.plan9 for 10 years.

In this case, nobody has a moral 'right' to be the owner - moderator of
this newsgroup, and it should become *unmoderated*.

This will allow people to freely use Usenet without any 'master' in
control as gods intended. Nobody can be banned, canceled, censored,
which is often the case in any kind of proprietary online channel like
mailing list, forum, IRC network and so on.

I don't see a reason for the removal of the newsgroup based on the
current state of Usenet. It's full of dead newsgroups and junkyards.
If just few people are still interested in this newsgroup, it should
stay alive.

morena
http://morena.rip
gopher://morena.rip

[Marco Moock]

Post by morena
In this case, nobody has a moral 'right' to be the owner - moderator
of this newsgroup, and it should become *unmoderated*.

Technically that means it will be deleted and a new one without
moderation will be created.

Post by morena
I don't see a reason for the removal of the newsgroup based on the
current state of Usenet. It's full of dead newsgroups and junkyards.

Such stuff should be removed to make it easier for people to find
places where discussion occurs. That's why the board discusses this.

Post by morena
If just few people are still interested in this newsgroup, it should
stay alive.

That's the question.
Can somebody ask at the place where the plan 9 people currently discuss
if there is interest?

[morena]

Post by Marco Moock
Such stuff should be removed to make it easier for people to find
places where discussion occurs. That's why the board discusses this.

Sadly even Big 8 crossposts to several news.* newsgroups which are often
dead and moderated. That does not help from my view. One just read the
same article in several newsgroups and in case of a follow up wasting
some time to figure out, where to post.

It is probably hard to take any decision how to adjust Usenet for
current state and time. Obviously also next step, how to make it
technically happen.

I assume nobody is expecting that millions of users will jump in and
start using Usenet again. This should be probably considered and many
things adjusted just for smaller group of users.

Post by Marco Moock
Can somebody ask at the place where the plan 9 people currently discuss
if there is interest?

Some serious discussion even with original authors or people who were
around Plan 9 in that time is taking place on mentioned 9fans mailing list.
I already let them know about this MVI.
<https://9fans.topicbox.com/groups/9fans/Td61c6dc9b11378a4-M47efb428ba7a73b6ad51ad2a/usenet-newsgroup-comp-os-plan9>

Not sure if Rob Pike can now use Usenet after Google trashed it ;/

[Marco Moock]

Post by morena
Not sure if Rob Pike can now use Usenet after Google trashed it ;/

https://www.novabbs.com/common/grouplist.php

[Anthony]

Post by Marco Moock

Post by morena
In this case, nobody has a moral 'right' to be the owner - moderator
of this newsgroup, and it should become *unmoderated*.

Technically that means it will be deleted and a new one without
moderation will be created.

Post by morena
I don't see a reason for the removal of the newsgroup based on the
current state of Usenet. It's full of dead newsgroups and junkyards.

Such stuff should be removed to make it easier for people to find
places where discussion occurs. That's why the board discusses this.

Post by morena
If just few people are still interested in this newsgroup, it should
stay alive.

That's the question.
Can somebody ask at the place where the plan 9 people currently discuss
if there is interest?

We have. There is.

I would like to keep the group moderated. I am up for assuming that role
(having lined up help).

[Marco Moock]

Post by Anthony
I would like to keep the group moderated. I am up for assuming that
role (having lined up help).

Great!

Do you already have moderation infrastructure?

[Anthony]

Post by Marco Moock

Post by Anthony
I would like to keep the group moderated. I am up for assuming that
role (having lined up help).

Great!
Do you already have moderation infrastructure?

Working on it. Waiting on confirmation from my current provider that
they’ll allow injecting messages with the Approved header set (pending the
conclusion if the MVI). Also more testing to do. But nearly there.

[Tristan Miller]

Dear Anthony,

Post by Anthony
Working on it. Waiting on confirmation from my current provider that
they’ll allow injecting messages with the Approved header set (pending the
conclusion if the MVI). Also more testing to do. But nearly there.

Any update on this yet? If you can confirm that you've got the
moderation setup in place, we'd be happy to conclude the MVI. Let us
know if you need any help.

Regards,
Tristan

[Anthony]

Post by Tristan Miller
Dear Anthony,

Post by Anthony
Working on it. Waiting on confirmation from my current provider that
they’ll allow injecting messages with the Approved header set (pending the
conclusion if the MVI). Also more testing to do. But nearly there.

Any update on this yet? If you can confirm that you've got the
moderation setup in place, we'd be happy to conclude the MVI. Let us
know if you need any help.
Regards,
Tristan

Infrastructure now in place, including confirming that my provider will
accept the appropriate header once the MVI is concluded.

[Anthony]

Post by Anthony

Post by Tristan Miller
Dear Anthony,

Post by Anthony
Working on it. Waiting on confirmation from my current provider that
they’ll allow injecting messages with the Approved header set (pending the
conclusion if the MVI). Also more testing to do. But nearly there.

Any update on this yet? If you can confirm that you've got the
moderation setup in place, we'd be happy to conclude the MVI. Let us
know if you need any help.
Regards,
Tristan

Infrastructure now in place, including confirming that my provider will
accept the appropriate header once the MVI is concluded.

In case it matters for the MVI, that’s still me. I forgot to change back
from a testing address.

[Tristan Miller]

Dear Anthony,

Post by Anthony
Infrastructure now in place, including confirming that my provider will
accept the appropriate header once the MVI is concluded.

That's great. I'll get in touch with you by e-mail to finalize things,
and then hopefully we can conclude the MVI.

Regards,
Tristan

[morena]

That's great.  I'll get in touch with you by e-mail to finalize things,
and then hopefully we can conclude the MVI.

It looks your pigeons died during their way. But don't stress, newsgroup
was dead over a decade, one year more is not the issue.

Usenet it passing away ;/ Based on speed of big 8 and new cool Plan 9
master, it will takes some time.

RIP

[Edward McGuire]

Post by Anthony

Post by Marco Moock
Do you already have moderation infrastructure?

Working on it. Waiting on confirmation from my current provider that
they’ll allow injecting messages with the Approved header set (pending the
conclusion if the MVI). Also more testing to do. But nearly there.

In March, I volunteered to moderate comp.programming.literate. I use Stump to
automate moderation and eternal-september.org to post approved articles. Contact
me if you run into any problems you'd like a second pair of eyes on.

Cheers
Edward

[yeti]

Post by Marco Moock

Post by morena
In this case, nobody has a moral 'right' to be the owner - moderator
of this newsgroup, and it should become *unmoderated*.

Technically that means it will be deleted and a new one without
moderation will be created.

So starting from scratch?

The old contents was public readable, is there any reason that it has to
be lost?

Ok, I see 242 old posts, that's not much that would be lost.

So the old group was not very active and the reactions I get mentioning
the MVI is near to zero. Well, outside of Usenet (IRC) exactly one so
far.

Frustrating.

I'd like to see traffic in c.o.plan9 despite probably not being among
the members frequently posting answers there. But questions I may have
a lot! ;-)

[Tristan Miller]

Greetings.

Post by yeti

Post by Marco Moock
Technically that means it will be deleted and a new one without
moderation will be created.

So starting from scratch?
The old contents was public readable, is there any reason that it has to
be lost?

If the moderation status is changed by removing and recreating the group
(as opposed to using the RFC 5537 mechanism I described elsewhere in
this thread) then whether the existing posts get deleted is up to the
software running on the individual news servers. If this isn't
addressed in their respective documentation, then it's probably a good
question to post on news.software.nntp, or to send directly to the
developers.

Regards,
Tristan

[Tristan Miller]

Greetings.

Post by Marco Moock
Technically that means it will be deleted and a new one without
moderation will be created.

Not necessarily -- it seems that RFC 5537 §5.2.1
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc5537.html#section-5.2.1> describes a

Post by Marco Moock
The newgroup control message requests that the specified group be
created or, if already existing, that its moderation status or
description be changed.

Regards,
Tristan