Re: 3rd RfD: Mass-deletion of moderated groups without a moderator

Marco Moock <mm@dorfdsl.de> writes:

On 11.03.2025 21:44 Uhr Keith Thompson wrote:

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

              REQUEST FOR DISCUSSION (RFD)
>
This is a formal Request for Discussion (RFD) to remove the
following 99 moderated newsgroups.
>
>
RATIONALE:
>
Currently, these groups cannot be used for discussion because of the
lack of a moderator. Most of these groups haven't had a moderator
for a long time and have been unused for years. We consider it
unlikely that they will ever be revived with a new moderator.
Nonetheless, anyone interested in becoming a moderator for a group
listed in this RFD is invited to contact the Big-8 Management
Board. 

 
comp.lang.c.moderated is in this list.  It has had no active
moderator and no traffic since 2014.  Discussions on comp.lang.c
indicate that at least some people would participate in a revived
comp.lang.c.moderated, but there's little or no support for actually
reviving it.

>
The I think deleting is the best option. The idea is to keep usenet
usable, which means defunct stuff will be removed.

The NNTP server I use, eternal-september.org, currently has 27,002
newsgroups.  I presume that nobody reads all of them.  I hardly think
that having a handful of newsgroups that are no longer active would make
Usenet any less usable.

However, I'm concerned that removing the group would lose existing
posts.  That's honestly probably not a huge deal, but it would be
a pity IMHO.

>
Archives like narkive.com exist which don't delete groups when rmgroup
messages are being sent.

As far as I can tell, narkive.com doesn't exist.

If there are archives that keep articles from deleted groups, I'm less
concerned -- but such archives are not well known.  groups.google.com
still has comp.lang.c.moderated articles, and since they no longer
interact with Usenet I presume they wouldn't delete the articles if the
newsgroup were deleted.

Would it be possible to leave comp.lang.c.moderated as it is (can't
post to it, but servers with sufficiently long memories still allow
old articles to be read)?

>
Technically it would be, but I prefer to either make it usable or delete
it.
Archive servers may keep it anyway.
>

If that's not feasible, it should be possible for someone (maybe
even me) to take over as moderator to keep the group alive, but
not allow any new posts.  This would be an alternate way to keep
the status quo.

>
That makes no sense because the group is still unusable.

It would not be usable for new posts, but existing posts would
still be available.  Perhaps you wouldn't find that useful.  I would.

[...]

--
Keith Thompson (The_Other_Keith) Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com
void Void(void) { Void(); } /* The recursive call of the void */