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The rec.radio.info newsgroup, first established in 1993, has been
recently revived by an active moderation team. We are currently seeking suitable information, FAQ, and bulletin articles from the entire rec.radio.* newsgroup hierarchy for simultaneous cross-posting to our newsgroup. Consistent with rec.radio.info's past usage and message traffic, we had resumed collecting and aggregating many popular weekly amateur radio bulletins and crossposting them to the newsgroups. We selected bulletins that were available via E-mail or Web page, had reprint/relay permission, were in the English language, and could be automatically gatewayed to the newsgroups in plain text. These included: AMSAT Weekly Satellite Report (Amateur Satellite Corporation) AMSAT News Service Weekly Bulletins (Amateur Satellite Corporation) WIANews (Wireless Institute of Australia) DXNL (Deutscher Amateur Radio Club) IRTS Radio Bulletin (Irish Radio Transmitters Society) GB2RS News (Radio Society of Great Britain) SARL News in English (South African Radio League) The ARRL Letter (American Radio Relay League) Amateur Radio Newsline (Newsline, Bill Pasternak) RAC Bulletin (Radio Amateurs of Canada) (The Ohio/Penn DX Bulletin had continued to be directly posted, via prior arrangement and authorization, during the absence of an active moderation team.) The original charter of rec.radio.info: http://www.faqs.org/ftp/usenet/news....rec.radio.info was to serve as a crossposting target for information bulletins, newsgroup charter announcements, and newsgroup Frequently-Asked Questions (FAQ) lists. Implicitly, that rec.radio.info should not "steal" articles from other newsgroups, or require readers to know that rec.radio.info exists and that all bulletins/FAQ's/etc. have been redirected to it. It was also potentially awkward (possibly rude) for us to redirect followup discussion from the FAQ's/bulletins to a newsgroup where the original root article of the thread wasn't posted in the first place. Also, as indicated by its place on the namespace hierarchy (rec.radio.*, not rec.radio.amateur.*), rec.radio.info was not intended to be just an amateur radio newsgroup. Other newsgroups' bulletins that were intended to be crossposted included rec.radio.broadcasting, rec.radio.shortwave, and rec.radio.scanner. When an article is simultaneously crossposted, only one article is propagated over the networks, and most newsreaders should show it only once. In this way, the rec.radio.info newsgroup becomes an information concentrator of articles that already exist in the news spool, not contributing extra bandwidth or duplication, much like rec.music.info or news.answers. It was also felt that a good test of whether a bulletin was worthwhile to post to the newsgroups was whether or not it was tolerated in a subject-specific "home" newsgroup. When we took over the newsgroup in February of 2007: http://www.big-8.org/dokuwiki/doku.p....info-announce we originally sought to continue both the letter and intent of the original charter. In cooperation with the rec.radio.amateur.moderated newsgroup and moderation team, we chose that newsgroup as the principal crossposting target for general amateur-radio related bulletins. Some members of that moderation team felt that crossposting the bulletins, and allowing followup discussion, could serve as useful discussion starters for their new newsgroup. Due to their size, frequency, and special interest topic, the AMSAT bulletins continued to be crossposted to rec.radio.amateur.space only. The DXNL bulletin was also crossposted to rec.radio.amateur.dx. The country-specific bulletins that had their own country-specific newsgroups were also crossposted to those newsgroups (aus.radio.amateur.misc for WIANews and uk.radio.amateur for GB2RS News). We commenced a 90-day test of relaying the bulletins, from March to May of 2007, and considered both internal and external feedback. There were no internal objections, though about half of the moderation team wanted a disclaimer at the bottom of each bulletin (to supplement the disclaimers already in the headers of each approved message for the moderated newsgroups). We only received one external objection, from an individual who felt that the ARRL Letter was more of a public-relations and advertising message than a true news bulletin. Concluding that we had readership support for relaying these bulletins, we then continued to post these bulletins, and as simultaneous crossposts. Starting around October of 2007, the rec.radio.amateur.moderated Moderation Team started to have internal discussion about whether crossposting bulletins to rec.radio.amateur.moderated was worthwhile. Some felt strongly that if posted, they should be posted to rec.radio.info only, and not any other newsgroup, with followups directed either to poster, or possibly even to a newsgroup for which the bulletin was not originally posted. This would be a change of charter for rec.radio.info. Because of this, we decided to have a 90-day test and moratorium, from October 2007 to January 2008, where we would not relay the bulletins and see if anyone noticed or complained. We received no external feedback regarding these bulletins during that time, nor did anyone complain about their absence. Since our two 90-day tests, one with the bulletins, and one without, were inconclusive with respect to reader feedback, we would like to now explicitly solicit reader feedback at this time in order to make an appropriate decision about the format and target newsgroups of any relayed bulletins. Examples of feedback that would be useful to us would include answers to the following questions: - Do you read the bulletins? - Which bulletins do you read? - Which bulletins, if any, do you feel have inappropriate advertising or public relations content for posting to the newsgroups? - In what newsgroup do your prefer to read the bulletins first, or read them at all (subject-specific, rec.radio.info, or none)? - Would you read the bulletins if they were posted to rec.radio.info only? - Would you be interested in initiating followup discussion based on the contents of the bulletins? To which newsgroups? Via E-mail to the originators? - Would you be able to follow any followup discussion that was directed to newsgroups other than to which the original bulletins were posted? We would be most interested in hearing about how *you* personally have read, or intend to read, the bulletins on the Usenet newsgroups, and intend to submit followup discussion (or not). Speculation or demands concerning how others "should" or "should not" read or react to the bulletins would be much less helpful to us. In particular, we wish to avoid expending a lot of ongoing effort to relay bulletins that will be substantially ignored, or shunted off to newsgroups that are not widely read. Please respect the "Followup-To: poster" line and direct all feedback via E-mail to the Reply-To: address of . Consistent with their newsgroup charters, followup discussion posts on this subject made to rec.radio.amateur.moderated or rec.radio.info will be rejected. Thanks in advance for any thoughtful feedback on this subject. Such feedback will weigh strongly on our decision how to proceed in the future. -- The rec.radio.info Moderation Team |
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