• RFD: Remove comp.unix.bsd.386bsd.misc and comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc

    From Usenet Big-8 Management Board@board@big-8.org to news.announce.newgroups,news.groups.proposals,comp.unix.misc,comp.unix.bsd.386bsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc on Fri Oct 10 10:22:36 2025
    From Newsgroup: news.groups.proposals

    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.


    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)
    --
    Usenet Big-8 Management Board
    https://www.big-8.org/
    board@big-8.org

    --- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From not@not@telling.you.invalid (Computer Nerd Kev) to news.groups.proposals on Fri Oct 10 19:22:29 2025
    From Newsgroup: news.groups.proposals

    In news.groups.proposals Usenet Big-8 Management Board <board@big-8.org> wrote:
    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.

    Can they though? If someone takes an interest in running these OSs
    and picks a group focused on current BSD to discuss them in, aren't
    they likely to effectively be told exactly that: "The operating
    system isn't developed anymore, go away"? The most active computer
    groups tend to be frequented by people who are hostile to users of
    unmaintained software (I think Marco Mook has fit this description
    himself in the past). Having these separate places to discuss old
    platforms is an asset of Usenet to allow it to cater for people
    with different interests without unnecessary conflict.
    --
    __ __
    #_ < |\| |< _#

    --- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From Marco Moock@mm@dorfdsl.de to news.groups.proposals on Sat Oct 11 14:40:04 2025
    From Newsgroup: news.groups.proposals

    On 10.10.2025 19:22 Uhr Computer Nerd Kev wrote:

    In news.groups.proposals Usenet Big-8 Management Board
    <board@big-8.org> wrote:
    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.

    Can they though? If someone takes an interest in running these OSs
    and picks a group focused on current BSD to discuss them in, aren't
    they likely to effectively be told exactly that: "The operating
    system isn't developed anymore, go away"?

    I do tell people if there OS is not supported anymore and suggest them
    to install a current one due to various reasons. Although, I do not
    tell them to go away. There are various folklore groups that have
    discussions about ancient operating systems.

    The most active computer groups tend to be frequented by people who
    are hostile to users of unmaintained software (I think Marco Mook has
    fit this description himself in the past). Having these separate
    places to discuss old platforms is an asset of Usenet to allow it to
    cater for people with different interests without unnecessary
    conflict.

    I would agree with that if there were people who want to do that - but
    the groups listed were inactive for a very long time.
    --
    kind regards
    Marco

    Send spam to 1760116949muell@stinkedores.dorfdsl.de

    --- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From noel@deletethis@invalid.lan to news.groups.proposals on Sun Oct 12 11:29:46 2025
    From Newsgroup: news.groups.proposals

    On Fri, 10 Oct 2025 19:22:29 -0400, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:

    In news.groups.proposals Usenet Big-8 Management Board <board@big-8.org> wrote:
    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.

    Can they though? If someone takes an interest in running these OSs and
    picks a group focused on current BSD to discuss them in, aren't they
    likely to effectively be told exactly that: "The operating system isn't developed anymore, go away"? The most active computer groups tend to be frequented by people who are hostile to users of unmaintained software
    (I think Marco Mook has fit this description himself in the past).
    Having these separate places to discuss old platforms is an asset of
    Usenet to allow it to cater for people with different interests without unnecessary conflict.


    I don't understand why this at all for UNmoderated groups now, did marco
    run out of moderated groups to pick on, he's clearly more at home on
    mailing lists than usenet, its not all just about currency, its about
    history as well, but many have pointed this out and were ignored, becasue
    what marco wants marco thinks he can get, total destruction of usenet,
    bad enough he went on his little rampage with unmod'd groups but now
    this... just further justification for changing all rmgroup message
    entries in control to discard.

    --- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From not@not@telling.you.invalid (Computer Nerd Kev) to news.groups.proposals on Sun Oct 12 11:30:19 2025
    From Newsgroup: news.groups.proposals

    Marco Moock <mm@dorfdsl.de> wrote:
    On 10.10.2025 19:22 Uhr Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
    Having these separate places to discuss old platforms is an
    asset of Usenet to allow it to cater for people with different
    interests without unnecessary conflict.

    I would agree with that if there were people who want to do that - but
    the groups listed were inactive for a very long time.

    I subscribe to groups in comp.* and elsewhere that have similar or
    even less recent discussion. Lately I've also been subscribing to
    dead groups on topics I'm less experienced in just to work back
    through the archive of old posts on the news server I use.

    Sometimes I post or cross-post to such groups. Sometimes I prefer
    that to posting in a more active group covering a broader topic
    where the regulars are very unlikely to be interested in my
    sub-topic, or not even agree with me that it is remotely on-topic.
    It works for me and I think it's harmless to keep these groups.

    Indeed I think trying to hurd people towards the remaining active
    groups will only increase the already troublesome amount of OT
    discussion in many of those active groups, which can drive regulars
    away from those groups too.
    --
    __ __
    #_ < |\| |< _#

    --- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From Marco Moock@mm@dorfdsl.de to news.groups.proposals on Sun Oct 12 11:37:19 2025
    From Newsgroup: news.groups.proposals

    On 12.10.2025 11:29 Uhr noel wrote:

    I don't understand why this at all for UNmoderated groups now, did
    marco run out of moderated groups to pick on, he's clearly more at
    home on mailing lists than usenet, its not all just about currency,
    its about history as well, but many have pointed this out and were
    ignored, becasue what marco wants marco thinks he can get, total
    destruction of usenet, bad enough he went on his little rampage with
    unmod'd groups but now this... just further justification for
    changing all rmgroup message entries in control to discard.

    Please have a look at https://www.big-8.org/wiki/Nan:2011-04-24-result-great-downsizing

    The process of removing unused groups is rather old.

    PS: From the replies we got so for no one showed interesting in posting
    to the groups that are proposed to delete.
    --
    kind regards
    Marco

    Send spam to 1760261386muell@stinkedores.dorfdsl.de

    --- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From noel@deletethis@invalid.lan to news.groups.proposals on Mon Oct 13 15:59:09 2025
    From Newsgroup: news.groups.proposals

    On Sun, 12 Oct 2025 11:37:19 -0400, Marco Moock wrote:

    On 12.10.2025 11:29 Uhr noel wrote:

    I don't understand why this at all for UNmoderated groups now, did
    marco run out of moderated groups to pick on, he's clearly more at home
    on mailing lists than usenet, its not all just about currency, its
    about history as well, but many have pointed this out and were ignored,
    becasue what marco wants marco thinks he can get, total destruction of
    usenet, bad enough he went on his little rampage with unmod'd groups
    but now this... just further justification for changing all rmgroup
    message entries in control to discard.

    Please have a look at https://www.big-8.org/wiki/Nan:2011-04-24-result-great-downsizing

    The process of removing unused groups is rather old.

    and a lot of these things were ative back then, this group has on-topic
    post from 2015 here, and who are you to decide whats on topic or not.
    usenet is dying, and your expiditing its entry to the grave, you dont see
    list admins or forum operators culling off threads because heaven forbid
    no one wants to contribute to a 2015 or 2010 thread since the answer to
    their question or curiosity is already answered.


    PS: From the replies we got so for no one showed interesting in posting
    to the groups that are proposed to delete.

    of course not, that does not excuse your desire to remove history, and
    usenet itself, but we all know you have made this decision, and no
    proposal notices anywhere will change your mind.

    It is extremely dangerous to have 8 hierachies fate decided by 3 or 4
    people, and lets face it most others on this board that keeps voting
    itself back in, see something that needs a voting on and will just hit
    yeah anyway without actually giving a damn... been there, done that. So
    this entire conversation is pointless, its also why I and from my
    testing, serveral other free access text groups wont honour rmgroups.

    --- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From yeti@yeti@tilde.institute to news.groups.proposals on Tue Oct 14 01:31:54 2025
    From Newsgroup: news.groups.proposals

    noel <deletethis@invalid.lan> wrote:

    (((...))), its also why I and from my testing, serveral other free
    access text groups wont honour rmgroups.

    \o/ Thanks!

    --- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From =?UTF-8?Q?Julien_=C3=89LIE?=@iulius@nom-de-mon-site.com.invalid to news.groups.proposals on Tue Oct 14 16:59:05 2025
    From Newsgroup: news.groups.proposals

    Hi Noel,

    marco thinks he can get total destruction of usenet

    I don't believe at all that's his goal. A bit of cleaning in the very
    long list of newsgroups is helpful to better see still active and
    relevant newsgroups nowadays.


    your desire to remove history
    [...]
    several other free access text groups wont honour rmgroups

    Sending rmgroup articles is not a synonym of removing history.
    It is normal and expected that news servers whose aim is to archive
    articles and therefore keep history, do not honour rmgroup requests.
    Not all news servers retain articles for a life time. If a server keeps articles during let's say 1 year, it is not intended to be used for
    historical purpose and it can have a cleaner list of still active
    newsgroups for its readers.
    --
    Julien |eLIE

    -2-aFarpaitement-a!-a-+ (Ob|-lix)

    --- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From Marco Moock@mm@dorfdsl.de to news.groups.proposals on Wed Oct 15 08:51:31 2025
    From Newsgroup: news.groups.proposals

    On 14.10.2025 16:59 Uhr Julien +LIE wrote:
    marco thinks he can get total destruction of usenet

    I don't believe at all that's his goal. A bit of cleaning in the very
    long list of newsgroups is helpful to better see still active and
    relevant newsgroups nowadays.
    Exactly that is the case. Occasionally some new users join and to make
    them subscribe to a group, there need to be at least some articles per
    year in a group. Otherwise the most likely don't subscribe to that.
    Long-time readers may also unsubscribe because of no traffic for years.
    your desire to remove history
    [...]
    several other free access text groups wont honour rmgroups

    Sending rmgroup articles is not a synonym of removing history.
    History of groups is available at isc and the board of various
    hierarchies also provide it.
    Old articles are being archived. Not every NNTP server is an archive and
    most NNTP servers don't have retention longer than some years, so the
    groups proposed for deletion do not contain one article.
    --
    kind regards Marco
    Send spam to 1760453945muell@stinkedores.dorfdsl.de
    --- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From noel@deletethis@invalid.lan to news.groups.proposals on Wed Oct 15 09:07:42 2025
    From Newsgroup: news.groups.proposals

    On Tue, 14 Oct 2025 16:59:05 -0400, Julien |eLIE wrote:

    Hi Noel,

    marco thinks he can get total destruction of usenet

    I don't believe at all that's his goal. A bit of cleaning in the very
    long list of newsgroups is helpful to better see still active and
    relevant newsgroups nowadays.


    It wont ffect hat at all IMHO, people search for and read/sub to those
    groups, they wont care if there is 20K unused groups with history.
    Thankfully these people who want to weild there new found power, can only destroy eight hierachies.


    your desire to remove history
    [...]
    several other free access text groups wont honour rmgroups

    Sending rmgroup articles is not a synonym of removing history.
    It is normal and expected that news servers whose aim is to archive
    articles and therefore keep history, do not honour rmgroup requests. Not
    all news servers retain articles for a life time. If a server keeps
    articles during let's say 1 year, it is not intended to be used for historical purpose and it can have a cleaner list of still active
    newsgroups for its readers.

    Of course there are some servers who have short retention and there
    purpose is to just offer whats "current" some of these are useless for
    anyone searching because they have sub 90 days, I've been running usenet servers since early 90's, back then we had 12 months retention - because
    we also carried binaries and disks were expensive, now days large
    capacity SAS disks are cheap.

    The average person will never know what groups are still active or not.

    --- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From ReK2 Hispagatos@rek2@usenet_reborn.tui to news.groups.proposals on Wed Oct 15 14:26:01 2025
    From Newsgroup: news.groups.proposals

    [in reply to ReK2 Hispagatos <rek2@usenet_reborn.tui>]


    My 2 cents on this,
    Nobody uses Solaris/AIX/..... and there are plenty of Linux/BSD newsgroups already, so I do not mind if this if really dead to be removed..
    Like in the future "if someone decides to pick on this OS..." who?
    if we do not already use a classic Unix OS who is going to do it?
    most people who will actually run this OS's already use usenet for most part

    only my opinion, I am working hard to give a good word for USenet
    so the cleaner we can get it and to the point, the easier it is
    for new people to enjoy it and be part of their daily computing..

    PD: Do not touch the GNU/Linux/BSD* newsgroups tho.. this is very much
    very in use.

    Happy Hacking
    ReK2
    --
    EfA|rCiryaN+AEfA|EfuNN+AEfA+N+Ari?N+AEfna {gemini,https}://{,rek2.}hispagatos.org - mastodon: @rek2@hispagatos.space [https|gemini]://2600.Madrid - https://hispagatos.space/@rek2

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  • From not@not@telling.you.invalid (Computer Nerd Kev) to news.groups.proposals on Thu Oct 16 09:38:07 2025
    From Newsgroup: news.groups.proposals

    Marco Moock <mm@dorfdsl.de> wrote:
    On 14.10.2025 16:59 Uhr Julien ?LIE wrote:
    marco thinks he can get total destruction of usenet

    I don't believe at all that's his goal. A bit of cleaning in the very
    long list of newsgroups is helpful to better see still active and
    relevant newsgroups nowadays.

    Exactly that is the case. Occasionally some new users join and to make
    them subscribe to a group, there need to be at least some articles per
    year in a group. Otherwise the most likely don't subscribe to that.

    Occasionally new users also try and advocate for creating new groups on specific sub-topics because they're not comfortable posting about those
    topics in the more general groups that already exist, so that argument
    for a longer/shorter group list sways both ways. Appeal to some new
    users and you'll disappoint others - it's just rearranging deck
    chairs on the Titanic.

    Also it's almost certain that those new users who do complain about
    too many, rather than not enough, groups are really talking about all
    the alt.* (etc.) groups carried by the server they're using. Trimming
    out groups from comp.* is never going to make a meaningful change
    compared to all those, so you might as well retain them and not have
    some new user asking for an "alt.386bsd" just because they can't see
    for themselves that nobody would talk to them there anyway.
    --
    __ __
    #_ < |\| |< _#

    --- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From groenveld@groenveld@acm.org (John D Groenveld) to news.groups.proposals on Thu Oct 16 09:38:29 2025
    From Newsgroup: news.groups.proposals

    In article <10coosn$l42m$2@matrix.hispagatos.org>,
    ReK2 Hispagatos <rek2@usenet_reborn.tui> wrote:
    Nobody uses Solaris/AIX/.....

    Not much discussed in comp.unix.solaris, but...
    $ cat /etc/os-release
    NAME="Oracle Solaris"
    PRETTY_NAME="Oracle Solaris 11.4"
    CPE_NAME="cpe:/o:oracle:solaris:11:4"
    ID=solaris
    VERSION=11.4
    VERSION_ID=11.4
    BUILD_ID=11.4.85.0.1.201.2
    HOME_URL="https://www.oracle.com/solaris/" SUPPORT_URL="https://support.oracle.com/"
    VARIANT_ID=sru
    VARIANT="Support Update"

    John
    groenveld@acm.org

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  • From Keith Thompson@Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com to news.groups.proposals on Thu Oct 16 09:38:36 2025
    From Newsgroup: news.groups.proposals

    Marco Moock <mm@dorfdsl.de> writes:
    [...]
    History of groups is available at isc and the board of various
    hierarchies also provide it.
    [...]

    What is isc? What is "the board of various hierarchies"? How are
    they accessible?
    --
    Keith Thompson (The_Other_Keith) Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com
    void Void(void) { Void(); } /* The recursive call of the void */

    --- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From Tristan Miller@tmiller@big-8.org to news.groups.proposals on Thu Oct 16 12:14:43 2025
    From Newsgroup: news.groups.proposals

    Greetings.

    On 2025-10-13 14:59, noel wrote:
    It is extremely dangerous to have 8 hierachies fate decided by 3 or 4
    people


    If that were truly the case, then neither you nor anyone else would be participating in this community discussion.

    RFDs to create, remove, or change newsgroups can be (and have been)
    initiated by Usenet users at large, not just the Board itself. At least
    as long as I've been a member, all RFDs that we've processed have
    followed a set, publically documented procedure that involves an
    extended period of community consultation. We often collectively spend
    many hours helping the proponents get their initial RFD in order,
    publicizing it, reading through the ensuing discussions, and summarizing
    them for the second and subsequent iterations of the RFD. We've never
    gone against community consensus in the final voting phase -- or at
    least, no one has ever accused us of this. In controversial cases where
    we could not identify a relatively strong community consensus, we have
    decided for the status quo.

    By design, Usenet is essentially a trust-based network with no central governance. If server administrators no longer trust the Board's
    competence to decide the "fate" of groups in the Big 8, then they're
    free to ignore the control messages sent on our behalf, and perhaps
    instead recognize those from some other decision-making body that they
    feel better reflects their or the community's wishes.

    Regards,
    Tristan
    --
    Usenet Big-8 Management Board
    https://www.big-8.org/
    board@big-8.org

    --- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From Tristan Miller@tmiller@big-8.org to news.groups.proposals on Thu Oct 16 12:35:04 2025
    From Newsgroup: news.groups.proposals

    Greetings.

    On 2025-10-10 18:22, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
    In news.groups.proposals Usenet Big-8 Management Board <board@big-8.org> wrote:
    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.

    Can they though? If someone takes an interest in running these OSs
    and picks a group focused on current BSD to discuss them in, aren't
    they likely to effectively be told exactly that: "The operating
    system isn't developed anymore, go away"?


    There might be an easy way to test this. In this case, the most obvious
    "more general group" is comp.unix.bsd.misc. Someone could post to it
    asking whether articles on 386BSD or BSD/OS are welcome there. If the
    answer is no, then one could go to the next most general group, which
    would be comp.unix.misc, and ask the same thing. But I doubt there will
    be negative answers in either group, since they are not particularly
    active. Most of the users who frequented those groups have probably
    left for other venues, and those who remain lurking would probably be
    happy for some new traffic.

    I've gone ahead and posted such a query to comp.unix.bsd.misc: <10cr6n5$2sn$1@reader2.panix.com>

    Regards,
    Tristan
    --
    Usenet Big-8 Management Board
    https://www.big-8.org/
    board@big-8.org

    --- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From Tristan Miller@tmiller@big-8.org to news.groups.proposals on Thu Oct 16 12:43:59 2025
    From Newsgroup: news.groups.proposals

    Greetings.

    On 2025-10-16 08:38, Keith Thompson wrote:
    Marco Moock <mm@dorfdsl.de> writes:
    [...]
    History of groups is available at isc and the board of various
    hierarchies also provide it.
    [...]

    What is isc? What is "the board of various hierarchies"? How are
    they accessible?


    ISC is the Internet Systems Consortium. They maintain an archive of
    control messages, RFDs, and similar administrative documents for the Big
    8 hierarchy at <https://ftp.isc.org/usenet/>.

    Most other newsgroup hierarchies on Usenet are managed by other entities (i.e., not the Big-8 Management Board). Julien |elie has a list of
    managed hierarchies, and the corresponding managing organizations, at <http://usenet.trigofacile.com/hierarchies/>.

    Regards,
    Tristan
    --
    Usenet Big-8 Management Board
    https://www.big-8.org/
    board@big-8.org

    --- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From Marco Moock@mm@dorfdsl.de to news.groups.proposals on Thu Oct 16 14:07:05 2025
    From Newsgroup: news.groups.proposals

    On 16.10.2025 12:14 Uhr Tristan Miller wrote:

    RFDs to create, remove, or change newsgroups can be (and have been) initiated by Usenet users at large, not just the Board itself. At
    least as long as I've been a member, all RFDs that we've processed
    have followed a set, publically documented procedure that involves an extended period of community consultation. We often collectively
    spend many hours helping the proponents get their initial RFD in
    order, publicizing it, reading through the ensuing discussions, and summarizing them for the second and subsequent iterations of the RFD.
    We've never gone against community consensus in the final voting
    phase -- or at least, no one has ever accused us of this. In
    controversial cases where we could not identify a relatively strong
    community consensus, we have decided for the status quo.

    Some hierarchies (IIRC big-8 too in the past) have a voting system
    where interested users can directly vote. Not many people are
    participating.

    In case of this RfD, only a few people ever replied back to the RfD.
    --
    kind regards
    Marco

    Send spam to 1760609683muell@stinkedores.dorfdsl.de

    --- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From Marco Moock@mm@dorfdsl.de to news.groups.proposals on Thu Oct 16 14:11:28 2025
    From Newsgroup: news.groups.proposals

    On 15.10.2025 14:26 Uhr ReK2 Hispagatos wrote:

    [in reply to ReK2 Hispagatos <rek2@usenet_reborn.tui>]


    My 2 cents on this,
    Nobody uses Solaris/AIX/.....

    A customer of the company I work at uses AIX. Some discussions happen
    in those groups.

    and there are plenty of Linux/BSD
    newsgroups already, so I do not mind if this if really dead to be
    removed..

    Certain dead operating systems are really dead. SysV is from the 80s -
    and no one in the last years has posted in the groups.

    Like in the future "if someone decides to pick on this
    OS..." who? if we do not already use a classic Unix OS who is going
    to do it? most people who will actually run this OS's already use
    usenet for most part

    And those people didn't even reply to the RfD - we didn't receive even
    one reply that someone was interested in discussing the topics of the
    groups I proposed to delete.
    --
    kind regards
    Marco

    Send spam to 1760531161muell@stinkedores.dorfdsl.de

    --- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From Marco Moock@mm@dorfdsl.de to news.groups.proposals on Thu Oct 16 14:12:00 2025
    From Newsgroup: news.groups.proposals

    On 16.10.2025 09:38 Uhr John D Groenveld wrote:

    In article <10coosn$l42m$2@matrix.hispagatos.org>,
    ReK2 Hispagatos <rek2@usenet_reborn.tui> wrote:
    Nobody uses Solaris/AIX/.....

    Not much discussed in comp.unix.solaris, but...
    $ cat /etc/os-release
    NAME="Oracle Solaris"
    PRETTY_NAME="Oracle Solaris 11.4"
    CPE_NAME="cpe:/o:oracle:solaris:11:4"
    ID=solaris
    VERSION=11.4
    VERSION_ID=11.4
    BUILD_ID=11.4.85.0.1.201.2
    HOME_URL="https://www.oracle.com/solaris/" SUPPORT_URL="https://support.oracle.com/"
    VARIANT_ID=sru
    VARIANT="Support Update"

    I am curious:
    Is that your home system or a system at work?

    On which architecture?
    --
    kind regards
    Marco

    Send spam to 1760600309muell@stinkedores.dorfdsl.de

    --- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From groenveld@groenveld@acm.org (John D Groenveld) to news.groups.proposals,comp.unix.solaris on Thu Oct 16 23:43:57 2025
    From Newsgroup: news.groups.proposals

    [followups set to comp.unix.solaris]

    In article <20251016201151.3946a92a@ryz.dorfdsl.de>,
    Marco Moock <mm@dorfdsl.de> wrote:
    On 16.10.2025 09:38 Uhr John D Groenveld wrote:
    $ cat /etc/os-release
    NAME="Oracle Solaris"
    PRETTY_NAME="Oracle Solaris 11.4"
    [snipped]
    I am curious:
    Is that your home system or a system at work?

    That's the output from a VM in my home lab but the output can be
    gathered at $WORK.

    On which architecture?

    $ isainfo -kv
    64-bit amd64 kernel modules
    $ isainfo -vk
    64-bit sparcv9 kernel modules

    John
    groenveld@acm.org

    --- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From noel@deletethis@invalid.lan to news.groups.proposals on Mon Oct 20 13:22:54 2025
    From Newsgroup: news.groups.proposals

    On Thu, 16 Oct 2025 12:14:43 -0400, Tristan Miller wrote:

    Greetings.

    On 2025-10-13 14:59, noel wrote:
    It is extremely dangerous to have 8 hierachies fate decided by 3 or 4
    people


    If that were truly the case, then neither you nor anyone else would be participating in this community discussion.


    Yeah but the "discussion" is all for show really, isnt it, if you want
    them gone, they'll be gone, 20 years ago in usenets prime you had to
    actually listen, but these days, I don't see much of that.



    By design, Usenet is essentially a trust-based network with no central governance. If server administrators no longer trust the Board's
    competence to decide the "fate" of groups in the Big 8, then they're
    free to ignore the control messages sent on our behalf, and perhaps

    and thats what a few servers are doing, because (I wont pretend to speak
    for others as I dont have that right) I have less faith in the board to
    do the right things, perhaps this is because its same 'ol group making
    the decisions, oh except new kid marco who must be trying to prove
    himself with all these rfd's.

    Remember how once we trusted usenet enough to allow nocems (and even
    cancels) but it didnt take long for them to be outright abused back in
    the 90's and therefor ignored by 90% of servers, IMHO this is akin to
    that, but many would disagree and they are welcome to do so.

    anyway, pointless me arguing with people who already made their minds up, luckily our control files can only be manually updated now, so rmgroups
    are gone forever here, so my right to an opinion here would likely be extinguished.


    cheers

    --- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From noel@deletethis@invalid.lan to news.groups.proposals on Mon Oct 20 13:23:03 2025
    From Newsgroup: news.groups.proposals

    On Wed, 15 Oct 2025 08:51:31 -0400, Marco Moock wrote:

    there need to be at least some articles per
    year in a group. Otherwise the most likely don't subscribe to that.


    Where is your evidence, links to multiple repuatable sources please,
    since you made that statement, you surely must have them.


    Long-time readers may also unsubscribe because of no traffic for years.


    Again, please supply evidence.


    your desire to remove history
    [...]
    several other free access text groups wont honour rmgroups

    Sending rmgroup articles is not a synonym of removing history.

    History of groups is available at isc and the board of various
    hierarchies also provide it.


    We are talking history as in history not just of groups names but their articles, usenet in its entirety is an "archive" it just depends on how
    long $server_admin wants to allow it, usually this is a disk space
    decision, not because nobody posts to it.



    --- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From Marco Moock@mm@dorfdsl.de to news.groups.proposals on Mon Oct 20 15:17:43 2025
    From Newsgroup: news.groups.proposals

    On 20.10.2025 13:23 Uhr noel wrote:

    On Wed, 15 Oct 2025 08:51:31 -0400, Marco Moock wrote:

    there need to be at least some articles per
    year in a group. Otherwise the most likely don't subscribe to that.



    Where is your evidence, links to multiple repuatable sources please,
    since you made that statement, you surely must have them.

    It is common sense. If a place is empty and stays empty for a while,
    people usually unsubscribe.

    I haven't got back one reply from someone who was lurking there and
    wants to keep the group. Not a single one.

    Although, sometimes new people arrive (have a look at eternal-september.newusers) and ask for groups where real discussion
    happens - because the group list is full of empty groups, that are
    useless for people who are interested in current discussions.

    Long-time readers may also unsubscribe because of no traffic for
    years.

    Again, please supply evidence.

    I assume various people subscribed to those groups in the past to read
    and post there. I haven't seen a reply from one of those, so the
    interest in those groups for current discussion is actually zero.

    your desire to remove history
    [...]
    several other free access text groups wont honour rmgroups

    Sending rmgroup articles is not a synonym of removing history.

    History of groups is available at isc and the board of various
    hierarchies also provide it.


    We are talking history as in history not just of groups names but
    their articles, usenet in its entirety is an "archive" it just
    depends on how long $server_admin wants to allow it, usually this is
    a disk space decision, not because nobody posts to it.

    And here we are again: Archiving servers shouldn't process rmgroup at
    all.
    In that case, why should admins of those servers care?
    --
    kind regards
    Marco

    Send spam to 1760959383muell@stinkedores.dorfdsl.de

    --- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From Marco Moock@mm@dorfdsl.de to news.groups.proposals on Mon Oct 20 15:23:44 2025
    From Newsgroup: news.groups.proposals

    On 20.10.2025 13:22 Uhr noel wrote:

    On Thu, 16 Oct 2025 12:14:43 -0400, Tristan Miller wrote:

    Greetings.

    On 2025-10-13 14:59, noel wrote:
    It is extremely dangerous to have 8 hierachies fate decided by 3
    or 4 people


    If that were truly the case, then neither you nor anyone else would
    be participating in this community discussion.


    Yeah but the "discussion" is all for show really, isnt it, if you
    want them gone, they'll be gone, 20 years ago in usenets prime you
    had to actually listen, but these days, I don't see much of that.

    We endorse people to take part in the discussions, we allow all
    opinions about those topics and the feedback is a relevant part of our decisions, as we discuss them in our meetings.

    If people replied back that they actually want to discuss those ancient
    and EoS operating systems, I might change my opinion (the other members
    have their own).

    By design, Usenet is essentially a trust-based network with no
    central governance. If server administrators no longer trust the
    Board's competence to decide the "fate" of groups in the Big 8,
    then they're free to ignore the control messages sent on our
    behalf, and perhaps

    and thats what a few servers are doing, because (I wont pretend to
    speak for others as I dont have that right) I have less faith in the
    board to do the right things, perhaps this is because its same 'ol
    group making the decisions, oh except new kid marco who must be
    trying to prove himself with all these rfd's.

    It is a process that has been going on in the past for big-8 (search
    big-8.org for great downsizing), in de.* and in fr.* too (I only saw
    the control messages). For de.*, ~50 people took part in the ballot -
    and 1~2 people voted against deletion - in many cases.

    anyway, pointless me arguing with people who already made their minds
    up, luckily our control files can only be manually updated now, so
    rmgroups are gone forever here, so my right to an opinion here would
    likely be extinguished.

    The RfDs are being posted to get feedback from people to come to a
    reasonable decision.
    --
    kind regards
    Marco

    Send spam to 1760959374muell@stinkedores.dorfdsl.de

    --- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From Winston@wbe@UBEBLOCK.psr.com.invalid to news.groups.proposals on Tue Oct 21 10:04:59 2025
    From Newsgroup: news.groups.proposals

    As part of this thread, Marco Moock <mm@dorfdsl.de> replied:
    If a place is empty and stays empty for a while,
    people usually unsubscribe.

    I'm just the opposite. Remaining subscribed to a group with no traffic, especially one where I mostly read and rarely post, costs nothing. The
    main time I've unsubscribed was when a group had lots of traffic and I
    decided I no longer cared enough about it to spend the time it takes to
    engage with it.

    The other reason for not unsubscribing is that not all USENET servers
    carry all groups. If I use a provider that doesn't carry some group,
    I'll keep the subscription because some day I might add a provider that
    does carry it.

    As an example of not unsubscribing, I've remained subscribed to aioe.news.helpdesk even though AIOE has been dead for a long time.
    (Yes, that's not a Big-8 newsgroup, but using it as an example has some
    humor value.)

    Just my two cents,
    -WBE

    --- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From Tristan Miller@tmiller@big-8.org to news.groups.proposals on Tue Oct 21 12:08:16 2025
    From Newsgroup: news.groups.proposals

    Greetings.

    On 2025-10-20 12:22, noel wrote:
    On 2025-10-13 14:59, noel wrote:
    It is extremely dangerous to have 8 hierachies fate decided by 3 or 4
    people

    If that were truly the case, then neither you nor anyone else would be
    participating in this community discussion.

    Yeah but the "discussion" is all for show really, isnt it, if you want
    them gone, they'll be gone, 20 years ago in usenets prime you had to
    actually listen, but these days, I don't see much of that.


    I don't understand why you think the discussion is all for show. Can
    you point to any RFD in the past five years where we ended up removing a
    group against the consensus expressed in the discussion?

    By design, Usenet is essentially a trust-based network with no central
    governance. If server administrators no longer trust the Board's
    competence to decide the "fate" of groups in the Big 8, then they're
    free to ignore the control messages sent on our behalf, and perhaps

    and thats what a few servers are doing, because (I wont pretend to speak
    for others as I dont have that right) I have less faith in the board to
    do the right things, perhaps this is because its same 'ol group making
    the decisions, oh except new kid marco


    Only if you consider five years to be "old" -- the Board underwent a
    complete turnover in membership in 2020, and none of those new members
    (nor Marco, who joined later) have any previous affiliation with the
    Board. We don't consult the previous Board members on matters of
    hierarchy management, except insofar as they're as welcome as any other
    users to respond to RFDs.

    anyway, pointless me arguing with people who already made their minds up


    Our minds aren't made up. If you -- and I'm speaking here to everyone reading, not just noel -- do or don't want the groups to be removed,
    then an explicit, well-reasoned statement to that effect will better
    help us gauge the community's overall response to the RFD. This thread currently has a lot of general questions, speculation, and discussion on
    the pros and cons of removing disused groups, though not much yet in the
    way of definitive conclusions on what should be done with the particular groups that have been nominated.

    Regards,
    Tristan
    --
    Usenet Big-8 Management Board
    https://www.big-8.org/
    board@big-8.org

    --- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From noel@deletethis@invalid.lan to news.groups.proposals on Wed Oct 22 05:57:24 2025
    From Newsgroup: news.groups.proposals

    On Mon, 20 Oct 2025 15:17:43 -0400, Marco Moock wrote:

    On 20.10.2025 13:23 Uhr noel wrote:

    On Wed, 15 Oct 2025 08:51:31 -0400, Marco Moock wrote:

    there need to be at least some articles per year in a group.
    Otherwise the most likely don't subscribe to that.



    Where is your evidence, links to multiple repuatable sources please,
    since you made that statement, you surely must have them.

    It is common sense. If a place is empty and stays empty for a while,
    people usually unsubscribe.


    Common sense? So as I suspected you have NO evidence.

    BTW there is no such thing as common sense, define it, go on, because
    what is to one may not be to another.


    I haven't got back one reply from someone who was lurking there and
    wants to keep the group. Not a single one.

    over what period of time, 28 days or longer, and why would they respond
    tpo someone who posts these things,


    Although, sometimes new people arrive (have a look at eternal-september.newusers)

    I do not use ES, nor do we peer with them. I know the support group is propogated out and only group I've got in my subs, no Idea why in the
    first place either.


    because the group list is full of empty groups, that are
    useless for people who are interested in current discussions.

    again, so what? you are intent on killing all usenet discussions unless
    they happened wiuth in past 3 hours or something, hell marco, you do not
    even run a usenet server yet you want to make decisions for us, and we've shown you in the past to, because ES has no articles in X period of time, consider the groups dead, Kev I think did so as well, we've shown our
    server, and by extension probably Jesse, Alex, Paul, Steve, Giga and
    others have posts in it years later than you see, and IIRC by your own admission on at least one of them, they were active, and not spam.


    Long-time readers may also unsubscribe because of no traffic for
    years.

    Again, please supply evidence.

    I assume various people subscribed to those groups in the past to read
    and post there. I haven't seen a reply from one of those, so the
    interest in those groups for current discussion is actually zero.


    assumptions are the mother of all fuckups


    your desire to remove history
    [...]
    several other free access text groups wont honour rmgroups

    Sending rmgroup articles is not a synonym of removing history.

    History of groups is available at isc and the board of various
    hierarchies also provide it.


    We are talking history as in history not just of groups names but their
    articles, usenet in its entirety is an "archive" it just depends on how
    long $server_admin wants to allow it, usually this is a disk space
    decision, not because nobody posts to it.

    And here we are again: Archiving servers shouldn't process rmgroup at
    all.
    In that case, why should admins of those servers care?

    I dont call myself an archive server, I call it a usenet news server,
    like pretty much all other operators do.

    --- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From noel@deletethis@invalid.lan to news.groups.proposals on Wed Oct 22 05:57:52 2025
    From Newsgroup: news.groups.proposals

    On Mon, 20 Oct 2025 15:23:44 -0400, Marco Moock wrote:



    The RfDs are being posted to get feedback from people to come to a
    reasonable decision.

    read as: from people who agree with us.

    why the hell am I wasting my time...
    you do you... I have better things to waste my time on, like the double
    malt thats waiting.

    --- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From Jesse Rehmer@jesse.rehmer@blueworldhosting.com to news.groups.proposals on Wed Oct 22 09:19:46 2025
    From Newsgroup: news.groups.proposals

    On Oct 22, 2025 at 4:57:24rC>AM CDT, "noel" <deletethis@invalid.lan> wrote:

    again, so what? you are intent on killing all usenet discussions unless
    they happened wiuth in past 3 hours or something, hell marco, you do not
    even run a usenet server yet you want to make decisions for us, and we've shown you in the past to, because ES has no articles in X period of time, consider the groups dead, Kev I think did so as well, we've shown our
    server, and by extension probably Jesse, Alex, Paul, Steve, Giga and
    others have posts in it years later than you see, and IIRC by your own admission on at least one of them, they were active, and not spam.

    Neither of the groups being discussed have relevant articles in the last 10+ years on my server.

    I do not see benefit keeping unused groups. Usenet was not intended to be an archive of articles that lasts forever. Archiving Usenet is a decision, and if you're looking for archives, there are plenty these days.

    For the health and relevancy of Usenet, I support removing unused groups. I've been around long enough and still don't always know where to post about a
    topic I haven't discussed on Usenet before. If one looks for "unix" against my active file there are 269 groups, "linux" has 455. How does a new/naive Usenet user determine the most appropriate group(s)?

    Judging by article count can be deceiving if the server archives. There may be over 1,000,000 articles making the group appear active at first glance, but upon inspection there hasn't been discussion about that topic for over 10 years. That's discouraging to a new user and could lead to them giving up Usenet quickly.

    Archives have benefits but that doesn't mean that all of Usenet should be an archive. If topics are no longer being discussed on Usenet, why keep the
    groups around? Looking back through Usenet history, there certainly wasn't an issue getting groups created when enough users were interested in a topic. Should Usenet see a revival and the needs of the network change I believe
    we'll be able to react appropriately.

    Usenet has shrank dramatically, whether we like it or not. In September 2025, there were 780 total hosts reported by 73 participating servers in the top1000 stats. If you take out duplicate hosts per site and FIDO nodes it's closer to 200 sites. In 2005 the top1000 routinely reported over 6,500 hosts seen by 356 participating servers.

    In Usenet's current state, in my opinion, it is appropriate to remove unused groups.

    --- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From Marco Moock@mm@dorfdsl.de to news.groups.proposals on Wed Oct 22 11:46:33 2025
    From Newsgroup: news.groups.proposals

    On 22.10.2025 09:19 Uhr Jesse Rehmer wrote:

    For the health and relevancy of Usenet, I support removing unused
    groups. I've been around long enough and still don't always know
    where to post about a topic I haven't discussed on Usenet before. If
    one looks for "unix" against my active file there are 269 groups,
    "linux" has 455. How does a new/naive Usenet user determine the most appropriate group(s)?

    Thanks for pointing that out.
    If I want to discuss a topic, I choose a place where actual people read
    and post.

    According to the replies we got so far, no one cared about those groups
    I proposed to remove.
    --
    kind regards
    Marco

    Send spam to 1761117586muell@stinkedores.dorfdsl.de

    --- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From noel@deletethis@invalid.lan to news.groups.proposals on Wed Oct 22 17:01:24 2025
    From Newsgroup: news.groups.proposals

    On Wed, 22 Oct 2025 09:19:46 -0400, Jesse Rehmer wrote:

    Usenet was not intended to be an archive of articles that lasts forever.

    You can only speak for youself, I've been doing this since the early/mid
    90's as well, and the only reason back then we had short retention was
    becasue disks were very expensive, and every leacher wanted binaries,
    disks got cheaper so we kept binaries for a year, andby "we" I mean many
    news server operators.

    Also if thats your belief why do you like to once in a blue moon tell
    people you have decades of articles in groups, why are you not expiring articles every 28 days, or should we now expect to see that on BWH, or
    are you a poltician Jesse, say one thing but do another :)




    For the health and relevancy of Usenet, I support removing unused
    groups. I've been around long enough and still don't always know where
    to post about a topic I haven't discussed on Usenet before. If one looks

    and that wont change, we had the same power trippers try do similar thing
    back in fidonet, which was before birth and popularity of usenet, and
    IIRC you're old enough to remember all that too. They failed to fix an
    alleged problem then too.



    Usenet has shrank dramatically, whether we like it or not.

    of course it has, becqasue kids of today rather al lthat eye candy in
    forums.


    --- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From Jesse Rehmer@jesse.rehmer@blueworldhosting.com to news.groups.proposals on Thu Oct 23 11:07:17 2025
    From Newsgroup: news.groups.proposals

    On Oct 22, 2025 at 4:01:24rC>PM CDT, "noel" <deletethis@invalid.lan> wrote:

    On Wed, 22 Oct 2025 09:19:46 -0400, Jesse Rehmer wrote:

    Usenet was not intended to be an archive of articles that lasts forever.

    You can only speak for youself, I've been doing this since the early/mid
    90's as well, and the only reason back then we had short retention was becasue disks were very expensive, and every leacher wanted binaries,
    disks got cheaper so we kept binaries for a year, andby "we" I mean many
    news server operators.

    Also if thats your belief why do you like to once in a blue moon tell
    people you have decades of articles in groups, why are you not expiring articles every 28 days, or should we now expect to see that on BWH, or
    are you a poltician Jesse, say one thing but do another :)

    Two things can be true at once. I am working on an archive for those who want one available through a newsreader. The archive does not represent the current state of Usenet, it's an archive.

    I'm also putting together a 'current' server that will only carry newsgroups that are still active. I don't recommend new users wishing to start discussion on Usenet begin with an archive. They should be looking at a list of relevant groups where discussion is active, not a list of 40,000 inactive groups.

    The nice thing is, these are all opinions, and you are free to do what you wish.

    --- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From not@not@telling.you.invalid (Computer Nerd Kev) to news.groups.proposals on Thu Oct 23 11:07:51 2025
    From Newsgroup: news.groups.proposals

    Marco Moock <mm@dorfdsl.de> wrote:
    On 22.10.2025 09:19 Uhr Jesse Rehmer wrote:

    For the health and relevancy of Usenet, I support removing unused
    groups. I've been around long enough and still don't always know
    where to post about a topic I haven't discussed on Usenet before. If
    one looks for "unix" against my active file there are 269 groups,
    "linux" has 455. How does a new/naive Usenet user determine the most
    appropriate group(s)?

    Thanks for pointing that out.
    If I want to discuss a topic, I choose a place where actual people read
    and post.

    So you end up with behaviour like in comp.os.linux.misc at the
    moment where people just talk about anything vaguely technology
    related (or now not even that) because people will repond there.
    But people like me start killfiling and marking all posts as read
    so much it becomes hard to follow what little on-topic discussion
    still takes place. There's the same trouble at
    sci.electronics.design where I saw at least one post from another
    reader who said they'd given up following the group regularly due
    to the similar problem there.

    On the other hand I'm happy to post to quiet groups, and at least
    my post is not lost in the noise from people who don't even really
    know anything about my topic (or don't want it discussed in their
    presence). Sometimes (albeit not often) after a week/month/year
    someone does actually come out of the woodwork and post an informed
    reply that I mightn't have followed a noisy group long enough to
    even see.

    According to the replies we got so far, no one cared about those groups
    I proposed to remove.

    The first reply was from me and I ended with this statement which
    covered these groups:

    Having these separate places to discuss old platforms is an asset
    of Usenet to allow it to cater for people with different
    interests without unnecessary conflict.

    But apparantly that doesn't count as caring to you. I'm not going
    to flail around further rewording an opinion you refuse to
    acknowledge. You understand someone generally in favour of deleting
    "unused" groups, but ignore someone who'se generally against it. I
    guess this wasn't really a Request for Discussion but a Request for
    One-Sided Discussion.
    --
    __ __
    #_ < |\| |< _#

    --- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From noel@deletethis@invalid.lan to news.groups.proposals on Fri Oct 24 04:20:57 2025
    From Newsgroup: news.groups.proposals

    On Thu, 23 Oct 2025 11:07:51 -0400, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:



    According to the replies we got so far, no one cared about those groups
    I proposed to remove.

    The first reply was from me and I ended with this statement which
    covered these groups:

    Having these separate places to discuss old platforms is an asset of
    Usenet to allow it to cater for people with different interests
    without unnecessary conflict.

    But apparantly that doesn't count as caring to you. I'm not going to
    flail around further rewording an opinion you refuse to acknowledge. You understand someone generally in favour of deleting "unused" groups, but ignore someone who'se generally against it. I guess this wasn't really a Request for Discussion but a Request for One-Sided Discussion.


    Glad I'm not the only one who thinks this and who sees marco looks
    through rose coloured glasses.

    Is it any wonder he's picking on technical groups when he doesnt know the simplest of things, like configuring ntp, I refer to his question in comp.protocols.time.ntp 2 days ago, I didnt repond because I was too
    busy laughing since I no longer take that person as serious and suspect
    marco is unsurprisingly being deceitful and aiming at nuking that group
    as well.


    --- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From Marco Moock@mm@dorfdsl.de to news.groups.proposals on Fri Oct 24 04:26:52 2025
    From Newsgroup: news.groups.proposals

    On 24.10.2025 04:20 Uhr noel wrote:

    Is it any wonder he's picking on technical groups when he doesnt know
    the simplest of things, like configuring ntp, I refer to his question
    in comp.protocols.time.ntp 2 days ago, I didnt repond because I was
    too busy laughing since I no longer take that person as serious and
    suspect marco is unsurprisingly being deceitful and aiming at nuking
    that group as well.

    Please reread my post there and reread the documentation of IBM.
    Then you might see why I asked that question.

    TLDR: IPv6 networks are usually specified with the /<netbits amount>
    notation. The mask notation is very, very uncommon and is not
    documented in the IBM documentation.

    That's why I asked.

    Is asking questions about non-documented configuration options now
    making me look stupid?
    --
    kind regards
    Marco

    Send spam to 1761272457muell@stinkedores.dorfdsl.de

    --- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From groenveld@groenveld@acm.org (John D Groenveld) to news.groups.proposals on Fri Oct 24 10:51:29 2025
    From Newsgroup: news.groups.proposals

    In article <68fa8f88$1@news.ausics.net>,
    noel <deletethis@invalid.lan> wrote:
    Is it any wonder he's picking on technical groups when he doesnt know the >simplest of things, like configuring ntp, I refer to his question in >comp.protocols.time.ntp 2 days ago, I didnt repond because I was too
    busy laughing since I no longer take that person as serious and suspect >marco is unsurprisingly being deceitful and aiming at nuking that group
    as well.

    Are you conflating two different posters?

    In article <10coosn$l42m$2@matrix.hispagatos.org>,
    ReK2 Hispagatos <rek2@usenet_reborn.tui> wrote:
    Nobody uses Solaris/AIX/.....

    In article <10dctfs$1q1r6$2@paganini.bofh.team>,
    Marco Moock <mm@dorfdsl.de>,
    On AIX I have

    John
    groenveld@acm.org

    --- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From noel@deletethis@invalid.lan to news.groups.proposals on Sat Oct 25 11:36:31 2025
    From Newsgroup: news.groups.proposals

    On Fri, 24 Oct 2025 04:26:52 -0400, Marco Moock wrote:

    On 24.10.2025 04:20 Uhr noel wrote:

    Is it any wonder he's picking on technical groups when he doesnt know
    the simplest of things, like configuring ntp, I refer to his question
    in comp.protocols.time.ntp 2 days ago, I didnt repond because I was
    too busy laughing since I no longer take that person as serious and
    suspect marco is unsurprisingly being deceitful and aiming at nuking
    that group as well.

    Please reread my post there and reread the documentation of IBM. Then
    you might see why I asked that question.

    TLDR: IPv6 networks are usually specified with the /<netbits amount> notation. The mask notation is very, very uncommon and is not documented
    in the IBM documentation.

    That's why I asked.

    Is asking questions about non-documented configuration options now
    making me look stupid?

    undocumented? so your ntp/ntp.conf man pages dont exist huh

    let me see, who "mandates" /net-bits...

    ntp i:p:v:6 optional i:p:v:6/96 nope
    postfix [i:p:v:6] optional [i:p:v:6]/96 nope
    apache [i:p:v:6] nope
    dovecot i:p:v:6 nope
    bind i:p:v:6 nope

    and the last time I CBF tpying an ipv6 address to ssh into it didnt need
    it either, in fact, nor did telnet.

    As to stupidity, no, not bothering to reading a man file when you dont
    know it is just lazy, but you run ipv6 on debian and (or did) slackware,
    so you would know how to configure ntp already, especially since you went
    to great pains to tell us in slackware that you dont run ipv4.

    I noticed you failed to address the other comments, in particular from
    Kev, but I guess it doesnt suite you, you'd rather try bury it in noise.

    --- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From =?UTF-8?Q?Julien_=C3=89LIE?=@iulius@nom-de-mon-site.com.invalid to news.groups.proposals on Sat Oct 25 11:37:52 2025
    From Newsgroup: news.groups.proposals

    Hi Jesse,

    For the health and relevancy of Usenet, I support removing unused groups. I've
    been around long enough and still don't always know where to post about a topic I haven't discussed on Usenet before. If one looks for "unix" against my
    active file there are 269 groups, "linux" has 455. How does a new/naive Usenet
    user determine the most appropriate group(s)?

    He can't, and will give up.


    There may be over 1,000,000 articles making the group appear active
    at first glance, but upon inspection there hasn't been discussion
    about that topic for over 10 years.

    I am also unsure a user will quickly find the information he needs in
    all these archived articles. He will need a good search engine at the
    server side, or he will have to download everything and search with his newsreader capabilities.


    Usenet has shrank dramatically, whether we like it or not. In September 2025, there were 780 total hosts reported by 73 participating servers in the top1000
    stats. If you take out duplicate hosts per site and FIDO nodes it's closer to 200 sites. In 2005 the top1000 routinely reported over 6,500 hosts seen by 356
    participating servers.

    Only 200 sites in 2025 :-(
    Thanks for sharing these stats.


    In Usenet's current state, in my opinion, it is appropriate to remove unused groups.

    It is the best we can do to improve user experience for the remaining
    users and possible future ones (unless we want to discourage them in 10 minutes to try this media).
    --
    Julien |eLIE

    -2-a|o temps suspends ton vol-a! Et vous heures propices, Suspendez votre
    cours.-a-+ (Alphonse de Lamartine)

    --- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From noel@deletethis@invalid.lan to news.groups.proposals on Sat Oct 25 11:37:59 2025
    From Newsgroup: news.groups.proposals

    On Fri, 24 Oct 2025 10:51:29 -0400, John D Groenveld wrote:



    Are you conflating two different posters?


    No.

    In article <10coosn$l42m$2@matrix.hispagatos.org>,
    ReK2 Hispagatos <rek2@usenet_reborn.tui> wrote:
    Nobody uses Solaris/AIX/.....

    In article <10dctfs$1q1r6$2@paganini.bofh.team>, Marco Moock <mm@dorfdsl.de>,
    On AIX I have

    John groenveld@acm.org

    --- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From Marco Moock@mm@dorfdsl.de to news.groups.proposals on Sat Oct 25 14:12:23 2025
    From Newsgroup: news.groups.proposals

    On 23.10.2025 11:07 Uhr Computer Nerd Kev wrote:

    So you end up with behaviour like in comp.os.linux.misc at the
    moment where people just talk about anything vaguely technology
    related (or now not even that) because people will repond there.

    Killfiling people who crosspost non-Linux related (mostly political)
    topics there is mostly a good decision, although, people need to decide
    that themselves.

    Certain NNTP servers also reject the messages that are crossposted to
    many political groups and comp.os.linux.misc.
    --
    kind regards
    Marco

    Send spam to 1761210471muell@stinkedores.dorfdsl.de

    --- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From Marco Moock@mm@dorfdsl.de to news.groups.proposals on Sat Oct 25 14:23:26 2025
    From Newsgroup: news.groups.proposals

    On 25.10.2025 11:36 Uhr noel wrote:

    On Fri, 24 Oct 2025 04:26:52 -0400, Marco Moock wrote:

    On 24.10.2025 04:20 Uhr noel wrote:

    Is it any wonder he's picking on technical groups when he doesnt
    know the simplest of things, like configuring ntp, I refer to his
    question in comp.protocols.time.ntp 2 days ago, I didnt repond
    because I was too busy laughing since I no longer take that person
    as serious and suspect marco is unsurprisingly being deceitful and
    aiming at nuking that group as well.

    Please reread my post there and reread the documentation of IBM.
    Then you might see why I asked that question.

    TLDR: IPv6 networks are usually specified with the /<netbits amount> notation. The mask notation is very, very uncommon and is not
    documented in the IBM documentation.

    That's why I asked.

    Is asking questions about non-documented configuration options now
    making me look stupid?

    undocumented? so your ntp/ntp.conf man pages dont exist huh

    On the AIX system I was working on, the manpages are not installed. As
    this is not "my" system, I cannot just install stuff.

    The IBM online documentation is an HTML copy of the manpages.

    let me see, who "mandates" /net-bits...

    It is the most common notation for IPv6 networks.
    I was talking about a network and not a single address.

    ntp i:p:v:6 optional i:p:v:6/96 nope

    The documentation doesn't show that notation.

    As to stupidity, no, not bothering to reading a man file when you
    dont know it is just lazy,

    Common, didn't I let you know that I read it?
    Have a look at my first post, I even linked it, so you can confirm that
    the IBM documentation (which looks like a slightly modified version of https://www.ntp.org/documentation/4.2.8-series/ntp.conf/) doesn't
    explain the mask option for IPv6.

    The ntp.org stuff is better, as it explicitly says that the
    default option is to set all bits.
    The IBM documentation says it defaults to 255.255.255.255, which only
    makes sense for IPv4.

    but you run ipv6 on debian and (or did)
    slackware, so you would know how to configure ntp already,

    I was never in need to use the restrict option there.
    On Debian, I don't even use ntpd, as the system comes with timesyncd by default, which fits my need to sync the RTC with a remote server.

    especially since you went to great pains to tell us in slackware that
    you dont run ipv4.

    I do have some systems that don't have IPv4 connectivity, mostly test
    systems.
    Is there any problem with that?

    I noticed you failed to address the other comments, in particular
    from Kev, but I guess it doesnt suite you, you'd rather try bury it
    in noise.

    I now replied to that.
    --
    kind regards
    Marco

    Send spam to 1761384991muell@stinkedores.dorfdsl.de

    --- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From not@not@telling.you.invalid (Computer Nerd Kev) to news.groups.proposals on Sun Oct 26 05:05:14 2025
    From Newsgroup: news.groups.proposals

    Marco Moock <mm@dorfdsl.de> wrote:
    On 23.10.2025 11:07 Uhr Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
    So you end up with behaviour like in comp.os.linux.misc at the
    moment where people just talk about anything vaguely technology
    related (or now not even that) because people will repond there.

    Killfiling people who crosspost non-Linux related (mostly political)
    topics there is mostly a good decision, although, people need to decide
    that themselves.

    Certain NNTP servers also reject the messages that are crossposted to
    many political groups and comp.os.linux.misc.

    I never mentioned crossposted political trolling, that's easy to
    killfile because the users posting it aren't regular participants
    in on-topic threads. The trouble is the regulars who want to
    discuss everything in one busy group rather than in more specific
    groups which are quieter. At some point filtering out the noise
    without breaking up on-topic discussion gets too complicated and
    you might as well give up and mark everything as read, hoping
    things will improve later, or unsubscribe completely. Some of that
    discussion is on-topic in other (often very dead) groups, so that
    problem would only be worse without those other groups for people
    to choose from in the first place.
    --
    __ __
    #_ < |\| |< _#

    --- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From =?UTF-8?Q?Julien_=C3=89LIE?=@iulius@nom-de-mon-site.com.invalid to news.groups.proposals on Sun Oct 26 21:03:13 2025
    From Newsgroup: news.groups.proposals

    Hi Jesse,

    Usenet has shrank dramatically, whether we like it or not. In September 2025, there were 780 total hosts reported by 73 participating servers in the top1000
    stats.

    FWIW, I've just came across:
    https://usenet.rexum.space/tree

    "Have you ever wondered how the vast network of Usenet is interconnected?"

    They do not even speak about news servers carrying Usenet outside "their backbone"...
    --
    Julien |eLIE

    -2-aLes cur|-s se consolent de n'|-tre pas mari|-s quand ils entendent les
    femmes se confesser.-a-+ (Armand Salacroix)

    --- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2