Even though UseNet is a shell of it’s former self, it’s still somewhat interesting.
However, its not really worth paying for a newreader service, so I’ve been accessing via Google Groups, which worked pretty well, until Saturday. Since then (25 June 2011), no updates have been seen to any news group I normally view (which is a decent number).
Not much news out there about this on the web that I could find, a few posts by people asking the same question and that’s about it.
Of course, it’s probable that as soon as I post this, Google Groups will resume updating the UseNet groups, but since that serves my purpose well, I’m still posting this…
Well, if Google has abandoned UseNet, there isn’t much choice, I’m afraid.
Actually I had noticed that comment (from a Linux group member) when I first searched, but not much else. I nosed around the Google Groups help ‘group’, but didn’t find any further info.
Duke University was the home of Usenet. They shut down the Usenet server on 20 May 2010. While archives are available, according to Duke University, usenet is now dead.
I’ve noticed that the USENET of Google Groups has not been updated since sometime late on June 25th, and it is now the afternoon of June 27th. I’m surprised that so far, this is the only place I can find this mentioned on the Web.
Also, aioe is a good alternative, but it has some important limitations compared to Google Groups:
You can’t post to more than one group without a followup-to for one group only, and if you make a mistake in a post, and it fails to follow one of their rules, you can’t just fix the mistake and repost the same post.
Usenet was (and is) a completely distributed network. There’s no “the” Usenet server, and Usenet itself continues to exist despite Duke (and many others) turning off their servers.
What do you mean by ‘news’? Almost nobody ever turned to Usenet for CNN-style news, if that’s what you mean: People have always used it as a large set of discussion fora, possibly talking about news if news is on their minds. It is about like here, in many ways, although only some of the fora have moderation.
And, yes there are enough people who use it for pure-text discussion that that aspect is no more ‘dead’ now than it was, say, a decade ago.
As mentioned, there are good discussions groups on Usenet, and sometimes I learned things and got answers, particular in misc.transport and rec.models (e.g, I learned about the MTA EZ-Pass replacement program this spring, and I learned about the Trainlife Model RR magazine collection on UseNet first - both useful info to me).
The way Google sort of intergrated UseNet into its groups actually worked pretty well for me, and I’d hate to lose access that way, but I’ll try the suggested free newsreaders just in case.
Just tossing this out there, as it probably doesn’t make a big difference, but I always put in “no archive” when I used usenet, and deja/google never showed my posts.
I find Google Groups very convenient for searching and browsing, and usually post via that interface as well, even though I have a free newsserver account I can access via Xnews.
Messages posted via Groups do indeed still appear on Usenet, but the archive is frozen to a past date when viewing via Groups! If this is deliberate it seems rather silly, an example of the famous “write-only” device. (In the past, when Groups was hiccupping, I’d sometimes get good results by modifying the URL, e.g. changing “google.com” to google.fr". But trying that now the URL just reverts back to “.com”.)
Why doesn’t Google add a note to its Groups page to reduce confusion?
The name (or nym) sounds a bit familiar, but honestly I don’t really recall any of (his) postings.
In misc.transport and rec.auto.driving there were a few nyms that were usually interesting (such as John Landsford, purported to be a NC road engineer, and Cmdr Yamato, who often linked to interesting videos); a larger number more that you never took seriously such as Randy, gpsman (a “gps man school of truck driving” graduate was always the cause of nasty accidents), Carl Rogers, and of course the 10,000 or so (probably more) nyms of the insane ‘Aunt Judy’ (Laura Bush Murdered her Boyfriend/3000 Car Crashes a Year/SADDAM/Speeders and Drunk Driversare Criminals/GM Causes Deaths…oh, I can’t remember them all); and then the generic schmucks like me, who would ask some questions, answer other questions, and in general were background noise/filler )
Anyway, Google Groups is still not updating the UseNet archives, and most perplexing, there seems to be very little chatter about it on the web (maybe I should search using some engine besides Google) - when searching you only turn up the same three thread/posts (this Straight Dope thread, the Linux group thread mentioned before, and a third post from some other board - these same threads get repackages by other boards a surprizing number of times), you know it’s just NOT a hot topic of conversation.
I guess I should just try to e-mail Google Groups contact, but I’m afraid that not only would I not get an answer, but the e-mail account would become a spam magnet - maybe I’ll be more motivated to slap together a one-shot gmail account later…
I suppose Usenet isn’t a headline grabber nowadays, not like back in the day before all these whipper-snappers and their Web 2.0. Do post if you find out what’s going on. I see there’s a thread about it on alt.fan.cecil-adams now.
It’s his real name, but he used many "nyms’ to avoid killfiles. He was active about 10 years ago, and it was really a joke question. He is better known as “Richard the Stoopid”.
The archives seem to be updating again, at least for now. :rolleyes:
And misc.transport.road has both a post busting on Richard Bullis (now I remember - you’re correct, srzss05) and a spam post for fake Nike shoes.
Somethings just never change…
(In the past, when Groups was hiccupping, I’d sometimes get good results by modifying the URL, e.g. changing “
)