Interesting (although depressing) article on state of google...
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/10/usenet/

--
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]

On Thu, 8 Oct 2009 12:16:09 +0000 (UTC), Andrew Gabriel wrote:

Interesting (although depressing) article on state of google...
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/10/usenet/

Must admit, I came to the conclusion quite a while ago that the downsides
of GG[1] *far* outweigh the benefits of said (imperfect) archive.

[1] spam and ****wit posters

--
The Wanderer

There is no place like 127.0.0.1

On Thu, 08 Oct 2009 12:16:09 +0000, Andrew Gabriel wrote:

Interesting (although depressing) article on state of google...
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/10/usenet/

If they're worried about advertising, how the hell do they think their
book proposal would work? Somehow I doubt folk would want to read
Shakespeare if it were littered with spammy crap.

I really like Google for web search and email (not that I'd ever wish to
use their browser-based email interface of course), but they've really
****ed up the usenet side of things. Mind you the writing was on the wall
when they first started calling it a "Google group", as though it were
just another ****ty web forum.

Shame we can't have a coordinated project to grab the data back and put it
somewhere where it *is* accessible - but to do that would mean actually
being able to get to it via the Google interface in the first place :-(

*Grumble*

In uk.d-i-y, Jules wrote:
I really like Google for web search and email (not that I'd ever wish to
use their browser-based email interface of course), but they've really
****ed up the usenet side of things. Mind you the writing was on the wall
when they first started calling it a "Google group", as though it were
just another ****ty web forum.

Google Groups *is* just another web forum. It just happens to have a
Usenet interface built in. Many (most?) Google Groups are not Usenet
newsgroups.

--
Mike Barnes

"Andrew Gabriel" wrote in message
...
Interesting (although depressing) article on state of google...
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/10/usenet/

Nice to know that we are doggedly ploughing through the moribund dregs of a
once proud resource.

Now - should uk.d-i-y move to Facebook or Twitter?

On the upside, if Google Groups went the way of all flesh it might cut down
on the background noise.

I am pulled two ways by this article - there are obviously some historic and
highly interesting posts in the Usenet archives but do we really want the
ability to revisit classic flame wars of the 90s?
[Hmmm....do I sense a book deal....]

On an everyday basis the signal to noise ratio is poor - think how much
useless crap there is stored away in Google Groups archive.

David WE Roberts
wibbled on Thursday 08 October 2009 17:22


"Andrew Gabriel" wrote in message
...
Interesting (although depressing) article on state of google...
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/10/usenet/

Nice to know that we are doggedly ploughing through the moribund dregs of
a once proud resource.

Now - should uk.d-i-y move to Facebook or Twitter?

No it ****ing shouldn't!

I hope that clears things up ;- I know you meant that tongue in cheek...

Personally, I find using nearly any web forum an exercise in self brain stem
removal. USENET/NNTP - one client to bind them all.

I search the groups, I subscribe to the groups I want, I killfile morons and
and ignore or watch threads. I apply cool scoring rules to highlight more
interesting posts. My client software, my choice, common community -
everyone is aiming at the same goal and noone is trying to move the posts.

If *your* USENET node is down, mine probably still works and you will catch
up later when yours is back.

It works, even on a slow link.

Show me a web forum that supports all those features...

On the upside, if Google Groups went the way of all flesh it might cut
down on the background noise.

It should go back to being an searcable archive and nothing more IMHO. There
are enough free USENET servers and Firefox does NNTP so most people should
be within reach of *a* client and a server.

I am pulled two ways by this article - there are obviously some historic
and highly interesting posts in the Usenet archives but do we really want
the ability to revisit classic flame wars of the 90s?
[Hmmm....do I sense a book deal....]

On an everyday basis the signal to noise ratio is poor - think how much
useless crap there is stored away in Google Groups archive.

OTOH, those of use who use NNTP can junk GoogleGroups postings trivially,
even allowing through particular named people who are otherwise good
company.

Call me a snob, but I haven't seen any real innovation since USENET for this
field of use. All the other crap just adds "flash" and all Twitter is good
for is keeping the inane berks off the streets, save those who sadly are on
the streets and Twitter simultaneously, courtesy of their mobile phone.

Cheers

Tim

--
Tim Watts

This space intentionally left blank...

On 8 Oct, 13:16, (Andrew Gabriel) wrote:
Interesting (although depressing) article on state of google...http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/10/usenet/

--
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]

"Searching within a newsgroup, even one with thousands of posts,
produces no results at all."

What ?
That's simply not true. Just searched for "electric" in uk.diy.
I've not had much of a problem with google groups.
Simon.

On 08/10/09 13:16, Andrew Gabriel wrote:

Interesting (although depressing) article on state of google...
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/10/usenet/


A while back it became obvious lots was missing from their index, you
could search for an article that e.g. you know you wrote yourself,
without x-no-archive and it wouldn't find it. perhaps at that point
they might have been able to rebuild and index and all would be ok.

Now even articles that it can find in it's own index come up as "article
unavailable" or some such message

On 08/10/09 14:33, Jules wrote:

Shame we can't have a coordinated project to grab the data back and put it
somewhere where it *is* accessible

Maybe Google's own Data Libertion arm could be persuaded to help?

http://www.dataliberation.org/

In article ,
Tim W wrote:

Now - should uk.d-i-y move to Facebook or Twitter?

No it ****ing shouldn't!

Heh.... Facebook no - but I must admit to liking twitter

Show me a web forum that supports all those features...

Indeed. However, it seems that the yoof of today aren't interested. I run
what is left of the usenet service at UKC - a place where usenet has
a bit of history (See http://uknof.org.uk/uknof6/Houlder-History.pdf
for a bit of it). Traffic has dived to being virtually non existant.

No one wants to use usenet at the university. I'm by far the heaviest user
and I'm pretty much only active on this group (largely - a few odd posts
elsewhere but nothing much). Sure, a few poeple post a bit here and there
but it's nothing. Given the maint costs of the machine it's running on are
escalating I suspect it'll soon die completely :-(

We used to feed loads of colleges and some other unis. None now. The list
of UK unis taking usenet feeds is getting depressingly small:

http://www.ja.net/services/news/news...t-clients.html

Can't see it lasting long at all. It's been replaced by web forums and
more recently, Facebook.

Facebook is *massive* amongst the students. Some UK unis were seeing
60-70% of all non-spam email coming into the site being Facebook related.
Wander into any PC room and it's facebook on half the screens. It's
scary how big it's got. Usenet isn't of interest with it's plain text
content :-(

Call me a snob, but I haven't seen any real innovation since USENET for this
field of use. All the other crap just adds "flash" and all Twitter is good
for is keeping the inane berks off the streets, save those who sadly are on
the streets and Twitter simultaneously, courtesy of their mobile phone.

It's the "flash" that people want these days. We are a dying breed :-(

(But I still like twitter for some reason ;-))

Darren

On Thu, 08 Oct 2009 20:46:06 +0000, dmc wrote:
Show me a web forum that supports all those features...

Indeed. However, it seems that the yoof of today aren't interested.

I've found that, too. They seem to care less about functionality that
helps readability or productivity than they do things like graphical
avatars and smileys. Problem is it means the same crap gets forced upon
the rest of us who *do* care.

run what is left of the usenet service at UKC - a place where usenet has
a bit of history

Heck, I cut my teeth on ukc.misc :-) (and for a while my access was via a
2400 baud modem and a local server running SLS Linux and slurp - those
were the days) Sad to hear it's not what it once was.

Usenet access when I was there was so *obviously* useful - and even
long after I'd left and the web had taken over everywhere, it was in most
cases *still* more useful in terms of finding real-world answers to
real-world problems (and still is, for a lot of things).

(See
http://uknof.org.uk/uknof6/Houlder-History.pdf
for a bit of it).

I'll have to have a read of that when I get a chance; I don't think
I've seen a broad history of ukc's involvement in things before.

Call me a snob, but I haven't seen any real innovation since USENET for
this field of use.
It's the "flash" that people want these days. We are a dying breed :-(

I'm with you two there. It's all noise and fluff and time-wasting
eye-candy, not stuff that's actually *useful*. Not to mention the
need to have a million different logins and passwords for a million
different sites and the time to check them all.

That's what annoys so much about the demise of usenet - it did genuinely
do a job that doesn't seem to have been replaced by anything else over the
years (and the things that have tried to fill the gap are just slower or
more awkward to use). If I ever meet T. Berners-Lee, I'm going to hoof him
in the nuts.

(But I still like twitter for some reason ;-))

Ick. I am on facebook, but not because I actually *like* it... :-)

cheers

Jules

In article ,
dmc@puffin. (D.M.Chapman) writes:

Facebook is *massive* amongst the students. Some UK unis were seeing
60-70% of all non-spam email coming into the site being Facebook related.
Wander into any PC room and it's facebook on half the screens. It's
scary how big it's got. Usenet isn't of interest with it's plain text
content :-(

Well, I'm a heavy Facebook user, as well as Usenet.
But I don't see them having the same role at all.

--
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]

On Oct 8, 6:27*pm, John Rumm wrote:

But given usable search, there is a treasure trove of information there.
Many times in the past, usenet searches have been my *first* port call
for some types of question, and the success rate was surprisingly high.


I just tried the Google archive search and, for the first time in
months, it's actually working again.

Here's hoping it's back permanently.

On Thu, 08 Oct 2009 22:09:43 +0100, Tim W wrote:
There'll come a time when some bright spark will say: "Hey - what a pain it
is having to check 23 web sites - why not integrate them all... Doh!"

But there's the issue - I'm sure they will, but even if they succeed folk
will still be stuck with something that's slow to interact with, slow to
read, doesn't easily handle local archiving, often doesn't do the most
basic of threading, often doesn't quote replies properly (if at all),
doesn't let them pick and choose their own interface, results in 50
different* forums about item foo etc.

* that really ****es me off. The 'net has made it too easy for people to
'own' a discussion area on a particular topic, which then results in
discussion on that particular topic being spread across many different
places rather than one place - and who has the time to interact with them
all?

I think it's party a reflection on society. We all get on here because
we have something to say, involving words (oh the horror). And what
people say is mostly interesting and often very interesting even when
it's off topic.

Exactly. The need is there. So it's a shame we make peoples' lives
harder by giving them a bad tool to do that job...

I have yet to be convinced that most of facebook isn't just utter
babble.

It is. It's crap. 95% of it is spam about Facebook 'applications', and
it's so much harder to cut through the junk to get to the useful stuff
than it ever has been with usenet or email.

I don't think anyone's ever really cracked that particular online
discussion model, though (i.e. one-to-many non-realtime private
communication) other than doing a mass-email to friends.

(bloody hell I'm a right Victor Meldrew today)

cheers

Jules

John Rumm
wibbled on Thursday 08 October 2009 23:17

Don't know if anyone has been watching the electric dreams series that
the beeb have been showing. Last episode with the family experiencing
the technology of the 80s was quite interesting, They had to choose a
computer of the era to have at home, and very quickly the boys of the
house were fighting over it and actually programming, reading the FM to
find out how etc. The mum and girls looked on in bemusement. The
commentary lamented that the technology was at the time offering lots of
promise but not yet evolved enough to interest the non techies and the
girls etc since it would not yet do what they wanted (communicate
basically) easily enough. The thing that no one seemed to pick up on,
was that it was that generation of boys (e.g. me for example!), playing
with the technology just for the sake of it, that provided the
developers who enabled the required development to take place.

Interesting...

It does raise the question about where the next generation will come
from. Perhaps the shear weight of numbers means there will be enough
interested, but its a very different world from the time when the
technology was simple enough to enable one to learn enough that fast to
do "useful" stuff.

run what is left of the usenet service at UKC - a place where usenet has
a bit of history

Heck, I cut my teeth on ukc.misc :-) (and for a while my access was via a
2400 baud modem and a local server running SLS Linux and slurp - those
were the days) Sad to hear it's not what it once was.

Usenet access when I was there was so *obviously* useful - and even
long after I'd left and the web had taken over everywhere, it was in most
cases *still* more useful in terms of finding real-world answers to
real-world problems (and still is, for a lot of things).

I remember my first success getting an answer to a technical question
via a network. It seemed amazing at the time that the answer came from a
complete stranger in the US, when I was just using a local single user
at a time BBS in Essex. Such was the power of Fidonet!


I was amazed when an email could get to Canada from York in only 20 minutes
in 1986

I was amazed when I could wander into KCL in London, borrow a terminal,
type "call 000006000000" or "call 000006000023" and check my email.

I kind of missed out the whole BBS thing though.

As Tim said, someone is bound to re-invent usenet before long. It will
be bigger, slower, full of eye candy etc and a pain at first. Perhaps
given time, ever faster hardware and comms will make it usable if not
ideal. Bit like Windows I suppose!


I'm still waiting for my "Minority Report" computer interface - how I would
dismiss the trolls to my killfile with a flick of my white gloved hand and
a "bah!".

--
Tim Watts

This space intentionally left blank...

In article ,
John Rumm writes:

As Tim said, someone is bound to re-invent usenet before long. It will
be bigger, slower, full of eye candy etc and a pain at first. Perhaps
given time, ever faster hardware and comms will make it usable if not
ideal. Bit like Windows I suppose!

RSS...

--
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]

In article
,
Owain wrote:
On 8 Oct, 13:16, (Andrew Gabriel) wrote:
Interesting (although depressing) article on state of google...http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/10/usenet/

"Though moribund today,"

How very dare they.

Indeed. Each day at load time my newsreader expires articles - read or
unread - more than 28 days old. And I've been subscribed to pretty well
the same groups for years - certainly about 10. The number being expired
kept on dropping from around 1000 to about half - but over the last year
or so has crept back up to about 750.

Many thought moderated forums where the way forward - no spam or flames,
etc. But have perhaps now realised the drawbacks.

Owain

--
*There are 3 kinds of people: those who can count & those who can't.

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

On Thu, 08 Oct 2009 20:46:06 +0000, D.M.Chapman wrote:

Indeed. However, it seems that the yoof of today aren't interested. I
run what is left of the usenet service at UKC - a place where usenet has
a bit of history (See http://uknof.org.uk/uknof6/Houlder-History.pdf
for a bit of it). Traffic has dived to being virtually non existant.

I still use Usenet a lot - just not at work! I probably accounted for a
lot of the traffic, once. (same place as Darren). In fact I even ran the
Usenet service on our VAX/VMS cluster.

Can't see it lasting long at all. It's been replaced by web forums and
more recently, Facebook.

Facebook is *massive* amongst the students. Some UK unis were seeing
60-70% of all non-spam email coming into the site being Facebook
related. Wander into any PC room and it's facebook on half the screens.
It's scary how big it's got. Usenet isn't of interest with it's plain
text content :-(

Yes, I've got into Facebook because I have to. I use it to communicate
with potential students,

--
Use the BIG mirror service in the UK:
http://www.mirrorservice.org

On Thu, 08 Oct 2009 22:09:43 +0100, Tim W wrote:

Indeed. However, it seems that the yoof of today aren't interested. I
run what is left of the usenet service at UKC - a place where usenet
has a bit of history (See
http://uknof.org.uk/uknof6/Houlder-History.pdf for a bit of it).
Traffic has dived to being virtually non existant.

Yes. I used to maintain the USENET server at Imperial for a bit - that's
gone now... That was used, but we were a "proper" compsci (as opposed to
ICT) department...

Hope you're not implying that UKC isn't 'proper' CompSci...! :-)





--
Use the BIG mirror service in the UK:
http://www.mirrorservice.org

D.M.Chapman wrote:

Indeed. However, it seems that the yoof of today aren't interested.
Traffic has dived to being virtually non existant. No one wants to
use usenet at the university.

It's not that long ago that I was at Uni (Warwick), and internal
newsgroups were thriving there, at least among us CompSci types. Wonder
if that's gone the same way now.

Pete

Bob Eager
wibbled on Friday 09 October 2009 00:20

On Thu, 08 Oct 2009 22:09:43 +0100, Tim W wrote:

Indeed. However, it seems that the yoof of today aren't interested. I
run what is left of the usenet service at UKC - a place where usenet
has a bit of history (See
http://uknof.org.uk/uknof6/Houlder-History.pdf for a bit of it).
Traffic has dived to being virtually non existant.

Yes. I used to maintain the USENET server at Imperial for a bit - that's
gone now... That was used, but we were a "proper" compsci (as opposed to
ICT) department...

Hope you're not implying that UKC isn't 'proper' CompSci...! :-)


No, I mean "as opposed to advanced Word and flash-monkeying at the
University of Slough or somesuch


--
Tim Watts

This space intentionally left blank...

On 08/10/09 22:56, mike wrote:

I just tried the Google archive search and, for the first time in
months, it's actually working again.

Did you check that the results were clickable? I found it listed the
hits, then claimed they didn't exist.

On Fri, 09 Oct 2009 00:43:46 +0100, Tim W wrote:

Bob Eager
wibbled on Friday 09 October 2009 00:20

On Thu, 08 Oct 2009 22:09:43 +0100, Tim W wrote:

Indeed. However, it seems that the yoof of today aren't interested. I
run what is left of the usenet service at UKC - a place where usenet
has a bit of history (See
http://uknof.org.uk/uknof6/Houlder-History.pdf for a bit of it).
Traffic has dived to being virtually non existant.

Yes. I used to maintain the USENET server at Imperial for a bit -
that's gone now... That was used, but we were a "proper" compsci (as
opposed to ICT) department...

Hope you're not implying that UKC isn't 'proper' CompSci...! :-)


No, I mean "as opposed to advanced Word and flash-monkeying at the
University of Slough or somesuch

I did actually interview someone who thought a CS degree meant 3 years of
learning how to use Office really well. When I explained, I couldn't see
them for dust...

I blame the school, not the applicant.



--
Use the BIG mirror service in the UK:
http://www.mirrorservice.org

"Pete Verdon" d wrote in
message ...
D.M.Chapman wrote:

Indeed. However, it seems that the yoof of today aren't interested.
Traffic has dived to being virtually non existant. No one wants to
use usenet at the university.

It's not that long ago that I was at Uni (Warwick), and internal
newsgroups were thriving there, at least among us CompSci types. Wonder if
that's gone the same way now.

When Marconi still existed we used newsgroups quite a lot.
It was pretty un-official in that the IT dept didn't run it, but Marconi
wasn't your typical office.
Even there there were arguments about text and binary.
Some of us would post pictures and stuff and get complaints from the old
diehards that insisted on using news readers that only worked with text.
This even though it wasn't usenet but private.

John Rumm
wibbled on Friday 09 October 2009 03:23

Tim W wrote:

I'm still waiting for my "Minority Report" computer interface - how I
would dismiss the trolls to my killfile with a flick of my white gloved
hand and a "bah!".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0awjPUkBXOU



Cool!
--
Tim Watts

This space intentionally left blank...

"John Rumm" wrote in message
...
Jules wrote:
snip
I remember my first success getting an answer to a technical question via
a network. It seemed amazing at the time that the answer came from a
complete stranger in the US, when I was just using a local single user at
a time BBS in Essex. Such was the power of Fidonet!
snip

Interesting point - the web forum (set up an managed by an enthusiast) seems
to be taking over from Usenet which has a more formal approach to new groups
and moderation.

It is now very easy for anyone to set up a forum on any subject of interest
without having to propose it and get a vote.

Perhaps this is BB coming back after all those years and empowering the
individual {barf} - sorry, must be something I ate - without the 'top down'
bureaucracy of Usenet.

Harder to use but easier to set up.

"Andrew Gabriel" wrote in message
...
snip

Well, I'm a heavy Facebook user, as well as Usenet.
snip

Always pictured you as fairly slim..........

dennis@home wrote:

When Marconi still existed we used newsgroups quite a lot.
It was pretty un-official in that the IT dept didn't run it, but Marconi
wasn't your typical office.

Where I work today there are thriving local site newsgroups. The server
*is* run by our local IT guys and technically it's an "official"
service, but in practice it's fairly informal and sounds much like your
Marconi groups. Our site is also not your typical office.

There is also a separate company-wide "forums" service, which a lot of
people (with scandalous lack of evidence I assume them to be mostly
sales and admin types :-) ) access via a Web view. However, this service
also provides NNTP service for those of us who prefer a proper
newsreader and - unlike some similar gateways I've seen - this works
really well, with neither interface seeming like a "poor relation" of
the other.

Pete