Moderator Vacancy Investigation: news.admin.technical

[Usenet Big-8 Management Board]

This is a formal Moderator Vacancy Investigation (MVI), begun because
the moderated newsgroup news.admin.technical is not functioning. This
investigation will set out the reasons for non-function, and may
result in the removal of the group or the selection and installation
of a new moderator.

Followups to this post have been set to news.groups.proposals to
ensure that any resulting discussion can be followed in one place.


RATIONALE:

Attempts to post to the group currently result in a bounce message from
the ISC moderation relay.

The most recent moderator, Scott Hazen Mueller, has confirmed to the
Board that he is no longer moderating the group. In July 2018 he had
written to the ISC to inform them that his moderation system would be
shut down. He had had the group on auto-moderation for at least a
decade and considered it to be effectively defunct.

Apart from automated posts from the moderator, the group's most recent
activity seems to be in 2012, when it had two posts. The group had
sporadic bursts of activity (much of it cross-posted) in 2010, 2009,
and 2008, and seems to have been used somewhat more regularly before
2007.

The Board recently received an inquiry about the status of the group
from someone interested in posting to it. Given this, and that the
group has historically been used for relevant posts on a topic that is
still relevant today, the Board considers that there may be merit in
opening the group to submissions again. As an alternative, the group
could be removed with the expectation that posters wishing to discuss
technical news administration would instead use the existing
unmoderated group news.admin.misc. (Indeed, in a 1995 RFD on
news.admin.technical, it was observed that "news.admin.technical
receives very little traffic" and that "A significant amount of the
technical news administration traffic goes to news.admin.misc"
anyway.)


NEWSGROUPS LINE:

news.admin.technical Technical aspects of maintaining network news.
(Moderated)


HISTORY OF THE GROUP:

news.admin.technical was proposed by Joe Buck
<***@forney.berkeley.edu> in 1992 as part of a larger reorganization
of the news.admin.* hierarchy. (See
<***@uunet.uu.net> which is archived at
<https://ftp.isc.org/usenet/news.announce.newgroups/news/news.admin-reorg>.)

news.admin.technical passed its vote 284:25:7 on 4 August 1992, and
Scott Hazen Mueller was appointed moderator. (See
<***@uunet.uu.net> which is archived at
<https://ftp.isc.org/usenet/news.announce.newgroups/news/news.admin-reorg>.)

In 1995 there was an RFD to further reorganize the news.admin
hierarchy, which would have involved renaming news.admin.technical to
news.admin.technical.moderated (in order to create a new group
news.admin.technical.help), though this part of the proposal was
dropped before the RFD reached a vote. (See <3epu0g$***@rodan.UU.NET>
which is archived at
<https://ftp.isc.org/usenet/news.announce.newgroups/news/news.admin-reorg2>.)


CHARTER AND MODERATION POLICY OF NEWS.ADMIN.TECHNICAL:

This group is dedicated to the technical aspects of maintaining the
netnews environment. Puzzled by the RFC's? Trying to diagnose a tricky
problem on your system? Then post here.

Personal abuse, repetition of things that have been hashed to death
already, and articles more appropriate for news.admin.policy would be
rejected by the moderator with a request to post it elsewhere.


DISTRIBUTION:

news.announce.newgroups
news.groups.proposals
news.admin.misc
news.admin.technical


PROPONENT:

Usenet Big-8 Management Board <***@big-8.org>


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

http://www.big-8.org/wiki/Moderator_Vacancy_Investigations


CHANGE HISTORY:

2024-02-27 Moderator Vacancy Investigation

[Russ Allbery]

Post by Usenet Big-8 Management Board
The Board recently received an inquiry about the status of the group
from someone interested in posting to it. Given this, and that the
group has historically been used for relevant posts on a topic that is
still relevant today, the Board considers that there may be merit in
opening the group to submissions again.

I'm not sure we *really* need a separate moderated version of
news.software.nntp, although since a lot of random stuff keeps getting
cross-posted into news.software.nntp that isn't entirely on-topic, maybe
it would be a good idea to resurrect this group for purely technical
discussion.

Post by Usenet Big-8 Management Board
As an alternative, the group could be removed with the expectation that
posters wishing to discuss technical news administration would instead
use the existing unmoderated group news.admin.misc.

news.software.nntp would be the closest group to the original intent of
this group, I believe, not news.admin.misc. The naming dates from the
days when there were multiple Usenet implementations, but these days when
we talk about UUCP we just use news.software.nntp anyway since that's
where all the people are, even though it's technically off-topic.

news.admin.misc tends to be more about policy than about technical issues.

[Steve Bonine]

Post by Usenet Big-8 Management Board
Apart from automated posts from the moderator, the group's most recent
activity seems to be in 2012, when it had two posts. The group had
sporadic bursts of activity (much of it cross-posted) in 2010, 2009,
and 2008, and seems to have been used somewhat more regularly before
2007.

OK, let me summarize. No activity at all for 12 years (2012). Not
regularly used for 17 years (20007). ONE person wants to post to it.
There is another group, news.software.nntp, which is available to cover
the topic.

Are you really so desperate for something to do as to consider trying to
revive a moderated newsgroup for a topic which is covered by another
newsgroup and is of interest to a vanishingly small number of people?

[Russ Allbery]

Post by Steve Bonine
Are you really so desperate for something to do as to consider trying to
revive a moderated newsgroup for a topic which is covered by another
newsgroup and is of interest to a vanishingly small number of people?

I personally would appreciate a forum for talking about Usenet software
where peering decisions, spam, and network abuse are rejected by
moderation so that the discussion was only about the technical issues of
software implementation.

[Ivo Gandolfo]

-------- Original Message --------
From: Russ Allbery <***@eyrie.org>
Date: mar, feb 27 2024 09:19:42PM GMT+00:00
Subject: Moderator Vacancy Investigation: news.admin.technical

Post by Russ Allbery
I personally would appreciate a forum for talking about Usenet software
where peering decisions, spam, and network abuse are rejected by
moderation so that the discussion was only about the technical issues of
software implementation.

I agree with Russ. Having a moderate group is the best guarantee for
keeping out a lot of unwanted junk.

I even go one step further, I volunteer as a moderator (especially if
there is at least one other person alongside me, Russ do you want to
propose yourself?). And if Big8 don't have space to host the robomod I
will also make the server available to host it.


Sincerely

[Russ Allbery]

Post by Ivo Gandolfo
I even go one step further, I volunteer as a moderator (especially if
there is at least one other person alongside me, Russ do you want to
propose yourself?).

I am absurdly behind on absolutely everything and really shouldn't
volunteer to do anything else. Although I admit the thought did occur to
me.

[Steve Bonine]

Post by Russ Allbery

Post by Steve Bonine
Are you really so desperate for something to do as to consider trying to
revive a moderated newsgroup for a topic which is covered by another
newsgroup and is of interest to a vanishingly small number of people?

I personally would appreciate a forum for talking about Usenet software
where peering decisions, spam, and network abuse are rejected by
moderation so that the discussion was only about the technical issues of
software implementation.

OK, I stand corrected, but in my defense I now realize that this is a
special case. This newsgroup will/would be used by the very few people
who are specifically interested in Usenet for Usenet's sake. In the
general case, trying to revive a moderated newsgroup that has been dead
for years is just silly.

[Flatzkrieg]

On Wed, 28 Feb 2024 08:40:41 CST

Post by Steve Bonine

Post by Russ Allbery

Post by Steve Bonine
Are you really so desperate for something to do as to consider trying to
revive a moderated newsgroup for a topic which is covered by another
newsgroup and is of interest to a vanishingly small number of people?

I personally would appreciate a forum for talking about Usenet software
where peering decisions, spam, and network abuse are rejected by
moderation so that the discussion was only about the technical issues of
software implementation.

OK, I stand corrected, but in my defense I now realize that this is a
special case. This newsgroup will/would be used by the very few people
who are specifically interested in Usenet for Usenet's sake. In the
general case, trying to revive a moderated newsgroup that has been dead
for years is just silly.

In that case then trying to revive Usenet at all is just silly.

Your logic is killing the network effect in the cradle.

[Marco Moock]

Post by Steve Bonine
Are you really so desperate for something to do as to consider trying
to revive a moderated newsgroup for a topic which is covered by
another newsgroup and is of interest to a vanishingly small number of
people?

The worst situation is a non-working moderated group. I think deleting
it would be a reasonable way too.

[Tristan Miller]

Greetings.

OK, let me summarize.  No activity at all for 12 years (2012). Not
regularly used for 17 years (20007).  ONE person wants to post to it.
There is another group, news.software.nntp, which is available to cover
the topic.
Are you really so desperate for something to do as to consider trying to
revive a moderated newsgroup for a topic which is covered by another
newsgroup and is of interest to a vanishingly small number of people?

Like practically every other RFD and MVI I've been involved with as a
Board member, this one arises from someone contacting the Board to
report a problem or to request that some action to be taken.
Facilitating discussions and implementing decisions on whether any given
group should be revived (or demoderated, or removed, or created, or what
have you) is precisely what the Board is for. We're happy to spare a
bit of time to look into why a moderated group isn't working, and the
group's history, and to summarize this information so that the wider
community can give their feedback on what (if anything) should be done.

Regards,
Tristan

[Usenet Big-8 Management Board]

Greetings.

Post by Usenet Big-8 Management Board
This is a formal Moderator Vacancy Investigation (MVI), begun because
the moderated newsgroup news.admin.technical is not functioning.  This
investigation will set out the reasons for non-function, and may
result in the removal of the group or the selection and installation
of a new moderator.

The responses to this MVI have shown a general consensus that it would
be useful to keep the group news.admin.technical, or at least one like
it, running. There has been an expression of interest from a
prospective moderator that the Board is following up on. Further
details will be posted when they become available.

Regards,
Tristan