Rec.food.cooking Reorganization

M

mbm052969

New member
This is a formal Request For Discussion (RFD) for the reorganization of
the unmoderated newsgroup, rec.food.cooking.

This RFD is being posted to news.announce.newgroups, news.groups,
rec.food.cooking, rec.food.drink, rec.food.historic, rec.food.recipes,
rec.food.sourdough, rec.food.veg and rec.food.veg.cooking, with
followups set to rec.food.cooking.

Rationale: Rec.food.cooking has been a high-volume newsgroup for several
years, and the subject of splitting has been brought up with a fair
amount of regularity. Traditionally, rec.food.cooking has been an
amazingly civil, calm and flame-free newsgroup, so a split never seemed
to be justified.

However, in recent weeks the noise level and number of inappropriate
posts has skyrocketed, and polite pointers to the FAQs (which usually
did the trick before) now go ignored or become targets for flames. I
feel that splitting rec.food.cooking will help bring back the focus that
it once had.

Proposal: rec.food.cooking be split into 5 unmoderated groups:

rec.food.cooking.misc rec.food.cooking.cookware rec.food.cooking.recipes
rec.food.cooking.media rec.food.cooking.discuss

Charters:

rec.food.cooking.misc (unmoderated) What rfc used to be and should be.
For general cooking discussion. This newsgroup will replace
rec.food.cooking.

rec.food.cooking.cookware (unmoderated) Bread machines, microwaves,
crockpots, knives, cutting boards, glass-top stoves, barbecues, cast
iron, woks, Calphalon, aluminum, dehydrators, pasta makers, rice
cookers, etc.

rec.food.cooking.recipes (unmoderated) Recipes and requests.

rec.food.cooking.media (unmoderated) Cookbooks, cookbook authors, tv
shows, movies.

rec.food.cooking.discuss (unmoderated) For all the spam and tripe that
currently plagues the group. For flames, rumors, controversial topics
(such as food poisoning), the $250 cookie, and those threads that bear
marginal relevance that seem to go on forever like, "What did you have
for dinner last night?" "What is your favorite fast food restaurant?"
"What is your least favorite fast food restaurant?" Etc, etc.

Discussion will run for a minumum of 21 days. The newsgroups in this
proposal are subject to change, and if major changes are necessary, the
discussion period may be extended an additional 7 days.

A Call for Votes (CFV) will be posted after the end of the discussion
period. The vote will be run by a neutral third party.

This RFD attempts to fully comply with Usenet newsgroup creation
guidelines set in "How to Create a New Usenet Newsgroup". Please refer
to this document if you have questions about the process.
 
On Mar 8, 5:54?pm, "Jean B." wrote:

There's no need for an unmoderated r.f.r. when this r.f.c. group
exists. It would turn into another one, and still stay dead.

N.
 
On Mar 7, 2:50?pm, Usenet Big 5 wrote:

Sorry, this newsgroup has been this way for years. Sometimes on
topic, sometimes way rabroad. People come and go, splitting it up
seems pointless to me.
 
Sqwertz wrote:


Yes, when I saw the "RFC re-organization" thread I initially assumed
it was a regurgitation of follow-ons to a years-old attempt at a re-org.

I find it charming that people might actually still want to improve
on a usenet group.

Steve
 
"rosie" wrote in message
news:acf1ec09-e176-4899-b280-cb6f930499cc@y36g2000pra.googlegroups.com...
On Mar 7, 2:50 pm, Usenet Big 5 wrote:

Absolutely agree! This NG to remain unchanged. The focused ones have all
died. Usenet is probably going to die. We're just enjoying it in its
denouement, to borrow a bit from Shakespeare.

Kent
 
On 3/7/2011 3:08 PM, rosie wrote:


I've been on a couple other newsgroups that used this rationale to
split/create offshoot groups, and all it accomplished was killing off
traffic on all the groups, with the perpetual exception of spam posts.
The better solution is using a newsreader with good filtering capability.
 
Sqwertz wrote:

Generally folks who write like there's no such thing as censors just
common sense do fine in moderated environments, which are just like
talking at a party at someone's house.

Often folks who have a problem with censors have that problem for a
reason, because they can't act like they would in public.

Censorship can easily get out of hand. But so can free speech. Check
any spam and troll ridden newsgroup (RFC has an extremely good signal to
noise ratio so one far worse. There are many).
 
"notbob" wrote in message news:[email protected]...

On 2011-03-08, sf wrote:


Oh, that's definitely part of it. Don't sell yourself short. It's
taken me a good long while to learn the power of my score file and how
to fine tune it. I've no doubt it's contributed immensely to the far
more pleasant experience usenet now is.

nb

At this time, I can assure you that your kill is not responsible. I've been
gone for 10 months. I've gotten Windows 7 and the new Office. I'm in the
process of wading through both and have made no adjustments yet. I just got
Forte Agent as well as Windows Live Newsgroups to try both out side-by-side
and I've made no adjustments to either. The noise level on rfc is way, way
down from a year ago. The Brits are gone, the religious doctor is gone, all
the spam is gone. . .what can I say? I can get immediately to those posts
I'm watching. I also don't have any follow-up spam in my mail box. This
group has always been a rowdy group of neighbors. No re-org is needed.
Janet
 
Stu wrote:

That process has been obsolete ever since abusers figured out they could
destrroy it by flooding the volunteer vote counters with thousands of
forged votes. In short, it was destroyed by trolls and has since been
replaced by a committee who do the voting.

The process now includes discussion in news.groups.propsals. I am on
the moderation team of news.groups.proposals and I have bene involved in
the newsgroup creation process for a number of years at this point.


Actually, there's no way the committee will vote in favor of changing
the moderation status of any group in any of the big-8 hierarchies that
include rec.*. They remain open to the idea in theory but in practice
they require a practical demonstration of getting it through all of the
major and most of the minor NSPs to prove it can be done. In reality it
can't be done so they ren't going to vote in favor of it. What they
will do is watch to see if anyone can pull it off in a well used alt.*
group first.
 
i haven't been here that long this time, have looked in from time to time,
when i read the OP, i had two thoughts, first shouldn't there be more than
one person to do such a proposal and second thought was what? you can't use
a kf? Lee
"Hell Toupee" wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
 
Nancy2 wrote:

Someone could do a Moderator Vacancy Investigation for RFR and become
the replacement moderator. It could then be set to approve all messages
that make it through the email spam filters.


Agreed. RFC sees very good traffic. There's no need to splinter it.
 
On Mar 7, 12:50?pm, Usenet Big 5 wrote:

The mantra "built it and they will come" does not apply to USENET
(except for alt.).Newsgroups are split up when the volume of
discussion on side topics tends to overwhelm the group. The volume of
non-spam postings on rec.food.cooking is in decline, thus no splits
are necessary. If discussion volume declines, the signal-to-noise
ratio will decrease to unity or less. Further, the likelihood of a
successful rec.food.spam (other than the potted meat) is nonexistent.


Any examples to back up these assertions? Or are they pulled out of
thin air?


Why?


A redundant version of rec.food.equipment. If splits worked, cookware
discussions would take place exclusively in r.f.e.


A redundant version of rec.food.recipes. Again, if splits worked,
recipe discussions would take place exclusively in r.f.r.


I can't imagine a discussion of cookbooks or TV shows that would omit
discussion of recipes, and few non-recipe discussions of shows, books,
etc. occur (e.g. Who's the hottest? Rachael Ray, Nigella Lawson, or
Lidia Bastianich?)


People who post tripe will post it where people will read it. Barring
moderation, tripe a la mode de Caen will reappear in rec.food.cooking.
You might as well propose one group for all spam.



So the proposed new groups are
1. redundant (duplicates of existing groups), and/or
2. unnecessary, and/or
3. useless
 
In article
,
Nancy2 wrote:




I seems like we just had a split. There are currently 17 rec.food.*
groups! At least half the posts on this group belong on one of them.
But if I posted my chocolate question on rec.food.chocolate, half the
people I want to see it, wouldn't. I just checked. There is only one
post on rec.food.chocolate on my server. It's from food banter about
BBQ!

--
Dan Abel
Petaluma, California USA
[email protected]
 
On Mar 7, 3:47?pm, "Kent" wrote:

It's ridiculous and a waste of time to try and reorganize r.f.c.
There is no more off-topic spam crap now than there was 5 years ago.
Get over it. Don't read it. Just pick the threads relating to food,
if you're going to be picky.

N.
 
>

No worse now than it's always been.


The moderated r.f.r. has already died. Didn't you notice? An
unmoderated group will fare no better.

N.
 
"Dan Abel" wrote



Doesnt matter Dan. It's a troll post. For one thing, the very name is a
giveaway. It's 'Usenet Big 8' for starters.


Now pet the troll on the head for generating many replies.
 
Back
Top