From Newsgroup: news.groups.proposals

This is a formal Request for Discussion (RFD) to remove the
unmoderated newsgroup comp.unix.user-friendly.

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


DISTRIBUTION:
news.announce.newgroups
news.groups.proposals
comp.unix.misc
comp.unix.user-friendly


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


RATIONALE:

Last activity in 2009
If there is need for discussion, more general groups can be used.


DISCUSSION SO FAR:

For discussions relating to the 1st RFD, please see the summary in the
2nd RFD at
<news:MPG.4382d871bfa8dd36989703@news.eternal-september.org>.

Discussions relating to the 2nd RFD took place in
news.groups.proposals and in news.groups. The discussion occurred
primarily in the threads in each group for "2nd RFD: Remove comp.unix.bsd.386bsd.misc and comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc", but many
responses were generally applicable to all groups under consideration
for removal, including the one in this RFD.

Arguments, suggestions, and observations put forward in response to
the 2nd RFD were:

- Removing unused groups will not increase participation in related
groups, nor in Usenet as a whole. [sticks, Steve Bonine, Adam
H. Kerman]

- Many sites won't list a group that has been rmgrouped, so group
history will be inaccessible unless one knows the group existed and
seeks out a provider that keeps the removed groups
archived. [sticks, Steve Bonine]

- There is potential for inconsistency/confusion for users if some
sites keep the group available and some don't. [Steve Bonine]

- There is no point to streamlining the list of newsgroups, as there
are no new users coming in to Usenet who could usefully be funneled
into a smaller list of groups. [Steve Bonine]

- It would be more useful to overhaul the whole Big-8, keeping only
the active groups and combining unused or little-used groups with
them. While this will not "save" Usenet, it would bring users
together and encourage active discussions with more
contributors. Something like this has happened in fr.* and nobody
has asked to re-create the removed newsgroups. [Julien |elie]

- The topics of some groups are now obsolete. Other groups were split
into sub-groups when the volume of discussion was much greater, and
these could perhaps now be usefully recombined. [Dr Englebert
Buxbaum]

- Large-scale consolidation of groups might work if users could be
consolidated along with their subscribed groups, but it's more
likely that they would just lose access to their old groups once the
rmgroups were issued. Also, to have much effect, it would be
necessary to remove a large majority of groups. [Matija Nalis]

- In a large-scale deletion, groups that are to be deleted could be
left in place for a transitional period in order to redirect users
to the best remaining group. [The True Melissa]

- The proposals overestimate the importance of the hierarchy
administration, as the active newsgroups list merely tells news
server administrators that, if they create a group on a given topic,
they should use the canonical name given in the list. [Adam
H. Kerman]

- Hierarchy administration does benefit new operators installing
Usenet servers, who ask for more accurate active files. [Todd
M. McComb]

- Older Unix systems, possibly including those covered by the groups
under discussion, may still be in use in the telephone industry or
by individuals with old PCs. [David Chmelik]


GROUP:

comp.unix.user-friendly
Discussion of UNIX user-friendliness

Charter:
UNIX has a reputation of being unfriendly for non-programmers - making
it difficult to use by those who need not know Unix, such as the
average user in the commercial business world. This group would be a
forum for discussion about UNIX user-friendliness and the availability
of user-friendly software for UNIX.

Presently, the above is done on an ad-hoc basis on a number of groups
such as comp.editors, comp.unix.questions, etc. Posts presently
asking about user-friendly utilities/software for UNIX usually attract
some flamage and seem out of place in these groups, because of
non-obvious differences between friendliness of Unix towards
programmers and unfriendliness towards non-programmers. This group
would give non-programming users a forum where their type of "user-friendliness" is meant to be the norm, not the exception.

The following would be considered typical for this group:-

- To clarify definitions like "user-friendliness" for the relevant
groups of users.
- Discussion about what user friendly software (editors, utilites,
etc) are available for UNIX.
- Discussion/opinions about ways of making "default" UNIX user setups
more user-friendly.
- Announcements of new "user-friendly" software and utilities.
- Discussion on how UNIX and UNIX software could be made more friendly
without endangering the work methods of the Unix programmers who feel
Unix *is* already friendly for them.
- Discussion on what makes a particular part of UNIX or UNIX software
so unfriendly/friendly, and for which subgroup of users.

History:
comp.unix.user-friendly is an unmoderated newsgroup which passed its
vote for creation by 280:87 as reported in news.announce.newgroups on
27 Sep 1993.


PROCEDURE:

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

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

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

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

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


HISTORY OF THIS RFD:

2025-10-10: 1st RFD (remove)
2025-11-15: 2nd RFD (remove)
2026-03-20: Final RFD / Last Call for Comments
--
Usenet Big-8 Management Board
https://www.big-8.org/
board@big-8.org

--- Synchronet 3.21e-Linux NewsLink 1.2