Weeks? hah!!

[g***@gmail.com]

Let's see...off the top of my head, not looking in the archives...
There's the "how do I remove a file named '-' from comp.unix.wizards...
( at least a year so far..)
The " 'move' is less intuitive than 'copy-and-delete' thread from this
humble newgroup ( 3 or 4 months, and still kicking! Hi, Mike!).
The "Furrymuck is for lameoid perverts" thread that Joel Furr keeps
firing back up on alt.fan.furry...
And let's not forhget the "Imminent Death of the Net" theme, which has echoed
at least since the first FidoNet gateway...(or was it Compu$erve?)

Those are all recurring, not long-running.

Do the cyclical "september threads" count as continuous?

It's moot now. September 1993 will go down in net.history as the September
that never ended.

You were surely right those years ago, it never ended for you guys.

[Patrick Scheible]

Post by g***@gmail.com

Let's see...off the top of my head, not looking in the archives...
There's the "how do I remove a file named '-' from comp.unix.wizards...
( at least a year so far..)
The " 'move' is less intuitive than 'copy-and-delete' thread from this
humble newgroup ( 3 or 4 months, and still kicking! Hi, Mike!).
The "Furrymuck is for lameoid perverts" thread that Joel Furr keeps
firing back up on alt.fan.furry...
And let's not forhget the "Imminent Death of the Net" theme, which has echoed
at least since the first FidoNet gateway...(or was it Compu$erve?)

Those are all recurring, not long-running.

Do the cyclical "september threads" count as continuous?

It's moot now. September 1993 will go down in net.history as the September
that never ended.

You were surely right those years ago, it never ended for you guys.

The last couple of years have made me think it's finally October, at
least as far as Usenet is concerned.

-- Patrick

[Michael Black]

Post by Patrick Scheible

Post by g***@gmail.com

Let's see...off the top of my head, not looking in the archives...
There's the "how do I remove a file named '-' from comp.unix.wizards...
( at least a year so far..)
The " 'move' is less intuitive than 'copy-and-delete' thread from this
humble newgroup ( 3 or 4 months, and still kicking! Hi, Mike!).
The "Furrymuck is for lameoid perverts" thread that Joel Furr keeps
firing back up on alt.fan.furry...
And let's not forhget the "Imminent Death of the Net" theme, which has echoed
at least since the first FidoNet gateway...(or was it Compu$erve?)

Those are all recurring, not long-running.

Do the cyclical "september threads" count as continuous?

It's moot now. September 1993 will go down in net.history as the September
that never ended.

You were surely right those years ago, it never ended for you guys.

The last couple of years have made me think it's finally October, at
least as far as Usenet is concerned.

And yet now, instead of AOL there is google, and too many people who know
so little about Usenet that they dig up old messages on the google archive
and reply to them, usually without even saying anything valuable.

The "original" poster replied to a post that is almost 19 years old, and
yes indeed, he is posting from google.

When google changed their interface years back, they inadvertently(?)
allowed for replies to old messages, when previously replies were disabled
if the message was older than 30 days. I was never sure if it was a
mistake, or since they were really interested in their own groups, hadn't
considered the effect to Usenet, when the original message would be long
gone. So people were vandalizing old threads, replying to some classic
threads (like the one between Linus and Andrew Tannebaum about Linux),
some of which google itself had highlighted because of their history. I
know I complained at the time, so did others. And relatively soon, the
"feature" disappeared.

Google changed their interface again, and once again introduced the
bug/feature. And now there are too many replying to old messages. There
seems to be something sinister about the process, someone suggested it's a
spamming technique. It doesn't make sense. I find it hard to believe
someone inadvertently lands on some old message to reply to. I saw one
where someone was really clueless, the reply seemed to be asking something
related, but it wasn't clear. I may have been around in some newsgroups
since 1994, but virtually nobody else is, yet people think they can supply
advice or ask a related question when the poster is likely long gone?

Michael

[Charles Richmond]

[snip...] [snip...]
[snip...]
Google changed their interface again, and once again introduced the
bug/feature. And now there are too many replying to old messages. There
seems to be something sinister about the process, someone suggested it's a
spamming technique. It doesn't make sense. I find it hard to believe
someone inadvertently lands on some old message to reply to. I saw one
where someone was really clueless, the reply seemed to be asking something
related, but it wasn't clear. I may have been around in some newsgroups
since 1994, but virtually nobody else is, yet people think they can supply
advice or ask a related question when the poster is likely long gone?

I've been on Usenet since 1990... and I think many of the fogies here are
long-time Usenet folks. To me, the "internet archive" function is good.
The rotten interfaces are an atrocity!!!

--

numerist at aquaporin4 dot com

[Patrick Scheible]

Post by Charles Richmond

[snip...] [snip...] [snip...]
Google changed their interface again, and once again introduced the
bug/feature. And now there are too many replying to old messages.
There seems to be something sinister about the process, someone
suggested it's a spamming technique. It doesn't make sense. I find
it hard to believe someone inadvertently lands on some old message
to reply to. I saw one where someone was really clueless, the reply
seemed to be asking something related, but it wasn't clear. I may
have been around in some newsgroups since 1994, but virtually nobody
else is, yet people think they can supply advice or ask a related
question when the poster is likely long gone?

I've been on Usenet since 1990... and I think many of the fogies here
are long-time Usenet folks. To me, the "internet archive" function is
good. The rotten interfaces are an atrocity!!!

Agreed, the archive is good but the interface for searching is
questionable and for posting is downright awful. I wish someone else
had the archive and would do it right.

-- Patrick

[Peter Flass]

Post by Patrick Scheible

Post by Charles Richmond

[snip...] [snip...] [snip...]
Google changed their interface again, and once again introduced the
bug/feature. And now there are too many replying to old messages.
There seems to be something sinister about the process, someone
suggested it's a spamming technique. It doesn't make sense. I find
it hard to believe someone inadvertently lands on some old message
to reply to. I saw one where someone was really clueless, the reply
seemed to be asking something related, but it wasn't clear. I may
have been around in some newsgroups since 1994, but virtually nobody
else is, yet people think they can supply advice or ask a related
question when the poster is likely long gone?

I've been on Usenet since 1990... and I think many of the fogies here
are long-time Usenet folks. To me, the "internet archive" function is
good. The rotten interfaces are an atrocity!!!

Agreed, the archive is good but the interface for searching is
questionable and for posting is downright awful. I wish someone else
had the archive and would do it right.

As I recall, DejaNews was pretty good. I'll never understand why they
didn't at least start with that.

[Ahem A Rivet's Shot]

On Sat, 01 Sep 2012 08:15:14 -0400

Post by Peter Flass
As I recall, DejaNews was pretty good. I'll never understand why they
didn't at least start with that.

Did they not start GG by buying DejaNews ?

[Peter Flass]

Post by Ahem A Rivet's Shot
On Sat, 01 Sep 2012 08:15:14 -0400

Post by Peter Flass
As I recall, DejaNews was pretty good. I'll never understand why they
didn't at least start with that.

Did they not start GG by buying DejaNews ?

I'm not sure they paid money, but they inherited the DejaNews database,
which they proceeded to screw up. They also wrote their own web
interface (I believe), and you can see the result.

[Rod Speed]

Post by Peter Flass

Post by Ahem A Rivet's Shot

Post by Peter Flass
As I recall, DejaNews was pretty good.

It had some real downsides, like going broke.

Post by Peter Flass

Post by Ahem A Rivet's Shot

Post by Peter Flass
I'll never understand why they didn't at least start with that.

They did.

Post by Peter Flass

Post by Ahem A Rivet's Shot
Did they not start GG by buying DejaNews ?

I'm not sure they paid money, but they inherited the DejaNews database,

Least they didn't just let it die.

Post by Peter Flass
which they proceeded to screw up. They also wrote their
own web interface (I believe), and you can see the result.

[Michael Black]

Post by Ahem A Rivet's Shot
On Sat, 01 Sep 2012 08:15:14 -0400

Post by Peter Flass
As I recall, DejaNews was pretty good. I'll never understand why they
didn't at least start with that.

Did they not start GG by buying DejaNews ?

I'm not sure they paid money, but they inherited the DejaNews database, which
they proceeded to screw up. They also wrote their own web interface (I
believe), and you can see the result.

That's a good question. Dejanews, having gone through changes trying to
become profitable, was about to fail. Like within the week or something.
And the archive was about to disappear. And now that you mention it, I
can't be sure if anyone said Google bought the archive, or just put the
effort in to save it. It might have been as simple as paying for whatever
it was archived on. It is a good point, I wonder if we've forgotten or
just assumed.

But I recall at the time reading somewhere that google had deliberately
not bought the interface. Maybe that's a false memory, but that would put
things in context, if they weren't willing to pay for the interface,
"intellectual property", it might point to the notion that they just
grabbed the archive at cost before someone put tv shows or whatever on it.

Michael

[Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz]

Post by Peter Flass
As I recall, DejaNews was pretty good. I'll never understand why
they didn't at least start with that.

They did start with that. Then they started coming up with innovative
ways to ruin the interface.

[D.J.]

On Sat, 01 Sep 2012 19:53:36 -0400, Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz

Post by Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz

Post by Peter Flass
As I recall, DejaNews was pretty good. I'll never understand why
they didn't at least start with that.

They did start with that. Then they started coming up with innovative
ways to ruin the interface.

And they did a marketing capaign any info-mercial would be proud of
'New And Improved Interface !'.
.
JimP.

[Michael Black]

Post by Charles Richmond

[snip...] [snip...] [snip...]
Google changed their interface again, and once again introduced the
bug/feature. And now there are too many replying to old messages. There
seems to be something sinister about the process, someone suggested it's a
spamming technique. It doesn't make sense. I find it hard to believe
someone inadvertently lands on some old message to reply to. I saw one
where someone was really clueless, the reply seemed to be asking something
related, but it wasn't clear. I may have been around in some newsgroups
since 1994, but virtually nobody else is, yet people think they can supply
advice or ask a related question when the poster is likely long gone?

I've been on Usenet since 1990... and I think many of the fogies here are
long-time Usenet folks. To me, the "internet archive" function is good. The
rotten interfaces are an atrocity!!!

Sorry, I was thinking in terms of who still read a specific newsgroup,
"some newsgroups".

Maybe not this one, where probably some thread is still going on from 18
years ago, but someone replied to an old message in
rec.radio.amateur.equipment last week and I know pretty much nobody is
posting there these days, so chances are good virtually nobody from 20
years ago is still reading it. I still do, but sporadically and there's
nothing of value there. I was reading some newsgroups in late 1994,
including rec.radio.amateur.homebrew, but I don't think I read .equipment
until a few years later.

I think one thing in retrospect that was so important to Usenet was the
constant flow of new people arriving (maybe not in a chunk in September
like all those hordes of McGill students I saw out yesterday barhopping),
but without new people coming in, many newsgroups have stagnated. But,
while some do stick around, it makes for a transient readership.

So when someone replies to an 18 year old message, especially if it's an
ad (like in rec.radio.amateur.equipment) or a post starting a thread
(often the iniative of someone new to the newsgroup), the chances are
limited that the specific poster of the original message is still around
is quite limited.

So that guy last week who asked "is this thing still available" to a post
at least a decade old, is just an idiot. The original poster is very much
not likely to be reading the newsgroup still, likely wasn't reading the
newsgroup about a week after he posted his ad, but chances are good that
the item for sale was either sold a long time ago, or been tossed.

Michael

[Peter Flass]

On 8/31/2012 2:30 PM, Michael Black wrote:
...

Post by Michael Black
I find it
hard to believe someone inadvertently lands on some old message to reply
to.

I did this once or twice by mistake, I don't use google groups much any
more - I used to use it because I didn't have usenet at work.

I find it discouraging that I'll research a software problem and find
the problem posted from several years back, often several times, but no
one ever posted a fix. [fortunately I have now figured out my SAMBA
problem (I hope) because the documentation sux and the error messages
are voluminous but nearly useless]

[Charlie Gibbs]

Post by Peter Flass
...

I find it hard to believe someone inadvertently lands on some
old message to reply to.

I did this once or twice by mistake, I don't use google groups much
any more - I used to use it because I didn't have usenet at work.

To be fair, on many web-based interfaces (on other forums as well)
you have to lookk carefully to find the date posted.

Post by Peter Flass
I find it discouraging that I'll research a software problem and
find the problem posted from several years back, often several
times, but no one ever posted a fix. [fortunately I have now
figured out my SAMBA problem (I hope) because the documentation
sux and the error messages are voluminous but nearly useless]

What I find discouraging is when I search for information on some
long-standing problem, only to find that the one message that deals
with it is the question I posted myself several years ago.

[Michael Black]

Post by Charlie Gibbs
What I find discouraging is when I search for information on some
long-standing problem, only to find that the one message that deals
with it is the question I posted myself several years ago.

That's happened to me. It is unfornate others aren't posting about it,
but it does make sense, you are doing a search on something that interests
you so you are likely to have already posted about it, and then you show
up in results.

I have a webpage about upcoming local used booksales, and sometimes it's
hard to find information about upcoming sales, even when I know they will
be happening soon. And once I use too broad a set of search terms,
hoping to find sales I haven't heard of before, I end up getting my page.

The sad thing is, fairly broad terms, "montreal used book sales" puts my
page first, yet given all the commentary I've written over the years on
the page about how hard it can be to find out about upcoming used book
sales, I don't see a lot of change. it seems like some of the smaller
church sales are better at getting the information up, and keeping it up,
than the library sales or the biggest of the book sales. I try to be
complete, but sometimes I do repeated searches and don't find anything
about a sale before the night before, or even after it's begun. SO much
for the internet age.

One library group said in a newspaper a few years back "we have a facebook
page now, sales increased". Well what do you expect? I remember the
first time they had a sale, I found out by finding a poster the day after
the event. The only way I can rely on finding out about the sale ahead of
time is to physically go to the library and hope to find an early notice
looking for volunteers. I've been posting about used book sales since
early 1997. The group is horrible about promotion, so no wonder
if they do a tiny bit it increases sales. I don't do facebook, and for
all but a few things, things behind the facebook wall don't show up in
regular searches. I can remember when a key part of internet strategy was
"letting information loose", yet it often is still difficult. People are
dazzled by facebook, but they are just following the pack, not
understanding.

Michael

[l***@gandi.cluon.com]

Post by Michael Black
Google changed their interface again, and once again introduced the
bug/feature. And now there are too many replying to old messages.
.deletia. I may have been around in some newsgroups since 1994, but
virtually nobody else is, yet people think they can supply advice or
ask a related question when the poster is likely long gone?
Michael

I recently saw an example of that in one of the ham-radio forsale
groups, where someone replied to a 15-year old posting asking if the
radio the poster had was still available ...

"Why sure -- I've been checking the group nightly for over a decade
hoping someone would FINALLY want my fifty dollar receiver ... " someone
said, never.

--NK1G

[Michael Black]

Post by l***@gandi.cluon.com

Post by Michael Black
Google changed their interface again, and once again introduced the
bug/feature. And now there are too many replying to old messages.
.deletia. I may have been around in some newsgroups since 1994, but
virtually nobody else is, yet people think they can supply advice or
ask a related question when the poster is likely long gone?
Michael

I recently saw an example of that in one of the ham-radio forsale
groups, where someone replied to a 15-year old posting asking if the
radio the poster had was still available ...
"Why sure -- I've been checking the group nightly for over a decade
hoping someone would FINALLY want my fifty dollar receiver ... " someone
said, never.
--NK1G

That may have been me replying. There have been a few recently. Someone
even said "I realize this is an old post, but did you ever sell this?".
I wondered if he was curious about the price that was paid (which could be
useful if someone has the same piece of equipment) but what was paid
fourteen years ago may not be relevant today, either the equipment is much
lower in price since it's now "obsolete" or has gone up in price "a
collector's item".

The other side is, people still post ads in rec.radio.amateur.equipment
(which was supposed to be fore discussion of the equipment, not advertising)
yet they don't notice that there's really no traffic there, except for the
occasional ad? If someone wants to buy or sell something, surely it makes
sense to find a place that is actually being used.

Michael VE2BVW

[Dave Garland]

Post by Michael Black
The other side is, people still post ads in
rec.radio.amateur.equipment (which was supposed to be fore discussion
of the equipment, not advertising)
yet they don't notice that there's really no traffic there, except for
the occasional ad? If someone wants to buy or sell something, surely
it makes sense to find a place that is actually being used.

It doesn't cost anything to post, so nothing ventured, nothing gained.
I'd say "tragedy of the commons", but if the group is moribund
anyhow, I don't guess it hurts or even inconveniences anyone.

[33 screaming frogs]

Post by Michael Black

Post by Patrick Scheible

Post by g***@gmail.com

Let's see...off the top of my head, not looking in the archives...
There's the "how do I remove a file named '-' from comp.unix.wizards...
( at least a year so far..)
The " 'move' is less intuitive than 'copy-and-delete' thread from this
humble newgroup ( 3 or 4 months, and still kicking! Hi, Mike!).
The "Furrymuck is for lameoid perverts" thread that Joel Furr keeps
firing back up on alt.fan.furry...
And let's not forhget the "Imminent Death of the Net" theme, which has echoed
at least since the first FidoNet gateway...(or was it Compu$erve?)

Those are all recurring, not long-running.

Do the cyclical "september threads" count as continuous?

It's moot now. September 1993 will go down in net.history as the September
that never ended.

You were surely right those years ago, it never ended for you guys.

The last couple of years have made me think it's finally October, at
least as far as Usenet is concerned.

And yet now, instead of AOL there is google, and too many people who know
so little about Usenet that they dig up old messages on the google archive
and reply to them, usually without even saying anything valuable.
The "original" poster replied to a post that is almost 19 years old, and
yes indeed, he is posting from google.
When google changed their interface years back, they inadvertently(?)
allowed for replies to old messages, when previously replies were disabled
if the message was older than 30 days. I was never sure if it was a
mistake, or since they were really interested in their own groups, hadn't
considered the effect to Usenet, when the original message would be long
gone. So people were vandalizing old threads, replying to some classic
threads (like the one between Linus and Andrew Tannebaum about Linux),
some of which google itself had highlighted because of their history. I
know I complained at the time, so did others. And relatively soon, the
"feature" disappeared.
Google changed their interface again, and once again introduced the
bug/feature. And now there are too many replying to old messages. There
seems to be something sinister about the process, someone suggested it's a
spamming technique. It doesn't make sense. I find it hard to believe
someone inadvertently lands on some old message to reply to. I saw one
where someone was really clueless, the reply seemed to be asking something
related, but it wasn't clear. I may have been around in some newsgroups
since 1994, but virtually nobody else is, yet people think they can supply
advice or ask a related question when the poster is likely long gone?
Michael
complains about necroposting
proceeds to necropost

wow you really are old

[Spagh]

Post by 33 screaming frogs

Post by Michael Black

Post by Patrick Scheible

Post by g***@gmail.com

Let's see...off the top of my head, not looking in the archives...
There's the "how do I remove a file named '-' from comp.unix.wizards...
( at least a year so far..)
The " 'move' is less intuitive than 'copy-and-delete' thread from this
humble newgroup ( 3 or 4 months, and still kicking! Hi, Mike!).
The "Furrymuck is for lameoid perverts" thread that Joel Furr keeps
firing back up on alt.fan.furry...
And let's not forhget the "Imminent Death of the Net" theme, which has echoed
at least since the first FidoNet gateway...(or was it Compu$erve?)

Those are all recurring, not long-running.

Do the cyclical "september threads" count as continuous?

It's moot now. September 1993 will go down in net.history as the September
that never ended.

You were surely right those years ago, it never ended for you guys.

The last couple of years have made me think it's finally October, at
least as far as Usenet is concerned.

And yet now, instead of AOL there is google, and too many people who know
so little about Usenet that they dig up old messages on the google archive
and reply to them, usually without even saying anything valuable.
The "original" poster replied to a post that is almost 19 years old, and
yes indeed, he is posting from google.
When google changed their interface years back, they inadvertently(?)
allowed for replies to old messages, when previously replies were disabled
if the message was older than 30 days. I was never sure if it was a
mistake, or since they were really interested in their own groups, hadn't
considered the effect to Usenet, when the original message would be long
gone. So people were vandalizing old threads, replying to some classic
threads (like the one between Linus and Andrew Tannebaum about Linux),
some of which google itself had highlighted because of their history. I
know I complained at the time, so did others. And relatively soon, the
"feature" disappeared.
Google changed their interface again, and once again introduced the
bug/feature. And now there are too many replying to old messages. There
seems to be something sinister about the process, someone suggested it's a
spamming technique. It doesn't make sense. I find it hard to believe
someone inadvertently lands on some old message to reply to. I saw one
where someone was really clueless, the reply seemed to be asking something
related, but it wasn't clear. I may have been around in some newsgroups
since 1994, but virtually nobody else is, yet people think they can supply
advice or ask a related question when the poster is likely long gone?
Michael
complains about necroposting
proceeds to necropost

wow you really are old

https://watchshadowdragon.com

[j***@gmail.com]

It's moot now. September 1993 will go down in net.history as the September
that never ended.

Nice

[Mohammed Khan]

Let's see...off the top of my head, not looking in the archives...
There's the "how do I remove a file named '-' from comp.unix.wizards...
( at least a year so far..)
The " 'move' is less intuitive than 'copy-and-delete' thread from this
humble newgroup ( 3 or 4 months, and still kicking! Hi, Mike!).
The "Furrymuck is for lameoid perverts" thread that Joel Furr keeps
firing back up on alt.fan.furry...
And let's not forhget the "Imminent Death of the Net" theme, which has echoed
at least since the first FidoNet gateway...(or was it Compu$erve?)

Those are all recurring, not long-running.

Do the cyclical "september threads" count as continuous?

It's moot now. September 1993 will go down in net.history as the September
that never ended.

I wonder how Dave Fischer is doing now? Hopefully he hasn't committed seppuku and knows that he made Internet history with what he said. Anyways, I gotta go. I'll come back to this on January 26th, 2024 so that I can be the one to announce the 20th anniversary of this legendary message lol