Re: 2nd RFD: Remove rec.radio.broadcasting - LAST CALL FOR COMMENTS (REDUX)

Hi Rayner,

I had hoped to get replies from people who had previously been involved
with converting a newsgroup to unmoderated, to get some idea of how well
it had actually worked in practice rather than relying on speculation.
Unfortunately, I had no such luck.

We converted in June 2023 two moderated newsgroups in the fr.* hierarchy to unmoderated newsgroups (fr.misc.handicap and fr.soc.homosexualite).
The change was reflected by 2 dedicated "newgroup" control articles and subsequent "checkgroups" control articles.
It permitted postings to be allowed again in these newsgroups, as the moderation was no longer working.  It worked, as some discussions then took place in these newsgroups.  But if you look at them now, you'll see they are still empty, due to the lack of interest and contributors, which is a global issue on Usenet-fr and Usenet in general, not specific to these 2 newsgroups.
In 2011, 2 newsgroups were similarly unmoderated: fr.bienvenue and fr.comp.lang.php.  These newsgroups are still more or less active, so it proves to work.
So to respond to your question, in works in practice though you shouldn't count on that action to magically revive newsgroups.  We checked at that time that the groups were properly made unmoderated in the servers mostly used by fr.* contributors, and it was the case.
If you wish to check on the news servers you have access to, feel free to do that and no longer rely on speculation :-)
I would also like to add that if a news server does not reflect the unmoderation status, it won't do any harm anyway.  The newsgroups were empty before the change, and they will remain empty after the change because they expect approved messages.  The news servers which reflect the change will work as expected and the unmoderated newsgroups may have postings.  So basically, it is a better situation than before!

However, given that this RFD is specifically about whether to delete the
group, I would say that converting the group to unmoderated would need
to be a subsequent discussion, contingent on the Board first voting not
to delete the group (as deleting it would render the point moot).

I may be wrong but I really doubt that unmoderating newsgroups will revive them, so if their topics no longer seem relevant to the Usenet audience, just deleting them would be fine.
In 2023 in fr.*, we wanted to give a last chance to these 2 newsgroups by first unmoderating them.  The next step will certainly be their removal the next time some cleaning and simplification are done.
--
Julien ÉLIE
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