Nan:2025-11-15-2nd-rfd-comp.unix.user-friendly
From Usenet Big-8 Management Board
From: Usenet Big-8 Management Board <board@big-8.org> Newsgroups: comp.unix.misc,comp.unix.user-friendly,news.announce.newgroups,news.groups.proposals Subject: 2nd RFD: Remove comp.unix.user-friendly Followup-To: news.groups.proposals,news.groups Date: Sat, 15 Nov 2025 13:36:53 EST Message-ID: <MPG.4382d871bfa8dd36989703@news.eternal-september.org> Archive-Name: comp.unix.user-friendly This is a formal Request for Discussion (RFD) to remove the following unmoderated newsgroup. comp.unix.user-friendly DISTRIBUTION: news.announce.newgroups news.groups.proposals comp.unix.misc comp.unix.user-friendly PROPONENT: Marco Moock <mmoock@big-8.org> RATIONALE: Last activity in 2009 If there is need for discussion, more general groups can be used. DISCUSSION SO FAR: Discussion took place primarily in news.groups.proposals with some further posts in news.groups. Responses were received in the threads "RFD: Remove comp.unix.bsd.386bsd.misc and comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc" (in news.groups.proposals) and "RFD: Remove comp.unix.user-friendly" (in news.groups.proposals and news.groups). No responses were received in the thread "RFD: Remove comp.unix.sys5.misc and comp.unix.sys5.r4". However, all of the points raised could be applicable to any of the five newsgroups currently under consideration, and therefore we have collated all of the responses into a single summary covering all five groups. Computer Nerd Kev argues that it is better to have separate newsgroups to discuss old platforms, as some users in the more general groups may not welcome discussions of old unmaintained software. Julien ÉLIE supports the proposals but suggests that a mass deletion of unused groups would be more efficient than removing groups a few at a time. Jesse Rehmer and ReK2 Hispagatos believe that a long list of newsgroups where many have had no traffic for years is discouraging for new users and makes it hard to find relevant groups. Computer Nerd Kev and Winston both note that they personally subscribe to groups with no traffic, and therefore lack of activity is not necessarily an indication that nobody has any interest in the group. noel, sticks, yeti, and DrunkenThon all expressed concern that removing the groups would also remove valuable historical discussions associated with those groups. Scott Dorsey countered that news service providers typically do not guarantee that old posts will remain available indefinitely in any case, and an archive server should not remove old posts if the group no longer exists. Todd McComb suggested that it would be more productive for anyone concerned about the availability of historical posts to direct their efforts at improving the state of Usenet archiving. Adam Kerman and Steve Bonine both consider the proposed changes a "make- work" activity that achieves nothing useful. GROUP: comp.unix.user-friendly Discussion of UNIX user-friendliness Charter: UNIX has a reputation of being unfriendly for non-programmers - making it difficult to use by those who need not know Unix, such as the average user in the commercial business world. This group would be a forum for discussion about UNIX user-friendliness and the availability of user-friendly software for UNIX. Presently, the above is done on an ad-hoc basis on a number of groups such as comp.editors, comp.unix.questions, etc. Posts presently asking about user-friendly utilities/software for UNIX usually attract some flamage and seem out of place in these groups, because of non-obvious differences between friendliness of Unix towards programmers and unfriendliness towards non-programmers. This group would give non-programming users a forum where their type of "user-friendliness" is meant to be the norm, not the exception. The following would be considered typical for this group:- - To clarify definitions like "user-friendliness" for the relevant groups of users. - Discussion about what user friendly software (editors, utilites, etc) are available for UNIX. - Discussion/opinions about ways of making "default" UNIX user setups more user-friendly. - Announcements of new "user-friendly" software and utilities. - Discussion on how UNIX and UNIX software could be made more friendly without endangering the work methods of the Unix programmers who feel Unix *is* already friendly for them. - Discussion on what makes a particular part of UNIX or UNIX software so unfriendly/friendly, and for which subgroup of users. History: comp.unix.user-friendly is an unmoderated newsgroup which passed its vote for creation by 280:87 as reported in news.announce.newgroups on 27 Sep 1993. PROCEDURE: Those who wish to comment on this request to remove this newsgroup should subscribe to news:news.groups.proposals and participate in the relevant threads in that newsgroup. To this end, the followup header of this RFD has been set to news.groups.proposals. All discussion of active proposals should be posted to news.groups.proposals. If desired by the readership of closely affected groups, the discussion may be crossposted to those groups, but care must be taken to ensure that all discussion appears in news.groups.proposals as well. For more information on the newsgroup removal process, please see https://www.big-8.org/wiki/Removing_newsgroups HISTORY OF THIS RFD: 2025-10-10: 1st RFD (remove) 2025-11-15: 2nd RFD (remove) -- Usenet Big-8 Management Board https://www.big-8.org/ board@big-8.org -- Usenet Big-8 Management Board https://www.big-8.org/ board@big-8.org
