I have been working for over a decade with a special volunteer team of national scope and influence devoted to ensuring the long-term survival of amateur radio. We have been attempting to accomplish this through public service as moderators/mentors/discussion leaders in the amateur radio community in the following areas of expertise: - Staying informed - Practicing good reading comprehension - Forming logical arguments - Persuasion through influencing We work in several spaces, including social media, blogs, seminars, and in-person guest speakerships. About every few years, an opening comes up on our team, and we seek one or more talented and motivated individuals to augment our efforts. We are seeking candidates who hold an amateur radio license in good standing, and have at least a high school diploma or equivalent (GED or military service considered in lieu). If this might interest you, please contact me at your earliest convenience, and we can talk further about our requirements to see if this would be an appropriate fit for your talents, temperament, and time. TNX ES 73, Paul, K3FU
Deja vu all over again. https://forums.qrz.com/index.php?threads/seeking-volunteers-for-a-special-project.598098/
Thanks for relaying that link. It helps give a bit more background about the original, and ongoing, request.
It's intentional that one of the suitability/screening tests here is to see who can take the initiative to do some on-line research of public information based on both my name and callsign, via both QRZ and Google searches, and is willing to express interest to me directly based on that information.
"Might you be referring to this type of information from your post on 27 Apr 06?" "Thanks for everyone's comments, both here, and on eHam. I admit that my article was intended to initiate preliminary discussion to start a formal proposal to moderate some of the amateur radio newsgroups on Usenet. Already, I have two other interested volunteers. I would welcome additional interested people to E-mail me before I contact the Usenet Group Mentors. These mentors would assist with any Request For Discussion (RFD), and possible Call For Votes (CFV), on news.groups and rec.radio.amateur.misc/policy. Again, this is all preliminary. I welcome good feedback from experienced Usenetters, particularly the Usenet Group Mentors, in the development of any proposal. When I say "meltdown," I don't just mean that problem users exist, or that people post opinions that are on-topic to amateur radio with which I or others disagree. I mean that probably less than a dozen problem users have nearly 100% taken over the misc and policy newsgroups with their postings. Whatever "immune system" the user community had previously - that was able to overcome, or just ignore, these problem users - has completely broken down. What I mean by "problem users" is that their posts are almost entirely short, sniping, and profanity-laden, personal attacks against each other, with no topic discussion. Nearly all of the posters are anonymous. Many of which are likely "sock-puppets" (i.e., various alter-egos of the same individual), posting from a small number of anonymous posting sites like Google Groups. A situation exists where virtually all constructive users have been run off and the misc and policy newsgroups have become a total write-off, serving as nothing but bad public relations for our hobby (service, whatever). My reading of Usenet newsgroup creation rules, and newsgroup threads discussing those rules, indicates to me that an existing, unmoderated newsgroup *can* be converted to moderated status. In fact, I believe that comp.infosystems.www.authoring.cgi is an example of a formerly unmoderated newsgroup that became moderated (though "moderated" only in the technical, implementation, sense; see more below). I believe most people agree that with the distributed nature of Usenet newsgroups and independent news servers, it is nearly impossible to have a newsgroup deleted. Even if it were possible, might even be seen as a cure worse than the disease. Moderating the existing newsgroups in place, rather than new newsgroups, is justified in the face of the existing, unmoderated, misc and policy newsgroups becoming totally damaged write-offs at this point. I've been in touch with the Usenet Group Mentors already, and one of them tells me that they wouldn't refuse outright a proposal to convert the existing newsgroups, but they would prefer instead to have a proposal that makes one or more new newsgroups with the *.moderated suffix (e.g., rec.radio.amateur.moderated). Yes, it is possible to reach problem users, even in unmoderated newsgroups. Most ethical ISP's have rules against using their services to "stalk," "threaten," or "harass" someone. Some even prohibit "off-topic" or "disruptive" postings to newsgroups, even unmoderated ones. Google Groups actually had conditions like these as part of their user policies in the past, but quietly dropped them. Google apparently doesn't care anymore, and thus serves as the source for most of the trash. Recently, I was able to get a problem user shut down, or at least got him to stop posting to rec.radio.amateur.policy and rec.radio.cb, but only because his ISP had ethical user policies and a willingness to enforce them. (Hint to the shut down user: It doesn't help your case to go on record in traceable Usenet postings that you don't feel obligated to follow any rules, including FCC regulations and your ISP's user agreement, even bragging publicly about the specifics of how you violated them on a willful and ongoing basis.). Such enforcement efforts are time-consuming and can only catch the grossest violators posting from the most ethical sites. At the end of the day, such efforts are more work than just implementing moderation in the first place. Moderation serves as much as a deterrence as a filter. Users know better than to step too far beyond the pale on eHam and QRZ, so the workload of their moderators is minimal. Moderation shouldn't be an ongoing battle beyond the initial implementation and fine-tuning. Moderation would consist of a very light hand, and simply to deal with the small number of abusive, beyond-the-pale, posters and their anonymous sock-puppets. If it's not obscene, not illegal, not an ad-hominem attack, not a threat, it is on-topic for amateur radio, and not part of a stale thread that has already been beaten to death over a reasonable period (say, two weeks), it should be posted. It might be necessary for the moderators to start the thread on the right newsgroups (policy vs. misc vs. rec.radio.swap vs. rec.radio.info), but that should be about it. One issue that would certainly be open for discussion would be that of anonymity. The "last name or callsign" rule from QST classified ads would be ideal. The use of a real E-mail address would be encouraged (and would be helpful to send moderator's replies). But, I suppose that some consistent use of a unique, well-known nickname and/or obfuscated E-mail address, used without intent to deceive, could be accommodated. With a team of moderators, and some automation techniques, moderation should not be an overwhelming workload. There are several newsgroup examples to choose from, not all of which require ongoing, close, manual review of hundreds of articles per day by a single moderator. One, sci.physics.research, has submissions sent to a central E-mail address, that then forwards each submission randomly to one of their team of moderators. The recipient decides whether it's appropriate to post, based on agreed-upon objective criteria, and posts the article to the newsgroup. Another newsgroup, comp.infosystems.www.authoring.cgi, is fully automated. Moderation in that case is simply to deflect first-time posters with an autoreply containing references, including an FAQ list. The second (and subsequent) posts would go right through. Even some traditional, single-moderator newsgroups like comp.dcom.telecom have moderators that will simply shut down a thread after everyone has reasonably had a say, but before it degrades into personal attacks or off-topic discussion. Some hybrid of all of these techniques could work for rec.radio.amateur.misc and rec.radio.amateur.policy. Heavy use of automated E-mail filter tools such as Spamassassin and Procmail would weed out from the moderator submission queue nearly all SPAM, problem posters (checking the harder-to-forge headers like NNTP-Posting-Host), and obvious profanity/obscenity. This would leave a much smaller batch of articles to be manually reviewed in a "service" queue by a team of moderators. Turnaround on articles should be less than 24 hours. This would be quick enough to keep discussion lively, but not so fast that impulsive, cascaded flame wars full of ad-hominem attacks are allowed to grow. I believe that filtering of rogue sites and problem users can be done surgically enough such that constructive users won't be shut out, or unfairly delayed, just because they are posting from Google Groups, for example. It should also be possible to "white-list" verified posters with good conduct, either placing them in a priority queue for cursory review, or even posting their articles immediately (this concept is similar to how "Karma" is implemented on slashdot.org, for example). This would further reduce the moderation workload, and serve as an incentive for good behavior. Whatever filtering, and submission queue management, schemes are used can be adapted in the face of new or changing threats. In terms of any automated "black-listing," it should even be possible to deal with violators on a flexible basis (warnings, suspension, only using permanent expulsion as a last resort in the face of gross, repeated, and willful violations). The existing first-time poster welcome message service for rec.radio.amateur.*, in use since 1996, can also serve as an ongoing monitor and cross-check. Specifically, it would measure the amount of "sock-puppeting" that might be occurring to try to game any automation, and get around moderation restrictions. Large numbers of new, throwaway, anonymous addresses would result in a statistically-significant surge in "new" posters being sent the welcome message, for example. After a while, the problem users will just give up and go elsewhere, preferably off of Usenet entirely. K3FU, Apr 27, 2006 Report #9 Like"
You are very close, but obviously there's been some changes and additions since almost 15 years ago. I have the latest updates. 73, Paul, K3FU
Usenet?!? Gawd, I can't remember the last time I descended into that sewer. Good Luck with the windmills Don Quixote...
Hi Gary, It's Paul, not Don. As I pointed out to K3XR, this is 2020, not 2006, and a lot has transpired since then, which you may have missed. Nearly all of the challenges of almost 15 years ago have been overcome, and we are at the stage where we have stable, useful, on-topic newsgroups for amateur radio on Usenet. Like a healthy garden, they are now at a state where they just need some ongoing maintenance and care, not the wholesale debris removal, weed-pulling, and pest control that was performed over a decade past. Please check them out for yourself: https://groups.google.com/g/rec.radio.amateur.moderated https://groups.google.com/g/rec.radio.info https://groups.google.com/g/uk.radio.amateur.moderated https://groups.google.com/g/aus.radio.amateur.misc Also, this isn't just about Usenet. There are other forums about amateur radio (including QRZ) that just need some ongoing maintenance and care, and a motivated community of volunteers that is periodically refreshed to help look after them. 73, Paul, K3FU
