First five ca.* charters now being auto-posted

Newsgroups: ca.news.group,ca.earthquakes,ca.general,ca.unix,ca.driving,ca.usenet
From: ikluft@thunder.sbay.org (Ian Kluft)
Subject: First five ca.* charters now being auto-posted
Distribution: ca
Message-ID: <Dyt4uz.Dst@thunder.sbay.org>
Organization: sbay.org - South Bay/Silicon Valley Community Network
Date: Sat, 5 Oct 1996 14:42:35 GMT
Followup-To: ca.news.group

[Followups directed to ca.news.group.]

In the effort to re-establish the charters for the ca.* newsgroups, the
software to do the posting has now been configured to begin posting the
first five charters on the following days of the month:
   5th,19th  ca.news.group
   6th,20th  ca.general
   7th,21st  ca.test
   8th,22nd  ca.earthquakes
   9th,23rd  ca.unix

The following two charters have been proposed and are now under discussion:
   ca.driving
   ca.usenet

Since there are probably readers who did not follow the beginning of the
discussions about re-establishing charters and coordination for the ca.*
newsgroups, a reminder may be needed.  The information that has gone into
the process so far is available at http://www.sbay.org/ca/ and is always
posted in ca.news.group.  Here's a summary of the reasons for doing this.
1) The signal levels in most of the ca.* newsgroups (except ca.driving and
   ca.earthquakes) are down to near-zero.  Spams have driven away the readers.
   The public discussions to write the charters are a first step in having
   something better that our word against theirs when California residents
   discourage spams in the ca.* newsgroups.
2) There was confusion in August about a proposal to remove ca.earthquakes
   as a side effect of a Big-8 newsgroup proposal.  Such confusion is likely
   to repeat itself in the future unless some sort of process (simple or not,
   as the upcoming discussions decide) is written down for adding and
   removing newsgroups.

Other regional UseNet newsgroup hierarchies clearly show a trend that
ones without active coordination die away.  Regional newsgroups have taken
the brunt of the spam problem because new users are not given instructions
on selecting newsgroups, and tend to post to all the forsale or general
newsgroups.  Hierarchies with coordination and some form of opposition to
spams have been able to recover to where discussions can be held again.
(Which "form" of opposition, if any, will be discussed in ca.news.group
after the newsgroup charters are written.)

Anyone who feels inclined to participate in this process is welcome to.
UseNet-experienced people are encouraged to volunteer to help the project.
See the web page for more info.
-- 
Ian Kluft  KO6YQ PP-ASEL  http://www.kluft.com/~ikluft/   sbay.org coordinator
ikluft@thunder.sbay.org (home)  ikluft@cisco.com (work)           San Jose, CA