On Sat, 12 Jul 2008 10:12:58 -0500, metspitzer
wrote:

On Sat, 12 Jul 2008 00:11:13 -0400, mm
wrote:


Just worry about the ones that interest you.

How much worrying do the groups I don't read take?

Every year or so I download an updated list of groups. I think it
takes only a couple minutes but when it took longer, I read my email
while it dl'd.

After that, I continue reading the ones I like and pay no attention to
the others.

Reading Usenet on google is nowhere near as satisfying or as versatile
as reading it off my own computer. Plus I have a copy on my computer
even if my internet connection is down, and I still have use of
Google.

alt.engineering.electrical can be useful, but unless you are an
electrical engineer, they usually tell you more than you want to know
over there.

I wish Google had a separate search for Usenet and for Google groups.
I would almost never include Google groups in my searches as they are
pretty much useless. Not all of them are, but because the crap groups
outnumber the good ones by about 10000 fold, I would gladly have them
excluded from the searches.

All I am saying is that you would probably find more groups you are
interested in by searching for topics that interest you than making a
list of thousands of groups and try to eliminate them from the list.

You can't use a news reader to search Usenet without downloading the
messages in the group. For most groups, that is a waste of time.

To each his own.

I read the same groups over and over for years, more than 10 years
now.

I have a list of 131 groups now that I have used in the last 10 years,
about 4 every day, and 7 more repeatedly, and the rest once or once in
a while.

When I have a new question or interest, I look for a group with the
right name. With Agent, I download only the headers: subject lines,
authors, lengths, and posting date. Maybe 300, maye 1000 of them.
Some have nothing but spam and some don't have enough traffic to be
worth it. I usually delete all the headers then. But I also usually
find in the first 3 groups I look at one that goes in my list of 131
groups for current and future use. Someone wrote a utility for Agent
that would allow me to order those selected groups the way I want, to
put the ones I read every day first, but I don't use it.

Once I'm set up, the reading and writing replies goes IMO faster than
with google. Because it's all local, a new screen pops up
immmediately, a tenth of a second or less. For google groups, even
with DSL it takes a second or three.

I offer this in case others are interested.

As to you and me, to each his own.