From Newsgroup: news.announce.newgroups


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

comp.unix.bsd.386bsd.misc
comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc


DISTRIBUTION:
news.announce.newgroups
news.groups.proposals
comp.unix.misc
comp.unix.bsd.386bsd.misc
comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc


PROPONENT: Marco Moock <mmoock@big-8.org>


RATIONALE:

There are various groups in comp.unix.* that are not used regularly.

I propose to delete groups that are not used well and to direct the
people to more general groups like comp.unix.misc in case they want to
discuss the topics they special groups covered.
If people declare interest in using them, I suggest to not delete them.


DISCUSSION SO FAR:

Discussion took place primarily in news.groups.proposals with some
further posts in news.groups. Responses were received in the threads
"RFD: Remove comp.unix.bsd.386bsd.misc and comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc" (in news.groups.proposals) and "RFD: Remove comp.unix.user-friendly" (in news.groups.proposals and news.groups). No responses were received in
the thread "RFD: Remove comp.unix.sys5.misc and comp.unix.sys5.r4".
However, all of the points raised could be applicable to any of the five newsgroups currently under consideration, and therefore we have collated
all of the responses into a single summary covering all five groups.

Computer Nerd Kev argues that it is better to have separate newsgroups
to discuss old platforms, as some users in the more general groups may
not welcome discussions of old unmaintained software.

Julien +LIE supports the proposals but suggests that a mass deletion of
unused groups would be more efficient than removing groups a few at a
time.

Jesse Rehmer and ReK2 Hispagatos believe that a long list of newsgroups
where many have had no traffic for years is discouraging for new users
and makes it hard to find relevant groups.

Computer Nerd Kev and Winston both note that they personally subscribe
to groups with no traffic, and therefore lack of activity is not
necessarily an indication that nobody has any interest in the group.

noel, sticks, yeti, and DrunkenThon all expressed concern that removing
the groups would also remove valuable historical discussions associated
with those groups. Scott Dorsey countered that news service providers typically do not guarantee that old posts will remain available
indefinitely in any case, and an archive server should not remove old
posts if the group no longer exists. Todd McComb suggested that it would
be more productive for anyone concerned about the availability of
historical posts to direct their efforts at improving the state of
Usenet archiving.

Adam Kerman and Steve Bonine both consider the proposed changes a "make-
work" activity that achieves nothing useful.


GROUPS:

comp.unix.bsd.386bsd.misc
386BSD operating system.

History:
comp.unix.bsd.386bsd.misc is a unmoderated newsgroup which passed its
vote for creation by 285:87 as reported in news.announce.newgroups on
22 Feb 1995. This groups supersedes the unmoderated groups in the comp.os.386bsd hierarchy, which will all be removed on 26 May 1995.

Charter:
Discussion about 386bsd which does not fall into the area
of coverage of any of the other 386bsd groups. Things
posted here should not be crossposted to the other 386bsd
groups.

Rationale:
Last on-topic message from 2010.
This operating system isn't developed anymore.
If there is need for discussion, more general groups can be used.


comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc
BSD/OS operating system.

History:
comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc is a unmoderated newsgroup which passed its
vote for creation by 305:69 as reported in news.announce.newgroups on
22 Feb 1995.

Charter:
Discussion about BSD/OS which does not fall into the area
of coverage of any of the other bsdi groups. Things posted
here should not be crossposted to the other bsdi groups.

Rationale:
Last on-topic discussion in 2015
This operating system isn't developed anymore.
If there is need for discussion, more general groups can be used.


PROCEDURE:

Those who wish to comment on this request to remove this newsgroup
should subscribe to news:news.groups.proposals and participate in the
relevant threads in that newsgroup.

To this end, the followup header of this RFD has been set to news.groups.proposals.

All discussion of active proposals should be posted to
news.groups.proposals.

If desired by the readership of closely affected groups, the
discussion may be crossposted to those groups, but care must be taken
to ensure that all discussion appears in news.groups.proposals as
well.

For more information on the newsgroup removal process, please see https://www.big-8.org/wiki/Removing_newsgroups


HISTORY OF THIS RFD:

2025-10-10: 1st RFD (remove)
2025-11-15: 2nd RFD (remove)
--
Usenet Big-8 Management Board
https://www.big-8.org/
board@big-8.org

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