From Newsgroup: news.groups

In <MPG.42b54d916dd18e09896f4@news.eternal-september.org> Big-8 Management Board <board@big-8.org> writes:

REPLACEMENT MODERATOR FOUND
rec.photo.moderated

The Big-8 Management Board is pleased to announce that Ivan Shmakov has >volunteered to take on moderation duties for rec.photo.moderated.

In <MPG.42b54e792ebe45e59896f5@news.eternal-september.org> Big-8 Management Board <board@big-8.org> writes:

REPLACEMENT MODERATOR FOUND
comp.std.announce

The Big-8 Management Board is pleased to announce that Ivan Shmakov has >volunteered to take on moderation duties for comp.std.announce.

In <MPG.42b54ff3bf9863519896f7@news.eternal-september.org> Big-8 Management Board <board@big-8.org> writes:

REPLACEMENT MODERATOR FOUND
comp.newprod

The Big-8 Management Board is pleased to announce that Ivan Shmakov has >volunteered to take on moderation duties for comp.newprod.

In <MPG.42b54f6af1452af69896f6@news.eternal-september.org> Big-8 Management Board <board@big-8.org> writes:

REPLACEMENT MODERATOR FOUND
comp.simulation

The Big-8 Management Board is pleased to announce that Ivan Shmakov has >volunteered to take on moderation duties for comp.simulation.

OK, so a single moderator for each newsgroup, and the same moderator
for all of these newsgroups? I don't doubt Ivan's sincerity, good
intentions, and likely technical skills, but I thought that this was the
kind of risky moderation model that we were trying to get away from
during past Moderator Vacancy Investigations.

There may also be some lessons-learned from the analogous experiences of
Brian Edmonds in the aughts and tens (2000's and 2010's), for example.
He identified many inactive newsgroups, offered to moderate them, set up moderation services, and offered these services to other newsgroups
(Robomod). Some newsgroups prospered, some didn't, and when he left
Usenet, all of these newsgroups managed with his now inactive services
were left high and dry. Some transferred to other moderation services,
some went dormant. In the archives is some discussion over the years, including expression of concerns about the future, whether Brian was
either biting off more than he could chew or assuming too much power
over large numbers of newsgroups, and which mostly predicted the
eventual outcome.

For newsgroup viability and longevity, should we be making an effort to
find multiple, independent, moderation teams and services across
newsgroups, ensure constituencies to populate those newsgroups with participation, and develop contingency plans in advance should those
moderators need to be replaced? Is four moderated newsgroups enough for
one moderator (Ian) and should we try to recruit others?

--
Paul W. Schleck
pschleck@panix.com

--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: news.groups

On Fri, 13 Jun 2025 21:14 Paul W. Schleck wrote:

For newsgroup viability and longevity, should we be making an effort
to find multiple, independent, moderation teams and services across newsgroups, ensure constituencies to populate those newsgroups with participation, and develop contingency plans in advance should those moderators need to be replaced? Is four moderated newsgroups enough
for one moderator (Ian) and should we try to recruit others?

I have serious doubt that this will succeed. There are not that many
people (anymore) and setting up moderation infrastructure is a task
only for technical skilled people.

--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: news.groups

On Sat, 14 Jun 2025 06:18:31 EDT, Marco Moock <mm+usenet-es@dorfdsl.de> wrote: >On Fri, 13 Jun 2025 21:14 Paul W. Schleck wrote:

For newsgroup viability and longevity, should we be making an effort
to find multiple, independent, moderation teams and services across
newsgroups, ensure constituencies to populate those newsgroups with
participation, and develop contingency plans in advance should those
moderators need to be replaced? Is four moderated newsgroups enough
for one moderator (Ian) and should we try to recruit others?

I have serious doubt that this will succeed. There are not that many
people (anymore) and setting up moderation infrastructure is a task
only for technical skilled people.

free to try . . . but because lurkers outnumber contributors by a wide
margin, lurkers can already subscribe, browse, watch, search, etc., in
any (un)moderated newsgroup via any read-server(s) they might be using
for whatever purpose(s) they might be serving, much open to conjecture

even those newsgroups that are heavily inundated by troll farm clutter
are continually monitored, presumably by automated a.i. infrastructure (gathering, sniffing, snooping, spying, whatever they call big brother
is watching you, watching everyone in their vast militarized universe)
of corporate-government insiders, but also by little guys, individuals
on the outside, mostly lurking for their own reasons with some perhaps
posting on (rare) occasion? lurkers are definitely the silent majority

the primary attraction of posting to unmoderated usenet newsgroups has
always been about uncensored free expression, not dialogue, discussion
or anything resembling substantive interaction ... it's not groupthink
but each individual with his/her own isolation from anyone's plurality
and that's what makes plain text usenet the only forum for free speech
in lieu of social media or anything else that is moderated, controlled

--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: news.groups

In article <102ifv6$14a$1@reader1.panix.com>, pschleck@panix.com says...

OK, so a single moderator for each newsgroup, and the same moderator
for all of these newsgroups? I don't doubt Ivan's sincerity, good intentions, and likely technical skills, but I thought that this was the
kind of risky moderation model that we were trying to get away from
during past Moderator Vacancy Investigations.

[snip: demise of Brian Edmonds' Robomod service]

For newsgroup viability and longevity, should we be making an effort
to find multiple, independent, moderation teams and services across newsgroups, ensure constituencies to populate those newsgroups with participation, and develop contingency plans in advance should those moderators need to be replaced? Is four moderated newsgroups enough
for one moderator (Ian) and should we try to recruit others?

I would be greatly in favour of having multiple independent moderators
for each newsgroup, with further backup moderators and succession plans
in place.

Unfortunately, the number of people with the time, willingness, and
technical competence to moderate a newsgroup is currently minuscule. It
is usually a struggle to find even one volunteer.

In this case, the B8MB proposed rmgrouping 101 moderated newsgroups that
had long been disused for lack of an active moderator. We then excluded
groups from the proposal if there seemed to be even the slightest
interest in anyone moderating them or contributing to them. Only 12 of
the groups received any such interest. Of the volunteers for those 12,
so far only Ivan has a working moderation setup (we still hold out some
hope for a couple of the other groups). So, thus far, that's 4 working newsgroups and one moderator out of the whole process.

To get to the point of having multiple moderators per group, I think
Usenet needs to become considerably more popular and/or the barrier to
entry for new moderators needs to be much lower.

As a contribution towards the latter, I have ported PyModerator to
Python 3 (https://github.com/PyModerator/PyModerator). It's still rather elderly and clunky, with much work to be done, but is considerably
easier to set up than the other extant moderation software, STUMP. The development version now has support for secure POP and SMTP connections, making it more likely to work with modern email providers.

The only other way I can think of to lower the barrier to entry is some
sort of hosted moderation platform, but that would be a single point of failure just like Robomod was.

If anyone wants to step up and volunteer as a moderator, promote Usenet
in general, or do something to make moderation easier, we're always glad
to hear from them and will offer as much support we can.

Rayner

--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: news.groups

My objection to moderated configging discussion remain. Crosspost cut.

Rayner Lucas <usenet202101@magic-cookie.co.ukNOSPAMPLEASE> wrote: >pschleck@panix.com says...

OK, so a single moderator for each newsgroup, and the same moderator
for all of these newsgroups? I don't doubt Ivan's sincerity, good >>intentions, and likely technical skills, but I thought that this was the >>kind of risky moderation model that we were trying to get away from
during past Moderator Vacancy Investigations.

[snip: demise of Brian Edmonds' Robomod service]

For newsgroup viability and longevity, should we be making an effort
to find multiple, independent, moderation teams and services across >>newsgroups, ensure constituencies to populate those newsgroups with >>participation, and develop contingency plans in advance should those >>moderators need to be replaced? Is four moderated newsgroups enough
for one moderator (Ian) and should we try to recruit others?

I would be greatly in favour of having multiple independent moderators
for each newsgroup, with further backup moderators and succession plans
in place.

Unfortunately, the number of people with the time, willingness, and >technical competence to moderate a newsgroup is currently minuscule. It
is usually a struggle to find even one volunteer.

In this case, the B8MB proposed rmgrouping 101 moderated newsgroups that
had long been disused for lack of an active moderator. We then excluded >groups from the proposal if there seemed to be even the slightest
interest in anyone moderating them or contributing to them. Only 12 of
the groups received any such interest. Of the volunteers for those 12,
so far only Ivan has a working moderation setup (we still hold out some
hope for a couple of the other groups). So, thus far, that's 4 working >newsgroups and one moderator out of the whole process.

To get to the point of having multiple moderators per group, I think
Usenet needs to become considerably more popular and/or the barrier to
entry for new moderators needs to be much lower.

As a contribution towards the latter, I have ported PyModerator to
Python 3 (https://github.com/PyModerator/PyModerator). It's still rather >elderly and clunky, with much work to be done, but is considerably
easier to set up than the other extant moderation software, STUMP. The >development version now has support for secure POP and SMTP connections, >making it more likely to work with modern email providers.

The only other way I can think of to lower the barrier to entry is some
sort of hosted moderation platform, but that would be a single point of >failure just like Robomod was.

If anyone wants to step up and volunteer as a moderator, promote Usenet
in general, or do something to make moderation easier, we're always glad
to hear from them and will offer as much support we can.

Moderated Usenet newsgroups need multiple moderators and a moderator
succession plan. Moderated newsgroups without this have failed.

The hierarchy administrators know this, yet continue to accept
subsequent moderators who are not proposing to take over a group with
multiple moderators and a succession plan.

Doctor! It hurts when I do this!
Stop doing it.

I'm personally in the same boat. Has someone written a parser that I
could modify to strip Mail headers, leaving the proto article otherwise
intact to be injected into Usenet?

I'm a clueless git with respect programming languages, but I can follow patterns if I discover other headers added by Mail servers that require stripping.

My succession plan is going to be begging more of the group's regulars
to step up. I volunteered but I'm kind of stuck.
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: news.groups

In news.groups.proposals Rayner Lucas <usenet202101@magic-cookie.co.uknospamplease> wrote:

As a contribution towards the latter, I have ported PyModerator to
Python 3 (https://github.com/PyModerator/PyModerator). It's still rather elderly and clunky, with much work to be done, but is considerably
easier to set up than the other extant moderation software, STUMP. The development version now has support for secure POP and SMTP connections, making it more likely to work with modern email providers.

The only other way I can think of to lower the barrier to entry is some
sort of hosted moderation platform, but that would be a single point of failure just like Robomod was.

If I understand correctly, the moderation software just needs to
read mail from the newsgroup's submission email inbox and post
approved messages to a willing NNTP server. In that case you could
easily have instances of the same moderation platform running in
different places, similar to front-end websites like Invidious. If
one dies, moderators could make an account on another identical
instance and keep going. If it's open-source and well written in a
long-term stable language (I wouldn't choose Python on that basis)
then it shouldn't need much maintenance even if the original author
departs.

As, I gather, a closed-source service, Robomod effectively opted in
to being a single point of failure, but I think that approach could
be done much more flexibly.

The only issue, and I'm not sure if it's an issue, might be the
NNTP servers willing to accept postings from these distributed
neo-Robomod instances. I got the impression from past discussion
that some (most?) NNTP servers don't accept moderators posting
approved articles through them, or require personal requests to
allow it. If all the instances are pointing to the same willing
NNTP server then it becomes another single point of failure.
Ideally they'd all be pointing to different NNTP servers (_ideally_
many instances would be run by the same people who run those NNTP
servers).
--
__ __
#_ < |\| |< _#

--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: news.groups

On 14.06.2025 15:59 Uhr Adam H. Kerman wrote:

Moderated Usenet newsgroups need multiple moderators and a moderator succession plan. Moderated newsgroups without this have failed.

The hierarchy administrators know this, yet continue to accept
subsequent moderators who are not proposing to take over a group with multiple moderators and a succession plan.

We removed a lot of unusable moderated groups and will continue with
that process.

Then problem is that there are not enough people that volunteer as
moderators.
--
kind regards
Marco

Send spam to 1749909573muell@stinkedores.dorfdsl.de

--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: news.groups

On 15.06.2025 00:20 Uhr Computer Nerd Kev wrote:

In news.groups.proposals Rayner Lucas <usenet202101@magic-cookie.co.uknospamplease> wrote:

As a contribution towards the latter, I have ported PyModerator to
Python 3 (https://github.com/PyModerator/PyModerator). It's still
rather elderly and clunky, with much work to be done, but is
considerably easier to set up than the other extant moderation
software, STUMP. The development version now has support for secure
POP and SMTP connections, making it more likely to work with modern
email providers.

The only other way I can think of to lower the barrier to entry is
some sort of hosted moderation platform, but that would be a single
point of failure just like Robomod was.

If I understand correctly, the moderation software just needs to
read mail from the newsgroup's submission email inbox and post
approved messages to a willing NNTP server.

Exactly.
But that still needs somebody who approved that posts.
webstump exists. :-)

In that case you could easily have instances of the same moderation
platform running in different places, similar to front-end websites
like Invidious. If one dies, moderators could make an account on
another identical instance and keep going. If it's open-source and
well written in a long-term stable language (I wouldn't choose Python
on that basis) then it shouldn't need much maintenance even if the
original author departs.

Which still has the issue that there needs to be a process for taking
over. If anybody can do that at any time, there is no real moderation.

The only issue, and I'm not sure if it's an issue, might be the
NNTP servers willing to accept postings from these distributed
neo-Robomod instances. I got the impression from past discussion
that some (most?) NNTP servers don't accept moderators posting
approved articles through them, or require personal requests to
allow it. If all the instances are pointing to the same willing
NNTP server then it becomes another single point of failure.

This is needed to keep the concept of moderated groups. Otherwise
anybody could post messages with an Approved: header.
--
kind regards
Marco

Send spam to 1749939628muell@stinkedores.dorfdsl.de

--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: news.groups

Hi Marco,

The only issue, and I'm not sure if it's an issue, might be the
NNTP servers willing to accept postings from these distributed
neo-Robomod instances. I got the impression from past discussion
that some (most?) NNTP servers don't accept moderators posting
approved articles through them, or require personal requests to
allow it.

This is needed to keep the concept of moderated groups. Otherwise
anybody could post messages with an Approved: header.

Indeed. Also, one should also take into consideration anti-spam/abuse mitigation. Ideally, setting up pgpmoose or like.
https://wiki.killfile.org/projects/usenet/pgpmoose/

Tim mentions that he can watch newsgroups and send the related NoCeM
messages to cancel unwanted articles posted with an Approved header
field in moderated newsgroups, but I don't know how many such newsgroups
are watched and whether his robot still work.
I think this is a useful service to have in Usenet moderation. And I
agree there should be more than one watching robot. Adding new NoCeM
keys can take ages as they need being manually added by news
administrators, so the best is to have current NoCeM senders doing that :)
--
Julien |eLIE

-2-aYou know what I did before I married? Anything I wanted to.-a-+

--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: news.groups

Marco Moock <mm@dorfdsl.de> wrote:

14.06.2025 15:59 Uhr Adam H. Kerman wrote:

Moderated Usenet newsgroups need multiple moderators and a moderator >>succession plan. Moderated newsgroups without this have failed.

The hierarchy administrators know this, yet continue to accept
subsequent moderators who are not proposing to take over a group with >>multiple moderators and a succession plan.

We removed a lot of unusable moderated groups and will continue with
that process.

This is not useful in any way.

Then problem is that there are not enough people that volunteer as >moderators.

Wrong. The problem is the hierarchy administrators being unwilling to
act in a way that would make success more likely. The plan, instead, s
to keep making the very same mistakes over and over again, deluding
themselves that there will be a different result.

Do not replace moderators if there is no moderation team and no
succession plan. It's that simple. A single replacement moderator with
no succession plan sets up for failure.

Stop. Doing. That.
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: news.groups

In article <102k694$9ev8$1@dont-email.me>, ahk@chinet.com says...

Moderated Usenet newsgroups need multiple moderators and a moderator succession plan. Moderated newsgroups without this have failed.

The hierarchy administrators know this, yet continue to accept
subsequent moderators who are not proposing to take over a group with multiple moderators and a succession plan.

Doctor! It hurts when I do this!
Stop doing it.

As one of those hierarchy administrators, my attitude has been:

- I would oppose the creation of a new moderated group, unless multiple
moderators were in place from the start.
- For moderated groups that already exist, a single moderator is
far from ideal, but infinitely better than a completely defunct group.
I strongly recommend that any such moderator should try the best they
can to recruit additional moderators.
- Moderated groups for which no moderator can be found should be
rmgrouped or have their moderation flag unset (we're in the process of
doing this for a bunch of long-disused moderated groups; I don't
particularly like removing groups, but a group that just generates
bounce messages is IMHO worse than useless).

I'd say that rejecting any moderation proposal for an existing group
that doesn't involve multiple moderators and/or a succession plan is
also a perfectly reasonable position. Given the general lack of
volunteers, though, this would realistically mean that more groups would
need to be rmgrouped, converted to unmoderated, or left disused.

I'm personally in the same boat. Has someone written a parser that I
could modify to strip Mail headers, leaving the proto article
otherwise intact to be injected into Usenet?

I'm a clueless git with respect programming languages, but I can
follow patterns if I discover other headers added by Mail servers that require stripping.

If you're on some sort of Unix system, you might actually be able to do
most of the work using just the 'formail' mail-formatting utility: this
has options to strip/append/rename headers, and/or keep only the headers
you specify.

PyModerator takes the approach of creating a proto-article using only
the following headers from the original email message:

Subject
From
Reply-to
Organization
References
Newsgroups
Followup-to

It uses its own simplistic parser to create a dictionary of headers (ParseMessageLines() in serverFiles.py), but if I were writing it from
scratch I'd use email.parser from the standard library.

STUMP, meanwhile, strips some headers and renames others, using a
combination of formail and Perl regular expressions (see
bin/submission.pl and bin/processApproved in the STUMP source tree).
Again, this probably isn't the best way; using a module such as
Email::Simple or Email::MIME and keeping only a short list of allowed
headers might be more sensible.

My succession plan is going to be begging more of the group's regulars
to step up. I volunteered but I'm kind of stuck.

Respect to you for stepping up. We've also found that getting more
volunteers is a difficult task.

Rayner
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: news.groups

In article <684e1bb7@news.ausics.net>, not@telling.you.invalid says...

In news.groups.proposals Rayner Lucas <usenet202101@magic-cookie.co.uknospamplease> wrote:

As a contribution towards the latter, I have ported PyModerator to
Python 3 (https://github.com/PyModerator/PyModerator). It's still
rather elderly and clunky, with much work to be done, but is
considerably easier to set up than the other extant moderation
software, STUMP. The development version now has support for secure
POP and SMTP connections, making it more likely to work with modern
email providers.

The only other way I can think of to lower the barrier to entry is
some sort of hosted moderation platform, but that would be a single
point of failure just like Robomod was.

If I understand correctly, the moderation software just needs to
read mail from the newsgroup's submission email inbox and post
approved messages to a willing NNTP server. In that case you could
easily have instances of the same moderation platform running in
different places, similar to front-end websites like Invidious. If
one dies, moderators could make an account on another identical
instance and keep going. If it's open-source and well written in a
long-term stable language (I wouldn't choose Python on that basis)
then it shouldn't need much maintenance even if the original author
departs.

Ah yes, Python. "Let's remove nntplib from the standard library, nobody
uses that any more". *sigh*

I like the idea of an open-source moderation platform. We have
STUMP/WebSTUMP, but it's a pain to set up.

We'd still need volunteers to run instances of the platform, but maybe
that way we'd only need a handful of technically competent people to
provide moderation services to people who are willing to do moderation
work but don't have the skills to set up their own platform.

As, I gather, a closed-source service, Robomod effectively opted in
to being a single point of failure, but I think that approach could
be done much more flexibly.

The only issue, and I'm not sure if it's an issue, might be the
NNTP servers willing to accept postings from these distributed
neo-Robomod instances. I got the impression from past discussion
that some (most?) NNTP servers don't accept moderators posting
approved articles through them, or require personal requests to
allow it. If all the instances are pointing to the same willing
NNTP server then it becomes another single point of failure.
Ideally they'd all be pointing to different NNTP servers (_ideally_
many instances would be run by the same people who run those NNTP
servers).

Panix and Eternal September are willing to allow posting of approved
articles, if the user can show they have a legit reason. If anyone knows
of other NNTP providers that will grant this permission, please let us
know, it's good to have more options we can recommend to potential
moderators.

Rayner

--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: news.groups

On 15.06.2025 15:10 Uhr Adam H. Kerman wrote:

Marco Moock <mm@dorfdsl.de> wrote:

14.06.2025 15:59 Uhr Adam H. Kerman wrote:

Moderated Usenet newsgroups need multiple moderators and a moderator >>succession plan. Moderated newsgroups without this have failed.

The hierarchy administrators know this, yet continue to accept
subsequent moderators who are not proposing to take over a group
with multiple moderators and a succession plan.

We removed a lot of unusable moderated groups and will continue with
that process.

This is not useful in any way.

There is simply nothing that can satisfy you. You don't like moderated
groups, you don't like removing them.
--
kind regards
Marco

Send spam to 1749993053muell@stinkedores.dorfdsl.de

--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: news.groups

Rayner Lucas <usenet202101@magic-cookie.co.ukNOSPAMPLEASE> wrote: >ahk@chinet.com says...

. . .

I'm personally in the same boat. Has someone written a parser that I
could modify to strip Mail headers, leaving the proto article
otherwise intact to be injected into Usenet?

I'm a clueless git with respect programming languages, but I can
follow patterns if I discover other headers added by Mail servers that >>require stripping.

If you're on some sort of Unix system, you might actually be able to do
most of the work using just the 'formail' mail-formatting utility: this
has options to strip/append/rename headers, and/or keep only the headers
you specify.

Ah. That I might be able to learn. Thank you.

PyModerator takes the approach of creating a proto-article using only
the following headers from the original email message:

Does it retain or strip X- headers?

Subject
From
Reply-to
Organization
References
Newsgroups
Followup-to

It uses its own simplistic parser to create a dictionary of headers >(ParseMessageLines() in serverFiles.py), but if I were writing it from >scratch I'd use email.parser from the standard library.

Thanks

STUMP, meanwhile, strips some headers and renames others, using a >combination of formail and Perl regular expressions (see
bin/submission.pl and bin/processApproved in the STUMP source tree).
Again, this probably isn't the best way; using a module such as >Email::Simple or Email::MIME and keeping only a short list of allowed >headers might be more sensible.

STUMP and WebSTUMP are overkill for the low-volume newsgroup.

My succession plan is going to be begging more of the group's regulars
to step up. I volunteered but I'm kind of stuck.

Respect to you for stepping up. We've also found that getting more >volunteers is a difficult task.

I haven't solved the problem yet, and let me be the first to object to
my own moderator succession plan as wishful thinking on my part.
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: news.groups

Marco Moock <mm@dorfdsl.de> wrote:

15.06.2025 15:10 Uhr Adam H. Kerman wrote:

Marco Moock <mm@dorfdsl.de> wrote:

14.06.2025 15:59 Uhr Adam H. Kerman wrote:

Moderated Usenet newsgroups need multiple moderators and a moderator >>>>succession plan. Moderated newsgroups without this have failed.

The hierarchy administrators know this, yet continue to accept >>>>subsequent moderators who are not proposing to take over a group
with multiple moderators and a succession plan.

We removed a lot of unusable moderated groups and will continue with
that process.

This is not useful in any way.

There is simply nothing that can satisfy you. You don't like moderated >groups, you don't like removing them.

I do not seek satisfaction. I do not object to moderated newsgroups.
Users may post where they like.

This has always been your baby. One of the hierarchy administrators
doesn't like how or where people post and decides that imposing order --
as he sees it -- upon Usenet will improve discussion. Hence we got
tale's Great Miscification and skirv's "I just know it!" newgroups,
intended to force posters in specific alt.* groups to post to
replacement groups in the Big 8 that not one of them wanted. skirv got
yelled at severely for that and wound down his time on Usenet shortly thereafter. Every single one of those groups failed.

Russ did something useful. He recognized the INET groups as Big 8 groups
so that a Big 8 checkgroups could finally be issued, something tale
simply wouldn't do.

And here you come along, having made the argument much of the time
you've been on Usenet, that a lengthy checkgroups filled with unused and
little used groups must be shortened for the good of Usenet.

Well, you've shortened it. Surely you must have evidence that you're
right and I'm wrong that anybody found it useful and began posting to
Usenet.

I know you intend to go after the low-traffic unmoderated groups next.
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: news.groups

On 6/15/2025 2:12 PM, Marco Moock wrote:

On 15.06.2025 15:10 Uhr Adam H. Kerman wrote:

Marco Moock <mm@dorfdsl.de> wrote:

14.06.2025 15:59 Uhr Adam H. Kerman wrote:

Moderated Usenet newsgroups need multiple moderators and a moderator
succession plan. Moderated newsgroups without this have failed.

The hierarchy administrators know this, yet continue to accept
subsequent moderators who are not proposing to take over a group
with multiple moderators and a succession plan.

We removed a lot of unusable moderated groups and will continue with
that process.

This is not useful in any way.

There is simply nothing that can satisfy you. You don't like moderated groups, you don't like removing them.

I suggest if you're going to continue in being part of the decision
makers, you get a little thicker skin. There are a million different
ways you could have answered AHK, but your newby shows through with your useless followup.
--
Darwinism Is Junk Science!!
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: news.groups

On 15.06.2025 17:16 Uhr sticks wrote:

I suggest if you're going to continue in being part of the decision
makers, you get a little thicker skin.

I've had many discussions with him and he has its own opinions, which
is fine. Although, I don't agree with them and I don't see a reason to
discuss with him further, as he is just against anything that is being
done or suggested. For me it looks like he wants that everything stays
as it is, but still complains about the current state.

Removal of unused or unusable groups has been done many times and only
a few people complained.

Some years ago we had the same discussion in de.*.
--
kind regards
Marco

Send spam to 1750000601muell@stinkedores.dorfdsl.de

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From Newsgroup: news.groups

Marco Moock <mm@dorfdsl.de> wrote:

15.06.2025 17:16 Uhr sticks wrote:

I suggest if you're going to continue in being part of the decision >>makers, you get a little thicker skin.

I've had many discussions with him and he has its own opinions, which
is fine. Although, I don't agree with them and I don't see a reason to >discuss with him further, as he is just against anything that is being
done or suggested. For me it looks like he wants that everything stays
as it is, but still complains about the current state.

That's a straw man.

Removal of unused or unusable groups has been done many times and only
a few people complained.

That's not true. Various News administrators have told you not to do it.
While they aren't running archive sites, they are keeping articles due
to long retention policies. Processing your checkgroups would interfere
with article retention, obviously.

You are hearing only what you want to hear and telling us that the
lurkers support you in email.

Some years ago we had the same discussion in de.*.

Clearly, then, you ignored objections from German speakers who were not
me whilst claiming there were no objections to ignore, My German isn't conversational, so none of those objections you ignored came from me.

It's curious that you don't provide evidence that this action saved the
de.* hierarchy.
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From Newsgroup: news.groups

On 16.06.2025 15:37 Uhr Adam H. Kerman wrote:

Marco Moock <mm@dorfdsl.de> wrote:

15.06.2025 17:16 Uhr sticks wrote:

I suggest if you're going to continue in being part of the decision >>makers, you get a little thicker skin.

I've had many discussions with him and he has its own opinions, which
is fine. Although, I don't agree with them and I don't see a reason
to discuss with him further, as he is just against anything that is
being done or suggested. For me it looks like he wants that
everything stays as it is, but still complains about the current
state.

That's a straw man.

Please explain that, English is not my first language.

Removal of unused or unusable groups has been done many times and
only a few people complained.

That's not true. Various News administrators have told you not to do
it. While they aren't running archive sites, they are keeping
articles due to long retention policies.

Some didn't like it, but at the end most processed the messages.

Processing your checkgroups would interfere with article retention, obviously.

That's why every operator can configure that.

You are hearing only what you want to hear and telling us that the
lurkers support you in email.

If that was right, I wouldn't discuss with you here. I heard arguments
against deleting, but I don't agree with them.

Some years ago we had the same discussion in de.*.

Clearly, then, you ignored objections from German speakers who were
not me whilst claiming there were no objections to ignore, My German
isn't conversational, so none of those objections you ignored came
from me.

German hierarchy has a voting system. In the cases I followed, one or
two people voted against deletion.

For example: https://de.admin.news.announce.narkive.com/gmbjeTiH/1-rfd-de-rec-tv-lindenstrasse-loeschung

It's curious that you don't provide evidence that this action saved
the de.* hierarchy.

If less people want to engage in discussions, it won't go back to the
state 30 years ago.
Although, occasionally new people join and having a working system
where discussion occurs is much better that hundreds of non-working
moderated groups.
--
kind regards
Marco

Send spam to 1750081061muell@stinkedores.dorfdsl.de

--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: news.groups

Marco Moock <mm@dorfdsl.de> wrote:

16.06.2025 15:37 Uhr Adam H. Kerman wrote:

Marco Moock <mm@dorfdsl.de> wrote:

15.06.2025 17:16 Uhr sticks wrote:

I suggest if you're going to continue in being part of the decision >>>>makers, you get a little thicker skin.

I've had many discussions with him and he has its own opinions, which
is fine. Although, I don't agree with them and I don't see a reason
to discuss with him further, as he is just against anything that is
being done or suggested. For me it looks like he wants that
everything stays as it is, but still complains about the current
state.

That's a straw man.

Please explain that, English is not my first language.

It's a disallowed technique in debate. One opponent lacks an argument or counterargument. He then assigns a position to the other opponent -- the assigned position is the straw man -- then knocks it down.

You lose points for doing that.

. . .

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From Newsgroup: news.groups

Adam H. Kerman wrote:

Do not replace moderators if there is no moderation team and no
succession plan. It's that simple.

And that wrong.

A moderated group with a single moderator that may or may not disappear
sooner or later is obviously a better solution than a moderated newsgroup without a moderator.

Sure, a moderation team and a succession plan would be even better - as
soon as they materialize.

A single replacement moderator with no succession plan sets up for
failure.

We all will fail at some point. We all will die one day. Nothing is
forever. Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!

But until that point, a group couldn't be used is usable again.

That's progress. Not perfect, but what is?

-thh
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: news.groups

Marco Moock schrieb:

On 16.06.2025 15:37 Uhr Adam H. Kerman wrote:

That's a straw man.

Please explain that, English is not my first language.

<https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strohmann-Argument>

-thh
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: news.groups

In article <102naos$1435m$1@dont-email.me>, ahk@chinet.com says...

Rayner Lucas <usenet202101@magic-cookie.co.ukNOSPAMPLEASE> wrote:

If you're on some sort of Unix system, you might actually be able to do >most of the work using just the 'formail' mail-formatting utility: this >has options to strip/append/rename headers, and/or keep only the headers >you specify.

Ah. That I might be able to learn. Thank you.

You're welcome; I hope it turns out to be useful.

PyModerator takes the approach of creating a proto-article using only
the following headers from the original email message:

Does it retain or strip X- headers?

It strips them. I'm not sure whether this is the Right Thing; it seems
like there'd be some value and no particular harm in passing X- headers through unchanged, but keeping only a strict list of allowed headers
makes things simpler with regard to avoiding bugs and ensuring articles
are correctly-formed.

I haven't solved the problem yet, and let me be the first to object to
my own moderator succession plan as wishful thinking on my part.

Good to be thinking about it, wishfully or not, and I hope you can
persuade others to join you. Best of luck.

Rayner
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From Newsgroup: news.groups

On 2025-06-15, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
In news.groups.proposals Rayner Lucas wrote:

I couldn't help but feel that the recent discussion at large
comes as somewhat discouraging towards prospective moderators.
And hence counter-productive, given that perhaps our best chance
at having moderator /teams/ at this point is to have more than
one person independently volunteer at the same time.

As well, criticizing someone's job without a particular tangible
goal in mind seems pointless at best. A possible such goal might
be, say, "5% increase of quality traffic across Big-8 groups in a
year." It is my personal opinion that the recent actions of the
Board increased the chances of that happening. It is also my
personal opinion that the chances are still infinitesimal due to
circumstances outside of the Board's control (such as the fairly
good so far performance of competing technologies, ActivityPub
and Matrix among them), rendering the point largely moot.

The only other way I can think of to lower the barrier to entry is
some sort of hosted moderation platform, but that would be a single
point of failure just like Robomod was.

If I understand correctly, the moderation software just needs to
read mail from the newsgroup's submission email inbox and post
approved messages to a willing NNTP server. In that case you could
easily have instances of the same moderation platform running in
different places, similar to front-end websites like Invidious.

The moderator is expected to check their mailbox and either
do that, or respond with rejection notices (or just discard
outright abuse); and what software they use, and how, to do
that, is entirely up to them. For instance, I'm going to rely
on a handful of Vim macros for the time being.

That's somewhat of a problem, as a moderation team will need
to, among other things, agree on what software to use, and the
preferences here might be highly subjective. Say, I don't mind
using a browser, Lynx mainly, to read the Web, yet using one to
do meaningful work is something I'd rather not do outside of a
paid-for job.

That said, at the core, a team needs a shared address or two
(one for submissions and another for reaching the team), /and/
one or more newsservers whose operators allow the members to
post approved articles.

It's very well possible for individual members to pick their
own software for turning an incoming email into an approved
article (or rejection notice.) About the only issue is
coordination; say, if one member rejects a submission, another
should at least be warned if they try to then approve it.
(If an article is approved more than once, it will be rejected
by the server due to a duplicate Message-Id:.)

One way to coordinate would be to use a shared incoming
mailbox: before dealing with a submission, you move it into
your own mailbox; and once you've dealt with it, you move it
into "approved" or "rejected." But there're just so many
ways of doing that that trying to market some sort of "single
best solution" is likely to fail.

A natural place to put the requisite functionality would be
a patch or an extension for a mail + news user agent: Alpine,
Gnus, Neomutt, Slrn, whatever. Some of them (Gnus, Slrn) are
readily extensible; others, I presume, will require patches.

Moderation being accessible from one's own preferred user agent
would likely increase the likelihood of one volunteering, and
yet maintaining all that code will be quite an effort. Not that
there has to be a single person doing it; anyone interested could
try implementing this for the user agent of their choice.

A particular impediment to that is the lack of standardization
when it comes to how an email submission is ought to be
transformed into an approved Usenet article (say, that the
incoming message Subject: is ought to be preserved, while
Control:, if any, must be rejected.) Researching existing
moderation software first may be necessary.

[...]

The only issue, and I'm not sure if it's an issue, might be the NNTP
servers willing to accept postings from these distributed neo-Robomod instances. I got the impression from past discussion that some
(most?) NNTP servers don't accept moderators posting approved
articles through them, or require personal requests to allow it.

There's indeed no easy way for the server to verify that the
approval is genuine, so it makes every sense for server operators
to only allow approvals to be posted from pre-verified accounts.

But perhaps the problem needs to be approached from the reverse?
Could we perhaps make a moderation platform that the newsmasters
wouldn't mind deploying as part of their news setup, given that
they already have a willing newsserver at hand, and presumably
also working email?

That said, Invidious can get away with working only with "big"
browsers, but I'm not so sure that the majority of Usenet users
will be eager to adopt some single solution for moderation when
they use such a diversity of newsreaders already.

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