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Moderation of comp.compilers (ATTN: John Levine)

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  Moderation of comp.compilers (ATTN: John Levine) Big-8 Management Board <board@big-8.org> - 2026-08-27 23:24 -0400
    Re: Moderation of comp.compilers (ATTN: John Levine) "Adam H. Kerman" <ahk@chinet.com> - 2026-08-28 12:36 -0400
      Re: Moderation of comp.compilers (ATTN: John Levine) "Adam H. Kerman" <ahk@chinet.com> - 2026-08-28 15:49 -0400
        Re: Moderation of comp.compilers (ATTN: John Levine) Tristan Miller <tmiller@big-8.org> - 2026-08-28 16:42 -0400
          Re: Moderation of comp.compilers (ATTN: John Levine) "Adam H. Kerman" <ahk@chinet.com> - 2026-08-28 18:59 -0400
    Re: Moderation of comp.compilers (ATTN: John Levine) Big-8 Management Board <board@big-8.org> - 2026-08-28 15:49 -0400

#62 — Moderation of comp.compilers (ATTN: John Levine)

[This post is directed to the moderator of comp.compilers, John Levine, 
whose mail server is bouncing messages from the Big-8 Management Board 
and from the operator of a moderation relay.  I see that John 
occasionally posts to this group, and so hope he will notice it and 
reply to us here or by e-mail.  If anyone else reading this has a 
reliable way of getting in touch with John, we'd appreciate it if they'd 
bring this post to his attention.]

Dear John,

Ivo Gandolfo, operator of the bofh.team moderation relay, CC'd us on an 
e-mail to you concerning a spam report you made against his relay 
server.  Ivo tells us that this message of his, like one he sent you 
last year in response to a similar spam report of yours, was bounced by 
your mail server.

We had a look at the comp.compilers submissions that triggered these two 
reports of yours and don't see how they constitute spam.  Even if they 
do violate the comp.compilers moderation policy for some reason, it 
should be only the original injecting agent, not whichever moderation 
relay happened to pass them on to you, that you should hold responsible.

As Ivo's host has threatened to close his account over your reports, he 
has been left with no choice but to configure his relay to drop further 
submissions destined for comp.compilers.  This will almost certainly 
prevent legitimate submissions from reaching your group.

We would urge you to adjust your spam reporting process so that your 
reports are never sent to the moderation relays registered with ISC, and 
so that your mail server does not block e-mails from the administrators 
of those relays.  (In order to address technical issues such as these, 
it is important that the lines of communication between newsgroup 
moderators and moderation relay operators remain open.  For the same 
reason, you might reconsider blocking e-mails from big-8.org.)

If you could confirm to us once you've rectified the issue on your end, 
we can ask Ivo if he will reinstate routing to your moderation address. 
Failing this, you will probably need to instruct would-be posters to 
comp.compilers to submit their articles directly via e-mail, or else 
face the prospect of them being silently dropped when they happen to be 
routed through the bofh.team relay.

Sincerely,
Tristan Miller

-- 
Usenet Big-8 Management Board
https://www.big-8.org/
board@big-8.org

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#63

Big-8 Management Board <board@big-8.org> wrote:

>[This post is directed to the moderator of comp.compilers, John Levine, 
>whose mail server is bouncing messages from the Big-8 Management Board 
>and from the operator of a moderation relay. . . . 

He'd announced publicly in 2025 that his life was completely disrupted by
events he could not control and wanted a volunteer to take over
moderation of misc.taxes.moderated. I wasn't aware that he also
moderated this group.

I asked some silly questions on Usenet and got some answers and
mostly figured out what I needed to do to manually approve articles.
There would have been two of us.

I dropped the ball on this but kind of lost interest as regulars had
stopped submitting articles. Didn't seem to be a group to keep going,

Because of serious nonsense in the unmoderated group many years ago, its
regulars wanted a moderated group for more serious discussion and must
have won the vote. I assume this was during the tale era.

I don't know when John took it over but he provided technical support,
with others doing the article approvals.

The only solution is for someone to volunteer to take over duties from
John. He always said if there was a volunteer, he'd confirm that he'd
relinquish moderation duties.

I'm shocked that John's hosts remained up this long.

As always, B8MB is asking the wrong question. Let's assume John is NEVER
going to change his mind. The question to ask is, If someone feels
strongly enough that one of the groups John moderates needs to continue
to exist as a moderated group, will he step forward and volunteer to put
up a server?

Moderation, with its single point of failure, was, is, and always will
be failure waiting to happen. Even if I had followed through, I'm just
barely competent enough to understand headers and the other moderator
would have needed to do things manually. If I stopped doing it, there
would have been no one else. My own volunteering was in violation of
successful moderation.

Once again, I implore B8MB never again to re-assign duties unless there
is a team to perform the work. Stop setting up all new single points of
failure.

I subscribe to a specific low-traffic moderatd groups.io mailing list.
Its owner knew he was dying and asked for volunteers. I volunteered.
Ultimately he made six subscribers, including me, co-owners.

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#64

Adam H. Kerman <ahk@chinet.com> wrote:

>Big-8 Management Board <board@big-8.org> wrote:

>>[This post is directed to the moderator of comp.compilers, John Levine, 
>>whose mail server is bouncing messages from the Big-8 Management Board 
>>and from the operator of a moderation relay. . . . 

>He'd announced publicly in 2025 that his life was completely disrupted by
>events he could not control and wanted a volunteer to take over
>moderation of misc.taxes.moderated. I wasn't aware that he also
>moderated this group.

I am a complete moron for conflating Jonathan Kamens, moderator of
misc.taxes.moderated, with John Levine. I have no comment to make about
John Levine's situation.

I apologize.

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#66

Dear Adam,

On 2026-08-28 14:49, Adam H. Kerman wrote:
> I am a complete moron for conflating Jonathan Kamens, moderator of
> misc.taxes.moderated, with John Levine.


In that case, you'll be pleased to know that Jonathan Kamens did indeed 
get in touch with us and the ISC in 2024 to arrange an orderly handover 
of his various technical and administrative responsibilities.  A new 
moderation relay was added to replace the one he shut down (operated by 
an individual rather than a team, I think, but there are several such 
independently operated relays, which helps provide the necessary 
redundancy), and the robomoderation system he ran was moved to new 
infrastructure where it is now maintained and operated by a team.

Regards,
Tristan

-- 
Usenet Big-8 Management Board
https://www.big-8.org/
board@big-8.org

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#67

Tristan Miller <tmiller@big-8.org> wrote:

>In that case, you'll be pleased to know that Jonathan Kamens did indeed 
>get in touch with us and the ISC in 2024 to arrange an orderly handover 
>of his various technical and administrative responsibilities.  A new 
>moderation relay was added to replace the one he shut down (operated by 
>an individual rather than a team, I think, but there are several such 
>independently operated relays, which helps provide the necessary 
>redundancy), and the robomoderation system he ran was moved to new 
>infrastructure where it is now maintained and operated by a team.

Thank you

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#65

Dear all,

On 2026-08-27 22:24, Big-8 Management Board wrote:
> [This post is directed to the moderator of comp.compilers, John Levine, 
> whose mail server is bouncing messages from the Big-8 Management Board 
> and from the operator of a moderation relay.  I see that John 
> occasionally posts to this group, and so hope he will notice it and 
> reply to us here or by e-mail.  If anyone else reading this has a 
> reliable way of getting in touch with John, we'd appreciate it if they'd 
> bring this post to his attention.]


John has now gotten in touch with us via e-mail, so there's no need for 
anyone else to inform him about this post.

Regards,
Tristan

-- 
Usenet Big-8 Management Board
https://www.big-8.org/
board@big-8.org

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