Xref: sn-us news.newusers.questions:658197 Return-Path: X-Original-To: nnqadmin Delivered-To: nnqadmin@titanium.presby.edu X-Reflex-Keepalives: . X-Original-Path: news.supernews.com!jtbell From: Jon Bell Newsgroups: news.newusers.questions Subject: [ADMIN] This group needs new moderators and a new host server Date: Sat, 08 Sep 2007 12:05:37 -0400 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com X-Original-ID: User-Agent: MT-NewsWatcher/3.5.2 (PPC Mac OS X) X-Complaints-To: abuse@supernews.com X-pstn-levels: (S: 8.95711/99.90000 R:95.9108 P:95.9108 M:97.0282 C:98.6951 ) X-pstn-settings: 5 (2.0000:2.0000) s gt3 gt2 gt1 r p m c X-pstn-addresses: from [357/15] Message-ID: Path: sn-us!sn-feed-sjc-02!sn-xt-sjc-11!sn-xt-sjc-07!sn-xt-sjc-12!supernews.com!nntp.csufresno.edu!tethys.csu.net!newshub.sdsu.edu!headwall.stanford.edu!newsfeed.stanford.edu!not-for-mail X-Path-To-Moderators: nnq-adm!mail.presby.edu![64.18.12.81]!source!pa-sjc-01.sjc-v12.supernews.net Approved: nnq-adm@presby.edu Six of the seven currently active members of the news.newusers.questions Moderation Board have decided to resign: Dennis Calhoun, Kathy Cole, Denis McKeon, Barbara Pattist, Heinrich Schramm, and myself. Thor Kottelin will remain. After I leave, it will not be possible to host the moderation software at Presbyterian College, so we also need a new host server. I will stay and run the current server for a reasonable time, provided that progress is being made on moving to a new one. However, if we can't make significant progress in that area by October 15, I will shut down the current server then. If you are interested in helping to keep this group running in the future (along with news.announce.newusers, which we're also in charge of), please e-mail me at jtbell@presby.edu. We are looking for two different "skill sets." First, we need people who can examine and approve/reject postings impartially, according to the guidelines in the group's charter, and who can work well together to make policy decisions. These people do not necessarily need detailed technical knowledge of the software, but should know the basics of how newsgroups work in general, and in particular how moderated newsgroups work. There should be at least three of these people altogether, including Thor. One of them will become the new head moderator. Second, we need at least one person who has enough technical knowledge to install and maintain software that receives postings via e-mail and makes them available to moderators for inspection and approval. This person doesn't necessarily have to be a moderator himself, but he does have to be someone that the moderators trust to act according to their wishes. The choice of software is up to this person and the other moderators. I'll be happy to provide the software that we currently use, but it's written in Perl (mostly by me and Denis McKeon), so it requires someone who knows that language, to configure and maintain it, and fix bugs. Besides moderating news.newusers.questions and news.announce.newgroups, we also maintain a web site. Much of the material needs updating. Some of the revised material could be used as periodic postings in news.announce.newusers. I had hoped to assemble a new set of postings for n.a.n, but never never got very far in this project. I did write a few, but they seem to have fallen victim to a server crash last year. So, there's a variety of work available here, for people who are interested in doing it! Here's some history, to put this situation in context... We converted this group from unmoderated to moderated in 1997. At that time, the Web was rapidly becoming more and more popular. One of the more popular browsers was version 3 of Netscape Communicator. Its newsgroup module showed a small handful of groups to first-time users, and the only one they could actually post to was news.newusers.questions; the others were moderated announcement-only groups. Traffic in n.n.q mushroomed to about a thousand postings per day. A large majority of them were pure test postings, or "noise" such as "how's the weather where you are?" or "Coke versus Pepsi?" The people who had been answering real questions regularly became frustrated by this situation, and several of them got together to start a process which eventually led to converting the group to a moderated one. At first it was a lot of work processing hundreds of postings per day, figuring out how to block various kinds of spam, dealing with occasional attacks on the moderation process, etc. But we had fun dealing with all those challenges. After a couple of years, traffic started to decline, at first mainly because Netscape Communicator 4 did not have a default subscription list of newsgroups, nor did other common newsgroup-reading software. Then, newsgroups became less "visible" versus Web-based forums, so fewer and fewer new people found their way to newsgroups at all, let alone to n.n.q. As traffic declined, we pushed n.n.q more into the background in favor of other interests and activities. I myself no longer have any enthusiasm for keeping the software running in the face of server upgrades, watching for security holes, etc. We've gotten to the point where we've decided that we really need to move on. I'd like to thank Barbara, Denis, Dennis, Heinrich, Kathy, Thor, and all the other people who have worked on this project since fall 1996 (when the idea of a moderated n.n.q first emerged). It's been great working with you all. I'd also like to thank Presbyterian College for allowing me to host the software on their servers all these years. -- ====== Please DELETE This Line and Everything Below It When Replying! ==== THIS NEWSGROUP is only for questions about newsgroups and the Internet. 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