Future of MTM

I want to expand a bit on what Stu wrote to make sure it is clear what the group's current needs are.

Right now the software used to manage the moderation of the newsgroup is hosted on a server I own. I find it necessary due to life circumstances to divest myself of various external commitments and obligations, including hosting this software. Therefore, to keep the group going we need a volunteer who is willing and able to both set up moderation infrastructure somewhere else and maintain it once it is set up.

Stu may also be looking for a new generation of moderators to help with the group (I think that would be a great idea!), but if the only new volunteers we get are moderators, that will not be sufficient; we also need someone equipped to do the technical setup and maintenance.

Thanks.

Would a Facebook group work?

I think the easiest approach would be to simply make the group unmoderated. I realize there is already an unmoderated taxes group which receives a lot of spam, but I think if you left the name as "moderated" the spam posts would be minimal and veteran users would just ignore them.

I think making the group unmoderated but leaving "moderated" in the title would be a far better solution than simply ending the group. I can't think of any real downsize to that approach.

Facebook is an entirely separate medium of communication than Usenet and is not a substitute.

Three questions:

1. It would be extremely helpful to know what is involved in that technical setup and maintenance. (I did some googling before asking this, but couldn't find any clear and current answers.)

1. And does the server need to be owned by a moderator, as opposed to the moderator owning a domain and website hosted at a provider?

2. I can't remember which group, but a few years ago, if memory serves, I was subscribed to some group where a robot automatically approved any post from someone who who had already had N number of posts approved. Is that an option? It wouldn't eliminate the need for moderators, but it would reduce the workload.

At the most basic level, the infrastructure needs to include just a few things:

All this can be done manually for a newsgroup with as little traffic as this one, but even for a low-traffic group there is the option of setting up software to facilitate it, either tools you write yourself or tools written by someone else. The most commonly used tool nowadays is STUMP

The server certainly doesn't need to be "owned" by the people running the group. They just need to have somewhere they can host the mailbox and tools.

Also, just to be clear, the "moderator" is note necessarily the person running the software. I have never been an active moderator of the newsgroup, my contribution has been hosting the tools, which include an old version of STUMP and an NNTP server to which approved articles are submitted, with peer feeds to several other NNTP servers to ensure that approved articles make it out to the entire net.

I don't really think the moderation workload is an issue here; this group gets very few postings. Having said that, STUMP allows moderators to add regular posters to a "good guys list" which causes their submissions to be auto-approved. This relies on them posting consistently with the same email address in the From line. It doesn't matter whether it's a real, working address or not, it just has to be the same every time.

Not sure but it seems to be the same as what misc.legal.moderated uses.

It probably needs its own server but these days you can rent a linux VPS for $5/mo so that's not a big issue.

I think that's misc.legal.moderated.

On mailing lists, we've had plenty of problems with whitelisting, which is not a security feature. A spammer uses a list of known valid email addresses likely grabbed from an addressbook maintained in a Microsoft application. With the list-posting address also in the addressbook, it was simple to post spam to the mailing list using the address of a known subscriber or who might be whitelisted on a moderated mailing list,

Obviously, I've been forged by various Hipclones, which any of you who were around in 2001 and 2002 will well recall.

I suppose a combination of whitelisting and PGP signatures will works.

Whitelisting someone who won't use his own working email address on From is ineffective. Multiple people using the same invalid email addresses are not forging each other.

Given the sharp drop in the number of people on Usenet over the past several years, I don't think we can really predict how many spammers may send messages to this group if it became un-moderated. And the two groups would not be identical because this group has a small group of regular users who would likely continue to use the group even if a few spammers got through.

As for the Big-8 Management Board - assuming it still functions - any actions it might take would likely not be instantaneous. There would be some period of time where the group would still be allowed to function, even if technically mis-labeled as "moderated" when it's not.

The important point is that there is really no harm in letting the group go un-moderated but keeping the current name for some period of time. If the choice is disbanding the group - meaning no group at all - or having a less than perfect group where spammers could start hitting the group but regular users could also keep posting for some period of time, I still think having some version of the group is better than no group at all.

Am Wed, 8 Jan 2025 22:33:28 EST schrieb Rick snipped-for-privacy@nospam.com:

Big-8 still exists - I am a member there.

This just creates more confusion. misc.taxes exists - already unmoderated.

========================================= MODERATOR'S COMMENT: Thank you for contributing.

I haven't checked in a while, but the last time I went to misc.taxes, it had gotten overrun with spam and was completely unusable. Clearly, misc.taxes.moderated does not get spam, mainly because it is moderated, but also perhaps partially because spammers tend to ignore groups that have the "moderated" label.

My only point was that if the choice is having misc.taxes.moderated go out of business because no one is available to moderate it, or to just let it run for the forseeable future with the "moderated" nomenclature in the name only, what's the harm?

I just looked, and it's full of cross-posted political arguments that have close to nothing to do with taxss. I agree it's unusable.

FWIW, the way I deal with crossposted articles from political newsgroups that I don't want to read in groups I do read is to subscribe to the political group, open the political group to junk everything in it, then open the group I do read that's now free of political newsgroup crossposting.

If MTM goes away (a horrible thought), what are some other tax forums that might be useful and not overtaken by angry mobs? Not just Usenet forums.

Thanks.

I have used TaxMama.com a few times and gotten good results. Although the original owner, Eva Rosenberg, sadly passed away in 2023, the site continues to provide good advice. The Clark Howard site has an advice forum similar to this that occasionally provides good tax info. I have used Bogelheads for financial advice and their forum will address tax questions, though it's not their primary focus. Another one I have used is AARP's Tax Aide, though they don't always address complex tax questions.

Ironically, while I don't use Turbo Tax, the Intuit Tax forum is actually pretty good and open to non_turbo Tax users. They will often answer questions geared to how their software works, but the information is usually pretty solid.