From Newsgroup: news.announce.newgroups

This is a formal Request for Discussion (RFD) to remove the moderated newsgroups rec.arts.comics.reviews and rec.arts.comics.info.

The Big-8 Management Board plans to begin voting on this proposal
after five days. Please offer any final discussion or comments before
the end of this waiting period. Voting may take up to one week (7
days); a result will be posted following the end of the voting period.


Newsgroups Lines:

rec.arts.comics.info Reviews, convention information and other comics
news. (Moderated)
rec.arts.comics.reviews Reviews of comics and comics-related materials. (Moderated)


Distribution:
news.announce.newgroups
news.groups.proposals
rec.arts.comics.reviews
rec.arts.comics.info
rec.arts.comics.misc


Proponent: Marco Moock <mm@dorfdsl.de>


Charter:

rec.arts.comics.info:
This group is basically modeled after the rec.arts.startrek.info newsgroup. It is for posts of an informative nature. Reviews, convention announcements, and other information from the comic book world would
find their home in this group. It is intended to be a non-discussion,
all signal informative group. Reviews submitted to r.a.c.info can be
from any of the r.a.c.* discussion groups, but it is asked of the poster
that s/he split up the review into articles that pertain to only one of
the discussion groups so that followups can be correctly directed.
Reviews or opinions of a single title should be seriously considered
before posting, unless said single review is from a larger review that
was split into parts.

rec.arts.comics.reviews Reviews of comics and comics-related materials. (Moderated)

The charter, culled from the vote result announcement:

The purpose of this newsgroup is to review items, materials, and
events normally addressed and discussed within the rec.arts.comics.*
hierarchy. Examples include, but are not limited to:

Comic books, strips, political cartoons, and their compilations
Movie/TV/prose adaptations of comic-book characters and stories
Biographies or histories of characters, pros, and the industry
rec.arts.comics.creative "issues" or "titles"
Industry-related publications and magazines
Subscription companies and services
Archival/collecting materials
Cataloguing software
Comics conventions

The following policies will apply:

- Advertisements, large binaries, SPAM, general announcements,
and discussion/followup posts are not permitted in this group.
They will be rejected. If a post begins with "Re: " then it is
treated as a followup and will be returned.

- Posts to the group should begin with a Subject keyword such
as REVIEW:, PREVIEW:, or COLUMN:, which will be chosen by the
moderator. The moderator may add additional keywords as they
become necessary. The moderator may add an appropriate keyword
to the subject line if none is provided.

- Posts to the group may be crossposted to other discussion groups
or to other appropriate *.reviews groups. Followups should be set
to three or fewer appropriate discussion groups.

- Hierarchy-wide pre-approved FAQ posts, such as the rec.arts.comics
general FAQ, will be posted if approved by the .info group. Other
FAQ posts (such as the charter of the group, or a guide to review
style) will be approved at moderator's discretion.


Rationale for removal:

rec.arts.comics.reviews and rec.arts.comics.info haven't seen posts in
the last 12 years and currently don't have moderators.

On 2012-06-01, the moderator of rec.arts.comics.reviews, Tim Skirvin,
posted an article indicating that he would like to step down and
calling for a replacement moderator: <https://groups.google.com/g/rec.arts.comics.reviews/c/Cfcr3NW6ovQ>
The search was evidently unsuccessful as the ISC currently has no
moderator address registered for the group.

There is likewise no moderator address registered for
rec.arts.comics.info. It is unclear who the most recent moderator
was. The group does not seem to have had any activity since
2012-06-01, and no posts other than Tim Skirvin's automated periodic
posting about rec.arts.comics.reviews since 2006-05-24.

An e-mail to Tim Skirvin on 2024-11-01 requesting further details on
the status and history of the groups has received no reply.

Some users may still be trying to post to either group, as evidenced
by a problem report posted to news.groups on 2024-10-21: <news:vf462a$cbs8$11@dont-email.me> Removing the two groups would
eliminate such problems. The unmoderated group rec.arts.comics.misc
is a place where the topics of these two groups can be announced or
discussed instead.


Discussion so far:

The first RFD attracted only a single response: (former) rec.arts.comics.reviews moderator Tim Skirvin indicated that he
doesn't think anyone took over moderation of rec.arts.comics.reviews,
that he doesn't presently moderate either group, and that he doesn't
remember if anybody else was moderating them. No expressions of
support for or opposition to removing the groups were received.

No comments were received in response to the second RFD.


History of the Groups:

rec.arts.comics.reviews is a moderated newsgroup which passed its vote
for creation by 157:37 as reported in news.announce.newgroups on 27 Mar
1997.

rec.arts.comics.info is a moderated newsgroup which passed its vote for creation by 223:65 as reported in news.announce.newgroups on 24 Jun 1992


Procedure:

Those who wish to comment on this request to remove this newsgroup
should subscribe to 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:

2024-11-17: 1st RFD (remove)
2024-12-06: 2nd RFD (remove)
2025-01-03: Final RFD / Last Call for Comments
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