Usenet becoming less available

[nancylebov]

Sprint sounds like it's going to stop offering alt groups.

And here's what Google Groups offers: http://groups.google.com/support/bin/
answer.py?answer=46465&topic=9244 is that you are supposed to tell
Google that you want to read groups via e-mail, then use the
filtering in your email client to organize the postings into threads,
and filter out those you don't want to read.

Do you bother with that? Do you know anyone who does?

I've been told that some sysadmins won't forward posts from google groups because there's so much spam and that Google just doesn't think it's worth hiring people who know and love usenet to work on google groups.

I haven't been using usenet for a while, but it would be a shame if it were allowed to go under. I haven't seen anything on the web that's as good as trn for making large discussions convenient.

First link thanks to twistedchick.

Addendum: Google's causualness about usenet seems odd to me. Not only could it be a better source of add revenue if more people read Google Groups, but letting Google Groups turn into a spam portal violates "Don't be evil".

Comments

[madfilkentist]

This is Andrew Cuomo's fault. He decided that because there are child porn posts to Usenet, Usenet is evil. ISP's consider Usenet marginal if not an outright inconvenience, so several big ones caved in without an argument.

Google Groups are the new AOL. When I send spam complaints to Google Groups, I get boilerplate email saying the consider it too much trouble to cancel spammer accounts. I killfile Google Groups posts by default and then whitelist people I know.

There's been a discussion on rec.music.filk of alternative newsgroup sources, some of which cost money. For some reason, the discussion has attracted several trolls, but there are still useful recommendations.

[dsgood.livejournal.com]

There are free newsgroup servers; motzarella.org seems to be one of the better ones. And non-free ones, some not very pricey.

Also, web interfaces. And: something I haven't seen much mention of is specialized web interfaces. For example, coolscifi gives access to the rec.arts.sf.* groups and some others related to sf; it also has its own forums.

[kgbooklog.livejournal.com]

motzarella.org seems to be one of the better ones

I just signed up with them (now that Time Warner has stopped pretending to support usenet), and I'm happy so far: free, painless registration, good selection of groups, standard configurations, etc. No binary groups, but I can't think of a legal reason to post binaries that wouldn't be better served by some other protocol.

[firecat]

panix.com has a good newsfeed (it doesn't have everything, but it will add pretty much anything you ask for).

[sgsguru.livejournal.com]

I've heard that Usenet is a nightmare for ISPs. Just keeping it running at all requires several full-time employees to deal with spam and bogus control messages (ie, folks randomly creating/deleting groups, etc).

Usenet seems to attract "problem personalities", ranging from clueless bozos to deliberate troublemakers to downright psychotics. Following things is a challenge at the best of times.

That said, it's a shame to see it go. For a good long time, it was the only example I know of of a functioning anarchy.

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