From et472@ncf.ca Sun Mar 2 21:46:45 2014 Path: diesel.cu.mi.it!feedme.news.telefonica.de!telefonica.de!news.szaf.org!nntp-feed.chiark.greenend.org.uk!ewrotcd!news.xcski.com!ncf.ca!not-for-mail From: Michael Black Newsgroups: comp.misc Subject: Re: Ghost of Usenet Postings Past Date: Wed, 26 Feb 2014 13:22:25 -0500 Organization: National Capital Freenet, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada Lines: 44 Sender: et472@bas1-montreal43-1177754812.dsl.bell.ca Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: bas1-montreal43-1177754812.dsl.bell.ca Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed X-Trace: theodyn.ncf.ca 1393438842 24900 70.51.28.188 (26 Feb 2014 18:20:42 GMT) X-Complaints-To: complaints@ncf.ca NNTP-Posting-Date: 26 Feb 2014 18:20:42 GMT In-Reply-To: User-Agent: Alpine 2.02 (LNX 1266 2009-07-14) Xref: diesel.cu.mi.it comp.misc:5585 On Sun, 23 Feb 2014, RS Wood wrote: > Anybody remember this cartoon from 1996? > > http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?GhostOfUsenetPostingsPast > > I first saw it attached to this Salon article about the geeks who saved > Usenet (by helping Google archive DejaNews and other archives a while > back). > > http://www.salon.com/2002/01/08/saving_usenet/ > > It's a great read, if you haven't already seen it. Highly recommended. > Huh? Usenet was never intended to be permanent. I would argue that when dejanews came along, their work at archiving messages from that point on was a good thing, suddenly information could be found. But dejanews didnt' save usenet, and all that google did when it took over dejanews' archive was save the archive from dejanews. Google hasn't done anything particularly good for usenet, and since they've changed their interface twice to favor their own groups (and indeed often don't make it clear that usenet is something different) they are damaging usenet. They allow replies to messages older than 30 days, so some idiot can ask "is this still for sale" 20 years after the original post. Too often those messages don't even quote some of the original message. Messages from there are no longer wrapped properly, leaving a real mess ont the screen. Since google let's the quoted material be hidden, we end up with endless pages of quoted text that the google poster doesn't realize they are including. Just because it looks one way at google doesn't mean the rest of us see it that way. I can't even access the google archive with a text only browser. What a joke, a medium that is only text, and I have to use a graphic browser now to search for my old messages. I don't even need a graphic browser for most of the web. Google is the enemy of usenet. Michael