REQUEST FOR DISCUSSION (RFD)
                       remove comp.binaries.apple2

This is a formal Request for Discussion (RFD) to remove the unmoderated
Usenet newsgroup comp.binaries.apple2.


RATIONALE: comp.binaries.apple2

Right now, there is only one unmoderated binary group in the Big Eight,
namely comp.binaries.apple2.  There are three major reasons to remove this
newsgroup:

  * The Apple ][ platform is fairly obsolete, and while binaries for that
    platform may still be of interest to emulator buffs, there are lots of
    web sites from which one can obtain such binaries or even upload new
    ones.  There really doesn't seem to be much point in having a Usenet
    newsgroup for the distribution of such binaries.

  * Because the group is unmoderated, it is used for all sorts of binaries
    that have nothing to do with the Apple ][.  Because it's a Big Eight
    group, it's widely propagated and therefore is a useful place for
    binary posters who want to get their binaries to systems that don't
    carry alt.binaries.*.  This is an obvious abuse of what the Big Eight
    is for.

  * As an unmoderated binary group, the traffic in this group has from time
    to time exceeded the combined traffic of the entire rest of the
    hierarchy and is often a substantial percentage of the rest of the
    hierarchy.  Andrew Gierth from Supernews has posted statistics to
    news.groups in the past.

The newsgroup was created 23 May 1991.  A vote to moderate the group in
1992 failed 99:64:2.  Details are available on the web here:


ftp://ftp.isc.org/pub/usenet/news.announce.newgroups/comp/comp.binaries.apple2
ftp://ftp.isc.org/usenet/control/comp/comp.binaries.apple2.gz


EXISTING CHARTER:

The group has no charter other than the newsgroups line.

END CHARTER.


DISTRIBUTION:

This RFD has been posted to the following newsgroups:

  news.announce.newgroups
  news.groups
  comp.binaries.apple2
  comp.sys.apple2
  comp.sys.apple2.usergroups


PROCEDURE:

The full (draft) group removal procedure is documented here:

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

Those who wish to comment on this request to remove this newsgroup should
subscribe to news.groups and participate in the relevant threads in that
newsgroup.

To this end, the followup header of this RFD has been set to news.groups.

All discussion of active proposals should be posted to news.groups.

If desired by the readership of closely affected groups, the discussion
may be crossposted to those groups, but care must be taken to ensure that
all discussion appears in news.groups as well.


PROPONENT:

Dave Sill  and the Deadwood Task Force


CHANGE HISTORY:

2006-06-06      RFD drafted by Martin Moleski and Tim Skirvin.
2006-06-02      Draft submitted to DGTF and Big-8.