Changing the moderation status of an existing newsgroup from
unmoderated to moderated is not a practical proposition, see:

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

Secondly, even if such a proposal passes (which is highly unlikely),
there are technical issues which makes it virtually impossible for a
transition from unmoderated to moderated to be effective.

It _is_ possible to create a parallell moderated group, but I rather
doubt that there will be sufficient interest.

And, as a matter of record, I should inform you that in addition to
having subscribed to and occassionally contributed to this group
throughout its existence, I am also currently a member of the "Big-8
Management Board", which is the body which makes decisions regarding
group management in the "Big-8" hierarchies, including rec.*

And it sounds like an MI5 plot, to me.

I cannot conceive of any reason why this would be the case.

I can, however, easily conceive of the group dying out completely
when what few valid posts there are are outnumbered 20:1 or 50:1
by spam.

I can also see that moderation on a *high*-volume group would be bad,
because the volume of both valid and spam messages would be overwhelming
to the extent that the moderator would melt down.

That's not the numbers I'm seeing.
Not counting the messages in *this* thread itself, I count:
    158 camera/photo-related msgs   (not necessarily medium format)
    268 junk
That is, very nearly 2/3, or 63% of the posts are outright junk or spam.

I didn't even try to count how many are "on topic" in the sense
of being related specifically to medium-format cameras or photography.

There is clearly some good content here,
but the preponderence of junk/spam is enough to make me wonder
if it's worth my time.
It's not like the non-topic messages were commercial advertisements
for medium-format products in which I might be interested,
and whose sponsorship makes this newsgroup possible.

I haven't yet read the articles to which links were posted,
describing the why's and why-not's of converting a non-moderated group
to a moderated group, or why moderated groups are just plain bad.
It does bug me that such an argument even comes up,
in the face of the onslaught of xxxx being posted in a group such as this.