This is an official communication from the Usenet Big-8 Management
Board. Please note that followups are set to news.groups.
In March 2021, the Board joined Open Collective Europe ><https://opencollective.com/europe> in order to make all of its
financial activities transparent.
Members of the public will now be able
to see a complete record of the Board's income and expenditures. >Historically, the Board's activities have been financed entirely through >donations by its members, though we have decided to allow for donations
from members of the public via Open Collective Europe.
We use donations primarily to pay our web/news hosting bills, and
secondarily to cover expenses associated with the Board's outreach
activities (e.g., attendance at technical conferences where we speak
about the Board's work) and to help fund maintenance and development of
STUMP and WebSTUMP, the GNU packages for newsgroup robomoderation.
For further information, please see the "Finances" page on the Board's >website at <https://www.big-8.org/wiki/Finances> and the Board's Open >Collective page at <https://opencollective.com/usenetbig8>.
Conference travel?
Tristan Miller <tmiller@big-8.org> wrote:
This is an official communication from the Usenet Big-8 Management
Board. Please note that followups are set to news.groups.
In March 2021, the Board joined Open Collective Europe >><https://opencollective.com/europe> in order to make all of its
financial activities transparent.
You spend, what, a few hundred bucks a year on Web hosting and related
stuff? Of all the issues with respect to the Bambies, the possibility of >embezzlement at no point entered my mind.
"Adam H. Kerman" <ahk@chinet.com> writes:
Tristan Miller <tmiller@big-8.org> wrote:
This is an official communication from the Usenet Big-8 Management
Board. Please note that followups are set to news.groups.
In March 2021, the Board joined Open Collective Europe >>><https://opencollective.com/europe> in order to make all of its
financial activities transparent.
You spend, what, a few hundred bucks a year on Web hosting and related >>stuff? Of all the issues with respect to the Bambies, the possibility of >>embezzlement at no point entered my mind.
Having a practical and reputable fundraising vehicle is more than just
about transparency, and transparency is more than just protection
against embezzlement.
More money can enable the Board to do more practical, useful things
to support Usenet.
Transparency can give useful feedback to the Usenet community how the
money is being spent, and encourage volunteers to contribute their time
and labor to pursue projects that can be accomplished with more money.
I'm not currently a Board member, nor do I have insight into current
Board activities beyond what's posted to the newsgroups and in the
meeting minutes at big-8.org. Conference travel was one thing mentioned
in this thread, but I recall other ideas being kicked around by previous >iterations of the Board with the caveat of "if only" (if only we had the >volunteers, if only we had the money.) Things like:
- Switching moderation bot accounts from retail individual accounts at
Panix to a Board-managed and configured "colocation" or "co-lo"
server in a data center.
- There might still be value to incorporate to limit liability for
Board members. A corporation could also carry, and afford the
premiums for, liability insurance (it is unlikely that the Board
would be held criminally liable for the acts of others on Usenet, but
civil liability from libel/defamation suits was mentioned).
- Running a robust and trained newsgroup mentoring program.
One with
experts that could shepherd proponents through all phases of the
newsgroup creation process, as well as assist with the challenges of
running a newsgroup. Too many proponents got discouraged and quit
due to challenges with having to write a properly-formatted RFD and
respond to vexatious criticism during the proposal process.
Once
created, many newsgroups failed due to challenges like having to
budget expenses like moderation site hosting,
having the volunteer labor to run a newsgroup day-to-day,
and building an audience with posting activity containing useful
threads of discussion.
All of
this while getting little to no useful feedback, even from the Board.
- It would be easier to recruit membership for a Board if it was a
working Board, and doing useful, practical things for the betterment
of Usenet.
The last iteration of the Board just gradually stopped
carrying out its duties more and more until it finally died.
Recruited Board members quickly got bored, saw their only role as a
target of criticism, and left. Some remaining Board members got into
distractive arguments and talking past each other, advocating
impractical blue-sky proposals unlikely to be implemented, while
leaving the actual practical, day-to-day work of processing the RFD
and MVI queues unattended.
I welcome the enthusiasm, foresight, and work-ethic of the new Board to
help solve some of these problems, and implement some of these
worthwhile proposals.
Paul W. Schleck <pschleck@panix.com> wrote:
"Adam H. Kerman" <ahk@chinet.com> writes:
Tristan Miller <tmiller@big-8.org> wrote:
In March 2021, the Board joined Open Collective Europe
<https://opencollective.com/europe> in order to make all of its
financial activities transparent.
You spend, what, a few hundred bucks a year on Web hosting and related
stuff? Of all the issues with respect to the Bambies, the possibility of >>> embezzlement at no point entered my mind.
Having a practical and reputable fundraising vehicle is more than just
about transparency, and transparency is more than just protection
against embezzlement.
Sure. Waste and abuse, too. I wasn't concerned given the amount of money involved. It can't hurt, though.
More money can enable the Board to do more practical, useful things
to support Usenet.
The role of hierarchy administration is extremely limited in supporting Usenet, and the Big 8 isn't Usenet anyway.
Paul W. Schleck <pschleck@panix.com> wrote:
"Adam H. Kerman" <ahk@chinet.com> writes:
Tristan Miller <tmiller@big-8.org> wrote:
This is an official communication from the Usenet Big-8 Management >>>>Board. Please note that followups are set to news.groups.
In March 2021, the Board joined Open Collective Europe >>>><https://opencollective.com/europe> in order to make all of its >>>>financial activities transparent.
You spend, what, a few hundred bucks a year on Web hosting and related >>>stuff? Of all the issues with respect to the Bambies, the possibility of >>>embezzlement at no point entered my mind.
Having a practical and reputable fundraising vehicle is more than just >>about transparency, and transparency is more than just protection
against embezzlement.
Sure. Waste and abuse, too. I wasn't concerned given the amount of money involved. It can't hurt, though.
More money can enable the Board to do more practical, useful things
to support Usenet.
The role of hierarchy administration is extremely limited in supporting Usenet, and the Big 8 isn't Usenet anyway.
I would prefer that Usenet be left to its own devices and the Big-8
Board stick to nothing but hierarchy administration.
On 2021-05-13, Adam H. Kerman <ahk@chinet.com> wrote:
Paul W. Schleck <pschleck@panix.com> wrote:
"Adam H. Kerman" <ahk@chinet.com> writes:
Tristan Miller <tmiller@big-8.org> wrote:
This is an official communication from the Usenet Big-8 Management
Board. Please note that followups are set to news.groups.
In March 2021, the Board joined Open Collective Europe
<https://opencollective.com/europe> in order to make all of its
financial activities transparent.
But there seems to be a plan to raise and spend large amounts of
money. What's the point of that?
As for one of the arguments to which you're replying, that Usenet
needs money to pay for moderating expenses, it depends on the false assumption that there's a need for moderated groups. If people want
censored discussions, let them use Web forums.
Greetings.
On 27/05/2021 21.37, Peter J Ross wrote:
On 2021-05-13, Adam H. Kerman <ahk@chinet.com> wrote:
Paul W. Schleck <pschleck@panix.com> wrote:
"Adam H. Kerman" <ahk@chinet.com> writes:
Tristan Miller <tmiller@big-8.org> wrote:
This is an official communication from the Usenet Big-8 Management >>>>>> Board. Please note that followups are set to news.groups.
In March 2021, the Board joined Open Collective Europe
<https://opencollective.com/europe> in order to make all of its
financial activities transparent.
But there seems to be a plan to raise and spend large amounts of
money. What's the point of that?
No, there are no firm plans to raise and spend large amounts of money.
Per our financial statement at <https://www.big-8.org/wiki/Finances>,
the Board's yearly operating expenses are about $200, and this is all we
are specifically aiming to cover. At the moment we're meeting these
expenses out of our own pockets, though anyone else is welcome to chip in.
Any surplus donations would go to outreach or to development of
(Web)STUMP.
The point of these is to help maintain (or maybe even
regrow) the user base and technical apparatus of the Big-8 so that it --
and by extension the rest of discussion-oriented Usenet -- can continue
to operate on a social, technical, and administrative level.
We've
already been engaging in these outreach and development activities,
including talks at tech conferences and maintenance/refactoring of the
STUMP codebase and documentation. None of this activity has incurred expenses so far, but in the event that we find ourselves with surplus
funds, we could arrange (for example) to contract a student developer to
help us improve STUMP.
As for one of the arguments to which you're replying, that Usenet
needs money to pay for moderating expenses, it depends on the false
assumption that there's a need for moderated groups. If people want
censored discussions, let them use Web forums.
Even a moderated newsgroup has many advantages over web forums
(including all the advantages you mentioned in your post).
Regards,
Tristan
. . .
When I was a moderator of soc.men.moderated (and Adam can share with
you all the well-deserved jokes at my expense), I offered to donate
some money to the man (whose name now escapes me) who ran the Robomod
site, but he told me that it didn't cost him enough to run the site
for a donation to be necessary.
. . .
No, there are no firm plans to raise and spend large amounts of money.
Per our financial statement at <https://www.big-8.org/wiki/Finances>,
the Board's yearly operating expenses are about $200, and this is all we
are specifically aiming to cover. At the moment we're meeting these
expenses out of our own pockets, though anyone else is welcome to chip in.
This is a matter of pennies. Why is an impressive financial statement
needed?
Any surplus donations would go to outreach or to development of
(Web)STUMP.
In other words, you want to support moderated newsgroups, which have
been obsoleted in many ways by the Web, instead of supporting
unmoderated newsgroups, which are Usenet's distinctive difference from
the Web.
The point of these is to help maintain (or maybe even
regrow) the user base and technical apparatus of the Big-8 so that it --
and by extension the rest of discussion-oriented Usenet -- can continue
to operate on a social, technical, and administrative level.
All that's needed from a hierarchy administrator is to post a monthly
list of newsgroups, and to keep an eye open in case somebody proposes
a potentially useful new newsgroup (which isn't going to happen in our lifetimes). I could do that with news.individual.net, for a lot less
than $200 per annum.
When I was a moderator of soc.men.moderated (and Adam can share with
you all the well-deserved jokes at my expense), I offered to donate
some money to the man (whose name now escapes me) who ran the Robomod
site, but he told me that it didn't cost him enough to run the site
for a donation to be necessary.
Even if moderated newsgroups are the FUTURE OF USENET, why do you need
to raise money?
Let the moderated newsgroups die. When they're dead, rmgroup them.
Having a practical and reputable fundraising vehicle is more than just
about transparency, and transparency is more than just protection
against embezzlement. More money can enable the Board to do more
practical, useful things to support Usenet. Transparency can give
useful feedback to the Usenet community how the money is being spent,
and encourage volunteers to contribute their time and labor to pursue projects that can be accomplished with more money.
I'm not currently a Board member, nor do I have insight into current
Board activities beyond what's posted to the newsgroups and in the
meeting minutes at big-8.org. Conference travel was one thing mentioned
in this thread, but I recall other ideas being kicked around by previous iterations of the Board with the caveat of "if only" (if only we had the volunteers, if only we had the money.)
- It would be easier to recruit membership for a Board if it was a
working Board, and doing useful, practical things for the betterment
of Usenet.
Regarding your proposed newsgroup mentoring program, a past iteration of
the Board seems to have done something like this (see ><https://www.big-8.org/wiki/Group_Mentors>). We've already heard back
from some former Group Mentors who have expressed a willingness to
resume their roles, though as has been discussed elsewhere, newgroup
requests are rare enough these days that this may not be necessary, and
the fact that mentorship was seen as necessary in the first place may >indicate that streamlining the group creation process may be a better
first step.
If you've been following our minutes, you'll have seen that
we did get one expression of interest in creating a new group lately
which made it as far as a draft proposal, but it seemed to fizzle out at
that stage. We had hoped that the process could have come to completion
so that we would have gotten a better idea of how the entirety of it
could be improved.
- It would be easier to recruit membership for a Board if it was a
working Board, and doing useful, practical things for the betterment
of Usenet.
Thanks; we think so too and this is exactly why we've been taking pains
to make the Board's activity more visible (i.e., by redesigning and >refactoring our website, posting detailed minutes of our weekly
meetings, and speaking about Usenet and our work at events outside Usenet).
Step one has got to be change your attitude with regard to group
creation. [...]
Step two has got to be adjusting the proponent's attitude so he
understands that his job is to promote discussion of the topic and to
promote creation and use of the newsgroup. [...]
Step three has got to be alt-style justification. [...]
Step four has got to be eliminate all the boilerplate language required
in proposals Bambie is so in love with.
If you've been following our minutes, you'll have seen that
we did get one expression of interest in creating a new group lately
which made it as far as a draft proposal, but it seemed to fizzle out at
that stage. We had hoped that the process could have come to completion
so that we would have gotten a better idea of how the entirety of it
could be improved.
Too bad there's no newsgroup on Usenet in which drafts can be discussed
and that proposal-making can be done in a sooper-sekrit process only.
- It would be easier to recruit membership for a Board if it was a
working Board, and doing useful, practical things for the betterment
of Usenet.
Thanks; we think so too and this is exactly why we've been taking pains
to make the Board's activity more visible (i.e., by redesigning and
refactoring our website, posting detailed minutes of our weekly
meetings, and speaking about Usenet and our work at events outside Usenet).
There couldn't possibly be enough hierarchy administration duties for
weekly meetings.
On 31/05/2021 16.04, Adam H. Kerman wrote:
Step one has got to be change your attitude with regard to group
creation. [...]
Step two has got to be adjusting the proponent's attitude so he
understands that his job is to promote discussion of the topic and to >>promote creation and use of the newsgroup. [...]
Step three has got to be alt-style justification. [...]
Step four has got to be eliminate all the boilerplate language required
in proposals Bambie is so in love with.
Thanks for the recommendations. Personally speaking, they all seem
sensible to me. (But it's not really fair to say that any of us are >enamoured with the boilerplate language; it predates the tenure of all >current Board members. We kept it in place on assuming our positions
but if we come to believe that it's an unreasonable obstacle to the
proposal process -- as the recent incident described below might
indicate -- then we may simplify or eliminate it.)
If you've been following our minutes, you'll have seen that
we did get one expression of interest in creating a new group lately >>>which made it as far as a draft proposal, but it seemed to fizzle out at >>>that stage. We had hoped that the process could have come to completion >>>so that we would have gotten a better idea of how the entirety of it >>>could be improved.
Too bad there's no newsgroup on Usenet in which drafts can be discussed
and that proposal-making can be done in a sooper-sekrit process only.
The proposer had gotten in touch with us directly and we were guiding
him through the existing process, which as you know does indeed involve >public discussion on news.groups.proposals. IIRC he sent us a draft RFD
to check over and we made some formal corrections, but we lost contact
with the with proposer right at the point where the RFD should have been >posted to news.announce.newgroups.
. . .
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