🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <8BF843D.1BB4001FE1.uuout@westonia.com>,
DAVE FLEMING <dave.fleming@westonia.com> wrote:
>
>
>CL>I look for clear, obvious, and energetic support for a group.  I don't
>CL>give a damn what the content is (unless the subject matter is forbidden
>CL>by my company's policies - in which case I simply don't participate).
>CL>That usually means 30-40 or more posted responses spread over a week or
>CL>more, and a group proponent willing to keep pushing the proposal.  But
>CL>it's not an exact number.  If I see 40 messages from people who were
>CL>bullied into it, or were mislead, or were inordinately lobbied,
>CL>I'll ignore them because they don't represent the real situation.

>        Thankyou Chris.

>        Do you mind if I take a 'time out' to make sure everyone can
>find and then include can.config in their mail subscription list?  From
>visiting several computer users, some are a quite unsure of how to
>find other conferences, especially if they are interfacing with a BBS
>which has internet newsgroups assigned to conference numbers.  I just
>want to give everyone who is interested, the time to sort out this
>problem.  This was the sole reason for posting the 'pre-RFD' which
>indicated my intentions and where the discussion will take place and
>then asked for people to let me know if they were encountering any
>problems finding Can.config.   I'm sorry that you don't agree with this
>initial proceedure.

There's no problem with taking however much time you wish.  I just
do not think you should be confusing the procedure by "asking for
interest" in advance of when you want to run your "race".   You'll just
tire out your supporters, and they'll not be here once the time comes.

>Expecting 30 to 40 postings over a week may be expecting too
>much for the type of newsgroup I am proposing so I will
>need much more time to find more Canadians interested in supporting
>this newsgroup.  Unfortunately, the way rec.nude is now, many people
>may not find it interesting from the naturist point of view to stick
>around reading rec.nude and catch the post I made there.

The guidelines for creating a group in can.* apply no matter what "type"
you think it is.  I would suggest that you don't spend too much time
trying to establish "formal support", because people seldom stick
cohesively together long enough in Usenet to accomplish anything like
that.  Your best bet I believe is to finalize your proposal,
with charter and whether you want it moderated or not, and simply
advertise it in the appropriate places (can.general, can.config,
relevant other groups such as rec.nude).  You may wish to postpone
proposing it and solicit discussion on the best way of doing it
first.

Another approach is to start up a mailing list (inherently
moderateable), and if the mailing list takes off we take that
as proof the group is viable.

When Kenda Gee tried to start can.community.asian, the amount of
support was clearly inadequate.  But he persisted, created a
mailing list, and within a very short time it was obvious that
a group should be created.  The group took off with quite a bang.

You might want to chat with Kenda - I'm sure he'd be pleased
to give you more details of what he did.

While rec.nude is quite noisy, you should be able to garner quite
a bit of interest if your proposal is moderated.

>Two years ago Rec.nude had few problems like what we are seeing now,
>especially X-posted off-topic messages that account for between
>30 to 60% of the messages we have to wade though now.  It's really
>quite maddening how this nice conference has degenerated and as
>news administrators, you are bound to stand by and let it happen.

Well, if you knew a little more about what I do, you'd realize
that your last sentence "you are bound to stand by and let it
happen" is quite amusingly ironic - especially given who was
one of rec.nude's biggest nuisances (and my Organization line
above).  But that's not relevant.

I can certainly appreciate the desire to moderate the group - if
only to keep Grubor's postings out ;-)

>This brings up another pre-RFD topic that has to do with
>moderation such as being proposed in rec.nude and in the mailing
>list discussion group.  Can we institute a 3 moderator system that
>would be used to remove obviously off-topic subjects, especially
>topics that come from 20 other newsgroups X-posted in one message?

You most certainly can.  The Moderator's Handbook (you get one
automatically when you become a moderator, - I've just misplaced
the URL somewhere) discusses a lot of this.  Many groups are
multiply-moderated in this fashion.  There are a number of
software packages that are capable of doing this.

It is very important, however, the charter for a moderated group
states _very_ explicitly what the group is for, and what the
posting rules are.  Further, given the track record in such areas
as soc.religion.islam, it is important to implement democratic
checks and balances, if only between the three moderators... 

There's a couple of mailing lists of interest here:

	moderators@uunet.uu.net - general newsgroup moderators list
	moderators-advise@uunet.uu.net - advice for existing and would-be
					 moderators.

One of my "accomplishments" is being a member of moderators-advice ;-)

>My question is about how doable is it for a Can.* group, and if
>it is possible, can you do the implementation of a moderated group?

I'm not sure whether it's administratively feasible for me to run
the "implementation".   But I can provide guidance on who to talk to,
where to get more information, and other stuff.

>If you are unable to take a look at setting up a moderated group,
>could you recommend someone who would check this out?

>This is very very important, after seeing rec.nude getting trashed...
>I don't want to go through with any RFD without knowing how hard
>or easy it is to get a moderated group.  I prefer to do an
>RFD on a moderated naturist newsgroup instead of an unmoderated
>group as was my original intention.

By all means, go for the moderated group if you think that's preferable.
The administrative technical issues are surmountable - they've been done
before.  Your only concern at this point is that this is the desired
approach, and you can find some people tentatively willing to moderate
the group.  I will personally ensure that, when the time comes, the
implementation end will be adequately covered.

>    ...I am trying to avoid future problems such as the ones
>that plague rec.nude.

I can certainly appreciate that - just do a dejanews/altavista
search on "Grubor" AND "Lewis". ;-)

I warn you that moderating a naturist group might a rather hot item, and
perhaps even personally dangerous.  So you should be prepared with
a _very_ thick skin.  See the previously aforementioned dejanews search...