OT: Moderator Vacancy Investigation: comp.arch.hobbyist

[Theo Markettos]

[Please note, followups set to news.groups]

The newsgroup comp.arch.hobbyist was created some years ago for the
discussion of recreational hardware design. The activity when it was
created was (for example) people wirewrapping their own microprocessor
boards at home, but the scope in the charter (below) is a bit broader than
that.

It was created as a moderated group because the community previously
inhabited alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt which was filled with off-topic posts
like 'How do I plug in SIMMs to my PC?'. That was probably a mistake, as
I'm not sure moderation was needed in comp.arch.*

Anyway, for some years the moderator has been AWOL and as a result the group
was been dead. So the Big 8 Management Board are currently seeing if
there's any interest in replacing the moderator, or whether the group should
be deleted.

Is there any interest in a newsgroup for non-commercial electronics/hardware
design? That might have a slightly different feel from, say,
comp.arch.embedded where the emphasis is on commercial development.
Hardware, software, FPGAs (and more) would be covered. It might not be a
particularly high-traffic group, as long as there are some people interested
in reading and posting.

If there's interest, the group is already carried by many news servers so
moderation just needs to be arranged - either on a simple automatic approval
system or, if manpower is available, with human moderators. I'm willing to
set this up if people think it's worthwhile. But I'm also happy for the
group to be deleted if no-one is interested.

So please followup to this posting (followup will go to news.groups not
comp.arch.* or sci.electronics.*) if you have an opinion.

Theo
(original proponent of comp.arch.hobbyist 1997-8)



Here's the official Moderator Vacancy Investigation posting (from
news.groups.proposals):

MODERATOR VACANCY INVESTIGATION (MVI)
moderated group comp.arch.hobbyist

This is a formal Moderator Vacancy Investigation (MVI), begun because
moderated newsgroup comp.arch.hobbyist is not functioning, and may have
been abandoned by its moderator(s).

This investigation will attempt to verify the reasons for non-function,
and may result in the removal of the group or the selection and instal-
lation of a new moderator. In practice, the Big-8 Management Board
considers the third alternative--changing the status of the group from
moderated to unmoderated--as likely to cause more harm than good.

NEWSGROUPS LINE:

comp.arch.hobbyist Homebrew digital electronics design. (Moderated)

DISTRIBUTION:

news.announce.newgroups
news.groups.proposals
comp.arch.hobbyist

PROPONENT:

Alexander Bartolich <[email protected]>

CHARTER OF COMP.ARCH.HOBBYIST

A moderated forum to exchange ideas, techniques, problems, solutions,
and other information concerning the hobby of electronics design and
construction, specifically related to digital machines and their
peripherals.

Commercial advertisements (except when non-repetitive and directly
relevant to the topic of the group) are expressly forbidden; it is up
to the moderation group to make individual exceptions.

Binary postings in this group are unwelcome. No postings containing
10K or more of binary content will be accepted. Postings containing
less than 10K of binary content should only be used where no other
reasonable method is available to convey the information they contain.
All postings containing binary content of more than 10 lines or 300
bytes, whichever is the smaller, shall be forwarded to the daily
moderators for inspection in the same manner as articles from unknown
authors.

Posters wishing to post binaries that do not fit the above criteria
should upload this data to an FTP or WWW site and instead post a
pointer to that site. The binary regulations do not apply to the
posting of ASCII schematics.

A 'bot moderator will be used, which will reject articles by authors
who have not read the posting guidelines. Articles rejected by the
'bot will be forwarded to a group of three daily moderators for
review. These daily moderators will be appointed by a moderation group
of at least eight and at most twelve members who will decide on
moderation policy in general and the workings of the 'bot in
particular. Moderation will follow the scheme outlined below:

The 'bot:

- auto-approves articles that match all of these:
- known author
OR keyword/phrase in article
OR reply to approved article to the same set of newsgroups
- article with less than 300 bytes or 10 lines of binary
content, whichever is the smaller
- plain text, without markup encoding
- mails notification of non-approval to original authors,
without an attempt to circumvent spamblocks
- notification message explains moderation system,
and points poster to relevant posting guidelines
- sends non-approved articles to the daily moderators
- uploads non-approved articles to a WWW site, and
regularly posts a pointer to them
- scans for forged approvals and cancels


The daily moderators:
- individually check articles the 'bot rejected;
- if at least one of the daily moderators think the
article is on-topic, it gets posted
- if it is reposted, the original author is notified

The moderation group:
- appoints the daily moderators
- deals with group abuse that's not caught by the 'bot
- it has the power to bar persistent abusers by
unanimous decision for a period of up to
30 days at a time
- deals with long-term moderation policy
- is obliged to post details of all moderation group
decisions to the newsgroup
- if a moderation group member does not express an opinion
on a matter, then their silence shall not be taken as
supporting either side of a decision

Moderators of news.announce.newgroups and successor groups are
allowed blanket crossposting at their discretion.

RATIONALE:

Probe posts to this group resulted in bounces.

<[email protected]>: host
moderators.switch.ch[130.59.10.10] said: 550 Unrouteable address
(in reply to RCPT TO command)

HISTORY OF THE GROUP:

comp.arch.hobbyist is a moderated newsgroup which passed its vote for creation
by 199:15 as reported in news.announce.newgroups on 30 Jun 1998.

PROCEDURE:

Those who wish to comment on this moderator vacancy investigation should
subscribe to news.groups.proposals and participate in the relevant
threads in that newsgroup.

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

For more information on the MVI process, please see

http://www.big-8.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=policies:mvi

CHANGE HISTORY:

2009-10-29 Probe post bounced
2009-11-01 Moderator Vacancy Investigation