Re: [PROPOSAL] alt.comp.software.thunderbird

Andy Burns <[email protected]> wrote:

Please ask people NOT to post followups with statements of support. It's
irrelevant. You don't actually know that they'll request creation of the
group, then post to it. alt.config is for discussion of the proposal
itself.

There is no approval in alt.config, just Charter discussion.

I'm not going to bother commenting in the Firefox newsgroup proposal.
Same comments apply to both.

I suggest that you write a final draft charter of both newsgroups,
posting it as a followup in the two threads. DO NOT start new threads
even if you take my suggestions on name changes, which you can ignore.

You cannot ignore my comments on syntax.

>For your newsgroups file:

This line is correct.

>alt.comp.software.thunderbird	Discussion of Mozilla Thunderbird 
>mail/news client

Getting the syntax correct is critical. I need you to pay attention so
when you send the newgroup message, there won't be errors in it that
makes it fail.

There MUST NOT be a line break. It is a line of less than 80 characters,
assuming an 8-position tab stop. The 80th character on the line
shouldn't be used due to vagaries of how it's displayed on terminals and
emulations.

group.name<tab character>Description.

Traditionally the description ends with a period, but if you need the
final character, skip the period.

Users grep the newsgroups file. Therefore a good description is a
phrase made up of key words that do not report words in the group name.

Do not say "discussion of" for text newsgroups are for discussion.

As you proposing two newsgroups, I guess you might as well propose them
at a new third-level hierarchy.

alt.comp.mozilla.thunderbird (leaving 47 characters for description)
alt.comp.mozilla.firefox (leaving 47 characters for description)

As both "mozilla" and "thunderbird" or "firefox" will be in the group
names, do not repeat those in the description.

You should write a Charter, which you haven't done. This is a paragraph
in which you suggest examples of on-topic discussion. At the end of the
Charter, add a statement that advertising and binaries and multipart
postings with HTML alternative parts are off topic. Do not state that
spam is off topic; spam coutermeasures are deployed server-wide, not in
specific newsgroups.

You should write a Justification, which you haven't done. This is a
paragraph in which you look for discussion of Thunderbird and Firefox in
Usenet newsgroups and count the number of articles that are real
discussion, not crossposts, and not copyright-infringed articles
reposted from the Web.

btw alt.fan.mozilla is an old newsgroup but I don't know if it's used
for Firefox discussion.

You find Thunderbird and Mozilla discussion taking place in existing
newsgroups, then let people know about these proposed newsgroups and
when to request their creation locally, but you can't assume they'll
post to them. All you can do is ask. That's why you do the
Justification.

>Mozilla will shutdown their news.mozilla.org server (and corresponding 
>mailing lists) from 3rd April 2021, this will be the end of the group 
>mozilla.support.thunderbird, which has little, or no, propagation to 
>other public servers.

This bit isn't really Justification. These are newsgroups, yes, but
institutional hierarchies aren't Usenet as you typically had to
subscribe to a specific server. We still have listed several dozen
netscape.* user-support groups from a server that was probably shut down
two decades ago. It was probably a Netscape Collabra server too,
shudder.

We don't know, and you just cannot assume, that users of
news.mozilla.org will subscribe to a genuine News server. This is a big
change, so you have to let them know several things:

1) Public News servers they might subscribe to

It cannot be emphasized enough that you cannot assume that all
news.mozilla.org users are also regular Usenet users on genuine News
servers. You have to ask the ones who aren't subscribers to find a News
server to subscribe to.

2) That once you send the newgroup message, they must REQUEST creation
of the new group, for on Usenet, creation is done one server at a time.
Your newgroup message DOES NOT create the newsgroup Usenet-wide.

3) Once the group is created locally, they must subscribe to it.

What we do know is that users who are already subscribers on a genuine
News server are in a better position to use the group you propose, so
find that discussion already taking place on Usenet so you'll know whom
to market the proposed group to.

Getting a new group up and running is real work on the part of the
proponent, and the group will not be sustainable unless there is a
minimum of 10 articles a day discussion in it. If you don't get enough
users willing to participate in discussion, the group will die just like
30000 newsgroups before it.

>The existing group (including the corresponding mailing list) has seen 
>3376 messages in the last 12 months (avg 9 per day).

That's sort of Justification, but if this isn't intended to be a
newsgroup gated to a mailing list, which presents its own set of
complications, are these subscribers truly interested in a Usenet newsgroup?

>People who have stuck with usenet for so long probably have little 
>appetite to join web forums as a replacement, please indicate your 
>support for the proposed group in this thread.

Do not include this in the newsgroup message. It's nothing to do with
the Charter.