RFD: reorganization of rec.arts.anime.*

[Rob Maxwell]

REQUEST FOR DISCUSSION (RFD)
reorganization of rec.arts.anime.*

This is a formal Request For Discussion (RFD) for the reorganization of a
Usenet hierarchy, as listed below:


NEWSGROUPS:

rec.arts.anime.games Group will be removed.
rec.arts.anime.models Group will be removed.
rec.arts.anime.music Group will be removed.


RATIONALE:

First the numbers -- the first number is the total posts for the year 2007,
and the second number is the total posts for the month of December 2007.

rec.arts.anime.creative 133 4
rec.arts.anime.fandom 524 18
rec.arts.anime.games 4 0
rec.arts.anime.info 33 3
rec.arts.anime.marketplace 266 17
rec.arts.anime.models 55 2
rec.arts.anime.music 64 5
[There were 10s of 1000s of posts in rec.arts.anime.misc last year.]

As can be seen by the above numbers, four newsgroups had less than 100 posts
in all of last year [2007]. rec.arts.anime.info is a moderated newsgroup
that had an unhealthy moderator that recently passed away, hence the low
traffic. Furthermore, there is some desire to retain the newsgroup, with the
addition of a new moderator(s) at a later date.

Of the remaining three, what little discussion there was previously in
rec.arts.anime.games and rec.arts.anime.music, has migrated to
rec.arts.anime.misc. rec.arts.anime.models is mostly eBay ads with the rare
on-topic post garnering one to zero replies. Given the near absence of
on-topic traffic, I propose the removal of these three newsgroups.


HISTORY:

All three were newgrouped as part of the second rec.arts.anime.*
sub-hierarchical reorganization on March 18, 1996.




PROCEDURE:

For more information on the newsgroup creation process, please see:

http://www.big-8.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=policies:creation

Those who wish to influence the development of this RFD and its final
resolution should subscribe to news.groups.proposals and participate in the
relevant threads in that newsgroup. This is both a courtesy to groups in
which discussion of creating a new group is off-topic as well as the best
method of making sure that one's comments or criticisms are heard.

All discussion of active proposals should be posted to news.groups.proposals.
To this end, the 'Followup-To' header of this RFD has been set to this group.

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.

We urge those who would like to read or post in the proposed newsgroup
to make a comment to that effect in this thread; we ask proponents to
keep a list of such positive posts with the relevant message ID
(e.g., Barney Fife, <***@sysmatrix.net>).
Such lists of positive feedback for the proposal may constitute good
evidence that the group will be well-used if it is created.




DISTRIBUTION:

This document has been posted to the following newsgroups:

news.announce.newgroups (moderated)
news.groups.proposals (moderated)
rec.arts.anime.games
rec.arts.anime.models
rec.arts.anime.music


PROPONENT:

Rob Maxwell <robu-***@excite.com>



CHANGE HISTORY:

2008-01-16 1st RFD

[Peter J Ross]

[crosspost adjusted to include news.groups, the established,
well-propagated place for such discussions]

In news.announce.newgroups on Wed, 16 Jan 2008 22:01:57 -0800, Rob

Post by Rob Maxwell
REQUEST FOR DISCUSSION (RFD)
reorganization of rec.arts.anime.*
This is a formal Request For Discussion (RFD) for the reorganization of a

I wouldn't call this a reorganisation: it's merely three proposed
rmgroups. But that's not important.

Post by Rob Maxwell
rec.arts.anime.games Group will be removed.
rec.arts.anime.models Group will be removed.
rec.arts.anime.music Group will be removed.

There's no reason in principle to keep these groups unless somebody
wants to use them - but if anybody *does* want to use them, now is a
good time to speak up, even if, for whatever reason, you can't or
won't jump through all the hoops required to post in
news.groups.proposals.

However, there are practical issues that need to be considered. These
affect *all* proposals for removing unmoderated Big-8 groups.

The problem with rmgroups is that they're not very widely implemented.
For example, news.software.anu-news was rmgrouped nine months ago but
is still carried by more than half the servers listed at
<http://groupsearch.aacity.net/engine.html>. It's unlikely that the
rmgrouping of the three Anime groups will be more successful.

Why is this a bad thing? I can best explain by comparing two
hypothetical scenarios with the real situation.

1. If rmgroups were universally effective, there would be no problem.
Any posters who wanted to discuss Anime games, music or models would
probably find their way to the .misc group at their first attempt.

2. If rmgroups were universally *in*effective, or if this RFD were
withdrawn or voted down, there would be a small inconvenience.
Somebody would have to monitor the games, music and models groups for
posts in order to advise posters to ask their questions in the more
populous groups.

3. But with a 50% rmgroup success rate, many posters will still find
the rmgrouped groups, which will mean that those groups will still
have to be monitored if the new posters aren't to be lost - but many
of the posters who could monitor the groups won't have access to them.

The third case may seem no worse than the second - halving the number
of "monitors" should be harmless if the number of new users who need
to be redirected is also halved - but in practice it will be the
experienced "monitors" who will lose access to the groups, not the
clue-requiring newbies. Experienced users tend to use well-managed
servers, which are likely to implement these rmgroups, while newbies
tend to use whatever rubbish their ISP offers.

For these reasons I think that rmgrouping unmoderated groups in the
Big 8 is at present a bad idea. (rmgrouping moderated groups is fine,
since the moderator can shut them down in practice as well as in
theory.)

The long-term solution is for the self-appointed, self-named,
self-important, self-deluding "Big 8 Management Board" to contact the
many news admins who ignore their rmgroups (and to a slightly lesser
extent their newgroups) in an effort to persuade them to do otherwise.
If the B8mbies succeed, even in part, they'll finally have something
to be proud of. Meanwhile they should stop further fragmentation of
the Big 8 into "official" and "unofficial" versions. (And yes, this
means that I'm suggesting a moratorium on all Big-8 newsgroup creation
and removal. Desperate illnesses require desperate cures.)

The short-term solution is for this RFD to be withdrawn until such
time that there's reason to believe that it will do Usenet, and
discussion of Anime on Usenet, more good than harm.

[Ru Igarashi]

Post by Peter J Ross
[crosspost adjusted to include news.groups, the established,
well-propagated place for such discussions]

[crosspost re-adjusted back to n.g.proposals]

Post by Peter J Ross
In news.announce.newgroups on Wed, 16 Jan 2008 22:01:57 -0800, Rob

Post by Rob Maxwell
REQUEST FOR DISCUSSION (RFD)
reorganization of rec.arts.anime.*
This is a formal Request For Discussion (RFD) for the reorganization of a

I wouldn't call this a reorganisation: it's merely three proposed
rmgroups. But that's not important.

Post by Rob Maxwell
rec.arts.anime.games Group will be removed.
rec.arts.anime.models Group will be removed.
rec.arts.anime.music Group will be removed.

...

Post by Peter J Ross
However, there are practical issues that need to be considered. These
affect *all* proposals for removing unmoderated Big-8 groups.
The problem with rmgroups is that they're not very widely implemented.
For example, news.software.anu-news was rmgrouped nine months ago but
is still carried by more than half the servers listed at
<http://groupsearch.aacity.net/engine.html>. It's unlikely that the
rmgrouping of the three Anime groups will be more successful.
Why is this a bad thing? I can best explain by comparing two
hypothetical scenarios with the real situation.
1. If rmgroups were universally effective, there would be no problem.
Any posters who wanted to discuss Anime games, music or models would
probably find their way to the .misc group at their first attempt.

You have this backwards, most folks already use .misc and work
their way to .music, if that even ever occurs these days. The
natural inclination currently is to post to .misc first, regardless.
This despite the fact that at least 20% of RAA.* readers browse
RAA.music. Another way of putting it is that these groups are
treated as if they have ALREADY BEEN REMOVED.

Post by Peter J Ross
2. If rmgroups were universally *in*effective, or if this RFD were
withdrawn or voted down, there would be a small inconvenience.
Somebody would have to monitor the games, music and models groups for
posts in order to advise posters to ask their questions in the more
populous groups.
3. But with a 50% rmgroup success rate, many posters will still find
the rmgrouped groups, which will mean that those groups will still
have to be monitored if the new posters aren't to be lost - but many
of the posters who could monitor the groups won't have access to them.

Non-issues. The groups are dead and in the case of music, raa.misc
already carries the bulk of postings. To some degree, this is
because the group is moribund: the perception is probably that
risk of not getting a response in RAA.music is much higher than
in RAA.misc, and from what I've seen the perception looks valid.
Further, the actual "risk" of losing useful postings due to the
above reasons is tiny when considering how much we already get in
raa.misc in this scenario. Speaking as a regular of raa.music
and the FAQ maintainer for this group, I have no intention of
monitoring the group once the rmgroup is issued; that's how minor
an issue I think this is.

Post by Peter J Ross
The third case may seem no worse than the second - halving the number
of "monitors" should be harmless if the number of new users who need
to be redirected is also halved - but in practice it will be the
experienced "monitors" who will lose access to the groups, not the
clue-requiring newbies. Experienced users tend to use well-managed
servers, which are likely to implement these rmgroups, while newbies
tend to use whatever rubbish their ISP offers.
For these reasons I think that rmgrouping unmoderated groups in the
Big 8 is at present a bad idea. (rmgrouping moderated groups is fine,
since the moderator can shut them down in practice as well as in
theory.)

To some extent, maybe even largely, these are irrelevant reasons.
They don't apply simply because there are NO posters for these
groups. You can't have a problem with lost postings and lost
posters if there aren't any to begin with. There's a reason
why these groups are being called "unused".

Post by Peter J Ross
The long-term solution is for the

...

Post by Peter J Ross
"Big 8 Management Board" to contact the
many news admins who ignore their rmgroups (and to a slightly lesser
extent their newgroups) in an effort to persuade them to do otherwise.

...

Post by Peter J Ross
(And yes, this
means that I'm suggesting a moratorium on all Big-8 newsgroup creation
and removal. Desperate illnesses require desperate cures.)

I disagree. If there are no new rmgroups, then there will be less
pressure, or at least less motivation, for NSPs to start honoring
rmgroups. If you keep rmgroups sporadic or even non-existent, then
there's no reason for NSPs to take any requests to remove groups
currently considered off the newsgroups list. If you provide
continued activity, show the form of that activity, show the means
of validating control messages, you give NSPs more confidence in
the system or process, and hence motivation to honor rmgroups. As
such I think it is important for the Board to continue to
process rmgroup requests as an aid to convince NSPs to honor
both group creation and removal.

Post by Peter J Ross
The short-term solution is for this RFD to be withdrawn until such
time that there's reason to believe that it will do Usenet, and
discussion of Anime on Usenet, more good than harm.

Speaking as one of the vocal supporters of creating RAA.music,
as the FAQ maintainer for RAA.music and as a regular of it:

I support the removal of the group. It no longer attracts
attention, and I find watching the group for postings more of
a hassle than help in this state. Attempts to redirect music
related discussion to the group have been fruitless, and the
volume of .misc is manageable enough to allow wider ranging
discussions. When the group was being discussed for creation
back in the 90's, my argument was to give music discussion
more visibility. That worked while RAA was extremely busy,
but now is no longer necessary. So I say take the RFD through
the entire process.

ru

[Martin X. Moleski, SJ]

... Speaking as one of the vocal supporters of creating RAA.music,
I support the removal of the group. ...

FWIW, I'll vote for the removals in the RFD.

I appreciate your thoughtful analysis of the situation.

Thanks!

Marty

[Thomas Lee]

Post by Martin X. Moleski, SJ

... Speaking as one of the vocal supporters of creating RAA.music,
I support the removal of the group. ...

FWIW, I'll vote for the removals in the RFD.
I appreciate your thoughtful analysis of the situation.

Well said - I agree with Ru's analysis and Marty's view on the voting.

[Rob Kelk]

On Fri, 18 Jan 2008 12:51:45 CST, Ru Igarashi <***@usask.ca>
wrote:

<snip>

Post by Ru Igarashi
Speaking as one of the vocal supporters of creating RAA.music,
I support the removal of the group. It no longer attracts
attention, and I find watching the group for postings more of
a hassle than help in this state.

<snip>

As the other regular of r.a.a.music, I concur with Ru's reasoning and
conclusion. I also support removal of the group.

As for r.a.a.games, I do not recall there being a single on-topic post
to that group in all of 2007. (I am not certain that there were no such
posts, only that I do not recall any.) I support removal of that group
as well.

I have no opinion on r.a.a.models.

[Ru Igarashi]

Post by Rob Kelk
As for r.a.a.games, I do not recall there being a single on-topic post
to that group in all of 2007. (I am not certain that there were no such
posts, only that I do not recall any.) I support removal of that group
as well.

I'm in the same boat as Rob Kelk. I don't remember seeing anything
on topic in raa.games for quite a while. Given that, I'm inclined
to support the removal of raa.games.

Post by Rob Kelk
I have no opinion on r.a.a.models.

raa.models does occasionally get traffic, but it's been very
sporadic over the past year. 3 years ago the proposal would
have elicited numerous responses. I'm actually quite surprised
by the deathly silence, when I think about it that way.
However, there was one regular that did comment in pre-RFD
discussion, and said he wasn't opposed to the removal.
Hardly statistically useful, but it didn't elicit a response,
either. Someone else said most of the regulars moved to a
web board.

Rob Maxwell's traffic analysis pretty much sums up the
situation. I concur with his assessment that most of the
traffic is marketplace-related (RAA has a designated marketplace
group, so these are off topic in .models). Further I count
about 10 on-topic postings through the past year, and about
half got 1 or 2 responses. There's more traffic there than
in the other groups in the removal list, but I haven't heard a
peep from the readers since this proposal went official. While
it's true that there are fewer readers of the models group
than the music group (10% vs 20%, respectively, relative to
raa.misc), that's still enough that one of them should have
seen the proposal and commented. OK, that does suggest
the group is dead, too.

We may get something over the weekend, so I'm not going
to assume anything until next week.

I'd like to point out something one of the pre-RFD participants
said, and I concur with his observation. The readership of
raa.models did tend to be an isolated group. I mean, the
bulk of the regulars there were not as active on any of
the other raa.* groups, including .misc. Whatever traffic
they had would not have moved and did not move to raa.misc
had the group died. Apparently the same can be said about
the relationship with the rec.models group(s). I don't
know how to balance this observation about readership
identity against the motivation for removing the group.
I guess it comes down to "zero strongly identifying users
is still zero users".

ru