Re: 1st RfD: Mass-deletion of moderated groups without a moderator

In <vno3se$ch7$1@reader2.panix.com> Tristan Miller <tmiller@big-8.org> writes:

Greetings.

On 2025-01-04 09:30, Adam H. Kerman wrote:

Big-8 Management Board <board@big-8.org> wrote:

               REQUEST FOR DISCUSSION (RFD)

 

This is a formal Request for Discussion (RFD) to remove the following
101 moderated newsgroups.

 
The audience for potential moderators of these specific newsgroups is
not to be found here in news.groups.
 

DISTRIBUTION:

 

news.announce.newgroups
news.groups.proposals
news.groups

 

[...]

 
Brilliant stuff there, Way to literally go behind everybody's back.

Where do you suggest we post the RFD, then?

Should we cross-post the RFD to all of the affected groups?  I doubt our
own news server would accept such an article, and others might also
reject it for excessive cross-posting.  But maybe I am wrong.

Should we post a separate copy of the RFD to each of the affected
groups?  Again, I'm worried this might trigger some automated
spam/flooding filters.  But again, maybe I am wrong about this.

Besides the affected groups, is there a better place to reach an
audience of potential moderators?

One technique that was used for another mass-removal RFD in 2011 was to
make a short pointer post crossposted to small groups of the affected
newsgroups, usually four newsgroups at a time (Panix will allow
simultaneous crossposting to up to 8 different newsgroups), with body
text customized to each group of newsgroups, to avoid news server
filtering on large numbers of exact duplicate articles.  This is well
within Breidbart Index limits followed by most news servers.  Usually
the newsgroups were combined by subhierarchy (e.g., rec.arts.*,
rec.games.*, rec.games.computer.quake.*, etc.).  An example of such a
short, crossposted pointer message may be found at:

https://groups.google.com/g/rec.games.trading-cards.startrek/c/00vYFmLltv0/m/o88IiT3WmEwJ

The current RFD encompasses about 100 newsgroups.  Sending pointer
messages with different sublists of the affected newsgroups, crossposted
to about 4 to 8 newsgroups each, would be about 15 to 25 messages.  A
lot, but not unmanageable, especially if the messages were templated,
possibly generated by a script.  Since this latest RFD affects moderated
newsgroups, an Approved: header would have to be added, of course.
There is ample precedent for the Board to post directly to inactive
moderated newsgroups, most recently with rec.radio.broadcasting.

--
Paul W. Schleck
pschleck@panix.com