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Re: Ghost of Usenet Postings Past

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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

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Thread

Ghost of Usenet Postings Past RS Wood <rswood@therandymon.com> - 2014-02-23 22:55 +0000
  Re: Ghost of Usenet Postings Past bad sector <forgetski@postit_INVALID_.gov> - 2014-02-23 18:19 -0500
    Re: Ghost of Usenet Postings Past Aragorn <thorongil@telenet.be.invalid> - 2014-02-24 08:33 +0100
      Re: Ghost of Usenet Postings Past RS Wood <rsw@therandymon.com> - 2014-02-24 23:29 +0000
        Re: Ghost of Usenet Postings Past RS Wood <rsw@therandymon.com> - 2014-02-25 10:27 +0000
          Re: Ghost of Usenet Postings Past Aragorn <thorongil@telenet.be.invalid> - 2014-02-25 16:05 +0100
            Re: Ghost of Usenet Postings Past RS Wood <rsw@therandymon.com> - 2014-02-25 15:22 +0000
            Re: Ghost of Usenet Postings Past Conceited Jerk <cj.speakeasy@AAARGHgmail.com> - 2014-02-25 15:42 -0600
      Re: Ghost of Usenet Postings Past Michael Black <et472@ncf.ca> - 2014-02-26 13:34 -0500
    Re: Ghost of Usenet Postings Past Chris J Dixon <chris@cdixon.me.uk> - 2014-02-24 07:39 +0000
      Re: Ghost of Usenet Postings Past "tdk" <forum.tdk@squte.com> - 2014-02-24 03:52 +0000
        Re: Ghost of Usenet Postings Past RS Wood <rsw@therandymon.com> - 2014-02-24 23:30 +0000
          Re: Ghost of Usenet Postings Past Aragorn <thorongil@telenet.be.invalid> - 2014-02-25 16:06 +0100
    Re: Ghost of Usenet Postings Past Michael Black <et472@ncf.ca> - 2014-02-26 13:27 -0500
  Re: Ghost of Usenet Postings Past Shadow <Sh@dow.br> - 2014-02-25 10:54 -0300
    Re: Ghost of Usenet Postings Past Dave Garland <dave.garland@wizinfo.com> - 2014-02-25 13:32 -0600
      Re: Ghost of Usenet Postings Past Shadow <Sh@dow.br> - 2014-02-26 11:12 -0300
      Re: Ghost of Usenet Postings Past Michael Black <et472@ncf.ca> - 2014-02-26 13:48 -0500
  Re: Ghost of Usenet Postings Past Ant <ant@zimage.comANT> - 2014-02-25 06:03 -0800
  Re: Ghost of Usenet Postings Past Michael Black <et472@ncf.ca> - 2014-02-26 13:22 -0500

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