XPost: news.groups.proposals

[Followups set to news.groups.proposals]

Apparently the moderation for misc.writing.screenplays.moderated is
completely broken or turned off. For the past 19 days, even the email
spam hasn't been making it into the group and new appropriate
submissions are being neither rejected nor posted.

Kathy Morgan <kmorgan@spamcop.net> wrote:

Big 8 Management Board <board@big-8.org> wrote:

2nd REQUEST FOR DISCUSSION (RFD)
moderated group misc.writing.screenplays.moderated (remove)

This is a formal Request for Discussion (RFD) to remove the moderated newsgroup misc.writing.screenplays.moderated.

NEWSGROUPS LINE:
misc.writing.screenplays.moderated Craft/business of screenwriting. (Moderated)

RATIONALE FOR REMOVAL:

Over the past few years many of the posters to misc.writing.screenplays.moderated have moved to a FaceBook group. The moderator feels that there is no longer sufficient interest in the newsgroup so it should be removed. This RFD is to determine whether
there is, in fact, enough interest to retain the group plus a qualified volunteer who wishes to take over the moderation.

I suspect that in order to have the interest to retain, the moderation absolutely has to get rid of the spam so that worthwhile posts can be
found.

I am hereby volunteering to take over the moderation, using the Robomod moderation platform hosted by Brian Edmonds. I would have volunteered sooner, but I needed to make sure first that Brian would be willing to
host the group. He is willing to do so, and Robomod is a proven
successful platform.

To be qualified, the volunteer should be acceptable to the community intending to use misc.writing.screenplays.moderated and have the
technical knowledge to be able to perform the moderation duties.

I currently moderate or co-moderate a number of groups, most of which
are mostly dead now due to lack of submissions but have been active in
the past. These include:

news.newusers.questions, hosted on HuHu
news.announce.newusers
news.admin.net-abuse.policy, hosted on Robomod
news.groups.proposals, using WebSTUMP hosted by Jonathan Kamens
news.admin.moderation, using WebSTUMP hosted on Panix by B8MB
comp.software.shareware.authors, hosted on Robomod
comp.software.shareware.announce, hosted on Robomod

Note: The group is currently shows a great deal of Usenet and Email
spam. A candidate to take over the moderation should, in addition to
the moderation policy listed in the charter below, plan to use implement measures to reduce/eliminate the spam.

I totally agree! The spam is inexcusable and has got to go! Robomod uses Bayes filters which are extremely effective. There is almost none that
makes it past the filters for me to reject for the three groups that I already moderate using Robomod.

In fact, I would expect that at first there will be a number of false positives, causing messages to be rejected that should be posted. (I
suspect some of the screen play excerpts that regulars have posted in
the past would trigger spam filters.)

I would plan to work with the regulars in mwsm to re-train the filters
as needed to make sure their posts get through or develop some kind of "token" that helps posts get to me.

misc.writing.screenplays.moderated will probably continue to be very low volume, and maybe this is an exercise in futility, but I'd like to give
it a try.

If you are a current or previous poster to
misc.writing.screenplays.moderated and would like for me to try to save
mwsm by taking over the moderation, please followup to this in news.groups.proposals to let the Big 8 Management Board know. They will
be voting on this RFD, and if there doesn't appear to be support for continuing the group with me as moderator, it will almost certainly be removed.

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