2nd RFD: remove comp.home.misc moderated (LAST CALL FOR COMMENTS)

[The Big-8 Management Board <board@xxxxxxxxx>]

                      REQUEST FOR DISCUSSION (RFD)
                         remove comp.home.misc

This is a formal Request For Discussion (RFD) to remove the moderated
newsgroup comp.home.misc.


PROCEDURE:

The B8MB plans to begin voting on this proposal after five days.  Please
offer any final discussion or comments before the end of this waiting
period.  Voting may take up to one week (7 days); a result will be posted
following the end of the voting period.

All discussion of this proposal should be posted to news.groups.proposals.

The full group removal procedure is documented here:

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


SUMMARY OF DISCUSSION:

No comments were received.


RATIONALE: remove comp.home.misc

The newsgroup comp.home.misc has not had any approvals since December
1997, and these were invitations by the moderator to join a www-based
forum saying in part:

  You may wonder, why we are not using the usenet comp.home.misc group
for these purposes. The explanation is, that traffic on usenet is of
such volume, that many servers tends to discard messages more than a
few weeks old. This prevents the emergence of stabilizing thematic
  structure, and looses  relevant researcher-participants, who may
  visit the net more infrequently.(But this call will go out on
  comp.home.misc)

Prior to that, about 60 articles had been approved in an 11 month
period from the founding of the newsgroup in February 1994 to January
1995.

Unmoderated discussion about practical aspects of home automation may
continue in comp.home.automation, so that there would be little
utility in converting comp.home.misc to an unmoderated status.


HISTORY:

The newsgroup comp.home.misc was created in February 1994.  At the
time it was created there was interest expressed in the more practical
aspects of home automation, but this was outside the proponent's
vision for comp.home.misc.  The unmoderated comp.home.automation was
created in May 1994.

The original proponent anticipated an eventual hierarchy of groups in
a comp.home.* hierarchy, which explains the unusual use of ".misc" for
a moderated group.

The newsgroup comp.home.misc was active for 11 months with around 60
articles posted.  With the last approvals in January 1995.  There were
3 additional approvals in December 1997, but these were invitations
for any readers to join www-based forums.


DISTRIBUTION:

This document has been posted to the following newsgroups:

  news.announce.newgroups
  news.groups.proposals
  comp.home.misc
  comp.home.automation
  comp.society.futures


CHARTER:

The newsgroup line is:

|comp.home.misc		Media, technology and information in domestic spaces.

The charter (in part) extracted from the CFV:

  The group will be devoted to discussions of larger perspectives and
  options in research, development and use of domestic information-
  technology, automation and telecommunication ACROSS the levels of

	* consumer hard- and software
	* network infrastructure
	* storage and distribution-media
	* teleservices and
	* socio-cultural & economic structures.


PROPONENT:

Jim Riley <jimrtex@xxxxxxxxxxxx>


CHANGE HISTORY:

2007-01-18     1st RFD
2007-01-29     2nd RFD/LCC