Tristan Miller: Moderator Vacancy Investigation: soc.history.war.world-war-ii

2023-09-29T15:00:01Z

Moderator Vacancy Investigation: soc.history.war.world-war-ii

New page

<pre>
From: Usenet Big-8 Management Board <board@big-8.org>
Newsgroups: alt.war.world-war-two,news.announce.newgroups,news.groups.proposals,soc.history.war.misc,soc.history.war.world-war-ii
Subject: Moderator Vacancy Investigation: soc.history.war.world-war-ii
Followup-To: news.groups.proposals
Date: Thu, 28 Sep 2023 10:15:17 EDT
Organization: Usenet Big-8 Management Board
Message-ID: <MPG.3f7f9aa2aab7cb969896c9@news.eternal-september.org>
Archive-Name: soc.history.war

This is a formal Moderator Vacancy Investigation (MVI), begun because
the moderated newsgroup soc.history.war.world-war-ii is not functioning,
and may have been abandoned by its moderator. This investigation will
attempt to verify the reasons for non-function, and may result in the
removal of the group or the selection and installation of a new
moderator. In practice, the Big-8 Management Board considers the third
alternative--changing the status of the group from moderated to
unmoderated--as likely to cause more harm than good.

The Big-8 Management Board has been approached by "Bixby"
<bixby@sctb.ch>, who has informed us that the moderation for
soc.history.war.world-war-ii is not functioning. They have also informed
us that they used to be a participant in the group, posting at the time
under their earlier alias of "Comrade Yum Yum". Bixby has volunteered to
take over moderation duties for the group, if no reason exists for them
not to do so.

Bixby has also communicated the following about their choice of alias:
-----
It is an alias, and the fact it is an alias should be known.

Each major on-line project I am involved in has its own alias, as a
way to maintain my personal privacy on-line.

My identity is not a secret, and will be disclosed on request to any
group member or the board, but when posting to systems which can be
automatically scanned, an alias is prudent for privacy.

(The origin is "Horace E. Bixby", the Mississippi boat pilot who
taught Samuel Clemens.)
-----

Followups to this post have been set to news.groups.proposals, to ensure
that any resulting discussion can be followed in one place.

RATIONALE:

Attempts to post to the group currently result in a bounce message from
the ISC moderation relay.

The most recent moderator, Stephen Graham, posted to the group on 7th
June 2017 to report that the group's moderation platform, robomod.net,
had suffered a catastrophic failure (Message-ID: <epqo2qFak6qU1
@mid.individual.net>). Robomod.net was never restored to service, and it
appears that no alternative moderation system was ever put in place.
Stephen Graham posted a followup on 26th October 2017 (Message-ID:
<f5ee8gForl2U2@mid.individual.net>) to say "As you can tell, robomod.net
has not been restored to service. At this point, I expect most former
readers have found alternative fora."

The group has been dormant since then, apart from a single post in 2019
that may not have been officially approved.

It therefore appears that no alternative moderation system was ever set
up, and that the moderator abandoned the group at this point without
appointing a successor.

Sadly, we have discovered that Stephen Graham died soon afterwards, in
2019. All of us thank Mr. Graham for generously volunteering his time as
a group moderator, and extend our condolences to all who knew him.

https://www.ece.uw.edu/spotlight/remembering-steve-graham/
https://web.archive.org/web/20190704082457/https://people.ece.uw.edu/gra
ham_stephen/

Because of this unfortunate news, it seems clear that a vacancy exists
and that a new moderator could be appointed.

The Big-8 Management Board is particularly keen to solicit input from
former participants in soc.history.war.world-war-ii, as the Board
members are unfamiliar with the community and are not well placed to
judge whether a prospective moderator would be a good fit. To this end,
this MVI has been crossposted to soc.history.war.misc and alt.war.world-
war-two. These groups have recently been used by some of the people who
previously posted in soc.history.war.world-war-ii, which will allow the
remaining community to give their views on the appointment of a new
moderator.

NEWSGROUPS LINE:

soc.history.war.world-war-ii History & events of World War Two
(Moderated)

HISTORY OF THE GROUP:

soc.history.war.world-war-ii was proposed by Joel Furr
<jfurr@acpub.duke.edu> in early 1994, along with soc.history.war.misc.

soc.history.war.world-war-ii passed its vote 181:17 on 19 April 1994.

CHARTER AND MODERATION POLICY OF SOC.HISTORY.WAR.WORLD-WAR-II:

The charter of soc.history.war.world-war-ii: Discussion of the
era 1939-1945 in particular, but ranging as far back as 1918 and
as far forward as the 1950's for discussion of events leading to
the War and post-war events such as the occupation of Japan and
Germany. The discussion will be limited to social, political,
military, economic, technological, demographic, and historial
aspects of World War II, including discussion of:

* Arms limitations treaties in the 1920's, intended to head
off any future war
* the Weimar Republic
* the rise of the Italian Fascists
* the Japanese war with China
* the rise of the Nazi Party
* American isolationism
* Franco-British appeasement
* Italian misadventures in Africa
* German occupation of the Sudentenland and Austria
* the war proper, 1939-1945
* the Manhattan Project
* the Holocaust
* Post-war occupation of Japan and Germany
* Post-war governments of Europe
* and so on.

In other words, the mandate for soc.history.war.world-war-ii is
intended to be broad, rather than narrow, with moderation in
place less to limit discussion than to keep out Gannon and the
Holocaust Revisionists and other malicious posters. Should Dan
Gannon or Serdar Argic submit articles which actually discuss
World War Two rather than spreading their brand of conspiracy
theory, their articles will be approved for submission as well.

Moderation policy:
------------------

Soc.history.war.world-war-ii will have a very relaxed moderation
policy. The main purpose, as noted above, for moderation of this
group is to prevent it from turning into a revisionist flamefest
akin to misc.headlines or soc.history. As such, any message
which actually discusses World War II will be approved for
posting, provided that it does not attempt to claim that events
such as the Holocaust never happened. There are other groups for
discussion of that question, most notably, alt.revisionism.

Moderation rules:

* Articles which discuss World War Two and its events will be
approved for posting.

* Articles arguing that the Holocaust never happened will not
be approved for posting.

* Articles must contain original thought. Lengthy quoting of
source material with a couple of lines of comment at the end
will not be approved for posting.

* Blank messages, test messages, advertisements,
MAKE.MONEY.FAST, and so forth, will not be approved for
posting.

* Articles which include excessive quoting (e.g. an article
which quotes an entire other article in order to add a few
comments at the end) will be trimmed down by the moderator in
question.

* An article MUST have a valid reply-to address or it will
not be approved for posting.

* Rejected articles will be shared with the other moderators
for group consideration.

As noted below, the group will be group-moderated, to minimize
delay between submission and posting and to keep the group
running when the traffic becomes heavy.

Moderators will be added by majority vote of the existing
moderators and moderators will be removed by 2/3 vote in the
event that a moderator is shown to be failing to do the job (i.e.
not posting anything).

DISTRIBUTION:

news.announce.newgroups
news.groups.proposals
soc.history.war.world-war-ii
soc.history.war.misc
alt.war.world-war-two

PROPONENT:

Bixby <bixby@sctb.ch>

PROCEDURE:

Those who wish to comment on this moderator vacancy investigation should
subscribe to news.groups.proposals and participate in the relevant
threads in that newsgroup.

To this end, the followup header of this MVI has been set to
news.groups.proposals.

For more information on the MVI process, please see

http://www.big-8.org/wiki/Moderator_Vacancy_Investigations

CHANGE HISTORY:

2023-09-28 Moderator Vacancy Investigation
</pre>

Nan:2023-09-28-mvi-soc.history.war.world-war-ii - Revision history

Tristan Miller: Moderator Vacancy Investigation: soc.history.war.world-war-ii