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

On 2025-03-11, Usenet Big-8 Management Board wrote:

 > This is a formal Request for Discussion (RFD) to remove the following
 > 99 moderated newsgroups.

I have to admit that I've had little interest in moderated
newsgroups so far, so I guess my thoughts below are to be taken
with a grain of salt.

Overall, I support the efforts of the Board to keep the portion
of the news: namespace they are responsible for clean.  That
a particular newsserver may carry many newsgroups from many
other namespaces, including unmaintained ones (such as alt.*,
by design) should be of no consequence to the Board policies.

With regards to moderation, as a user, I'd expect *.moderated
newsgroups to be moderated, and if no one volunteers for the
job, to be removed.  Given that Usenet is, at this time, a kind
of a niche medium, with relatively few users, and hence limited
supply of potential moderators, I believe that while MVIs should
be initiated as promptly as possible, discussions of possible
removal are to be delayed until at least a year passes since an
article is last successfully approved to the group at hand.

Same applies to announcement newsgroups (such as *.announce
and, e. g., comp.newprod), as well as newsgroups that might be
oriented more at publishing and collaborating on works rather
than discussion proper (rec.music.makers.guitar.tablature,
rec.arts.ascii.)

I would prefer other groups to, as a rule, become unmoderated
if no one volunteers to be their moderator.

I agree that such a change won't necessarily revive a group.
However, a newly unmoderated group /might/ become active,
while a deleted group certainly won't.

I think that a viable approach to moderation would be to have
a whitelist of good faith posters to each newsgroup, so that
the moderator would only need to consider posts by infrequent
users, or those who aren't particularly observant of the group's
charter.

Having little prior interest in moderated newsgroups, I'm not
familiar with the moderation process, or at least its technical
details; however, I have for a long time had interest in netnews
and Internet standards in general, so I'd be willing to give it
a try, including entirely by myself.  However, my preference
would be to be a part of a team instead, as I don't feel ready
to invest effort in the process on a daily basis.

I'd be interested in (co)moderating the following groups.

 > comp.newprod            Announcements of new products of interest.
 >   (Moderated)
 > comp.std.announce       Announcements about standards activities.
 >   (Moderated)
 > rec.music.makers.guitar.tablature       Guitar tablature and performance.
 >   (Moderated)
 > rec.photo.moderated     The art and science of photography.  (Moderated)

Groups that I'd be monitoring were they "reactivated," either
by becoming unmoderated (which would be my preference, except
for news:rec.arts.ascii; and provided that their new status
isn't at odds with their respective charters, which I haven't
checked), or by finding a new moderator.

 > comp.simulation         Simulation methods, problems, uses.  (Moderated)
 > rec.arts.ascii          ASCII art, info on archives, art, & artists.
 >   (Moderated)
 > sci.bio.evolution       Discussions of evolutionary biology.  (Moderated)
 > sci.bio.phytopathology  All aspects of plant diseases and pests.
 >   (Moderated)
 > sci.chem.organic.synthesis      Synthetic organic chemistry related topics.
 >   (Moderated)
 > soc.politics            Political problems, systems, solutions.
 >   (Moderated)
 > soc.politics.marxism    Karl Marx and his legacy in theory and practice.
 >   (Moderated)

In particular, note that news:soc.politics has been active
recently, e. g., news:VI-cnTLCE4IuxQn6nZ2dnZfqn_GdnZ2d@giganews.com
(also via a forged Approved: header), even if the value of such
activity is debatable.