• RESULT: comp.software.shareware.announce and comp.software.shareware.au

    From Tristan Miller@21:1/5 to All on Mon Mar 28 10:25:49 2022
    XPost: news.groups.proposals

    Result:

    comp.software.shareware.announce and comp.software.shareware.authors
    will be removed.


    The Last Call for Comments (LCC) on 2022-03-16 initiated a five-day
    period for final comments. Following this comment period, the Big-8
    Management Board has decided by a vote to remove the groups comp.software.shareware.announce and
    comp.software.shareware.authors. The vote was 2 in favour of deletion
    and 1 abstaining.


    Newsgroups Line:

    comp.software.shareware.announce Shareware announcements. (Moderated) comp.software.shareware.authors Creation of shareware. (Moderated)


    Distribution:

    news.announce.newgroups
    news.groups.proposals


    Proponent: Tristan Miller <tmiller@big-8.org>


    Charters:

    CHARTER: comp.software.shareware.authors

    This is a moderated newsgroup, intended for discussion related to the
    creation and sale of shareware software. Without limitation,
    acceptable postings may relate to:

    Development issues.
    Programming issues.
    Marketing techniques.
    Distribution techniques.

    Binary postings are not acceptable, although pointers to binary
    postings in appropriate binaries groups are. Commercial
    advertisements are not acceptable except insofar as they are bona
    fide one-off announcements of new shareware products. Cross-posting
    between this newsgroup and other comp.software.shareware.* newsgroups
    is not acceptable.

    CHARTER: comp.software.shareware.announce

    This is a moderated newsgroup, intended for informational
    announcements related to shareware products and resources. Without
    limitation, appropriate topics may include:

    Announcements of new shareware releases.
    Announcements of shareware FTP and WWW archives.
    Announcements regarding shareware related services, such as
    credit card registration services.

    This group is not intended for discussion about shareware, and
    follow-ups to articles in this group should be posted elsewhere.
    Commercial advertisements are not acceptable except insofar as they
    are bona fide one-off announcements of new shareware products or
    services. Cross-posting between this newsgroup and other comp.software.shareware.* groups is not acceptable.


    Rationale for removal:

    The current moderator of record for the newsgroups, Kathy Morgan, had
    taken over moderatorship after the previous moderators had
    disappeared. She reports to the Big-8 Management Board that during
    her tenure as moderator, the groups were not successful "because they
    never again received an adequate number of submissions to make a
    viable group". She attributes this to former community members having
    moved on to other forums. She furthermore writes, "I posted asking
    users if there was any desire to keep the groups and IIRC received
    just one response and that was in the negative. I would like to see
    them removed, since there is no longer interest in the groups and I no
    longer have access to moderate them."

    Inspection of the two groups on public servers reveals that no new
    articles have been posted since May 2017; in the three years prior to
    that, only a handful of articles per year had been posted to either
    group.

    A third and final group in the comp.software.shareware.* hierarchy, comp.software.shareware.users, was already deleted without objection
    on 2009-12-23, the RFD having established that the group had become
    moribund.

    In view of this community history, and of the near-extinction of the
    shareware model, I believe that further efforts to rescue and
    revitalize comp.software.shareware.announce and
    comp.software.shareware.authors would be unproductive. (These efforts
    include putting the groups under caretaker moderation for the sole
    purpose of posting this RFD to them.) For this reason I propose that
    the groups simply be deleted.


    Discussion so far:

    Only two users (besides the RFD proponent) have posted a comment in
    direct response to the RFD. One user sees no reason to keep comp.software.shareware.authors, and was silent on the matter of comp.software.shareware.announce. The other user, who identifies as a newsmaster, views the problem as a technical one which demands a
    technical solution, rather than the administrative action of removing
    the groups. The user furthermore considers that the spirit of the
    shareware model persists today. Summing up, they suggest keeping both
    groups and removing moderation.

    The RFD proponent has clarified that the moderator of record
    recommended deletion not for technical reasons but because she
    believes the groups had become dormant, with no prospects for a
    revival, before she lost the means to moderate them. The RFD
    proponent furthermore noted that the current Board has been repeatedly
    advised against changing the moderation status of groups because
    implementation across news servers is inconsistent.


    History of the Groups:

    1997-09-15: 1st RFD (create)
    1997-09-29: 2nd RFD (create)
    1997-10-20: 1st CFV
    1997-10-30: 2nd CFV
    1997-11-12: Result:
    comp.software.shareware.announce fails 119:27
    comp.software.shareware.authors fails 108:30
    comp.software.shareware.users fails 110:32
    1998-07-17: 1st RFD (create; revised)
    1998-08-26: 1st CFV
    1998-09-08: 2nd CFV
    1998-09-22: Result:
    comp.software.shareware.announce passes 334:22
    comp.software.shareware.authors passes 323:26
    comp.software.shareware.users passes 322:29
    2009-11-24: 1st RFD (delete comp.software.shareware.users)
    2009-12-13: LCC (delete comp.software.shareware.users)
    2009-12-20: Result: comp.software.shareware.users to be deleted
    2009-12-23: comp.software.shareware.users deleted


    History of this RFD:

    2022-02-07: 1st RFD (remove)
    2022-02-28: 2nd RFD (remove)
    2022-03-16: LCC (remove)
    2022-03-28: Result:
    comp.software.shareware.announce to be deleted
    comp.software.shareware.authors to be deleted

    --
    Usenet Big-8 Management Board
    https://www.big-8.org/
    board@big-8.org

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