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| James Dolan... |
 Posted: Sat Jul 04, 2009 1:48 pm |
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Guest
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my basic question is in the subject header: how badly broken is
google's usenet archive?
i've often heard people complain about it, but i've usually found it
to be not as badly broken as the worst complaints seemed to suggest,
until i tried using it this week and found it to be just about
completely dead. is it true that it's just about completely unusable
now? about how long has it been that way?
i apologize if i'm repeating questions that people are already sick of
answering, but because of the archive problems i haven't even managed
to find out to what extent the problems have already been discussed.
--
jdolan at (no spam) math.ucr.edu |
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| Mensanator... |
| Posted: Sat Jul 04, 2009 2:22 pm |
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On Jul 4, 6:48�pm, jdo... at (no spam) math.UUCP (James Dolan) wrote:
[quote:47d0ec3eac]my basic question is in the subject header: how badly broken is
google's usenet archive?
[/quote:47d0ec3eac]
Not bad.
[quote:47d0ec3eac]
i've often heard people complain about it, but i've usually found it
to be not as badly broken as the worst complaints seemed to suggest,
[/quote:47d0ec3eac]
There will always be whiners who blame the system
for their own shortcomings.
[quote:47d0ec3eac]until i tried using it this week and found it to be just about
completely dead. �is it true that it's just about completely unusable
now? �
[/quote:47d0ec3eac]
No. I just did a Google search and found the very
first message I ever posted from Jan 6, 2001. Couldn't
do that if it was broken.
[quote:47d0ec3eac]about how long has it been that way?
[/quote:47d0ec3eac]
You're asking for a conclusion based on a false premise.
[quote:47d0ec3eac]
i apologize if i'm repeating questions that people are already sick of
answering, but because of the archive problems i haven't even managed
to find out to what extent the problems have already been discussed.
--
jdo... at (no spam) math.ucr.edu[/quote:47d0ec3eac] |
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| Chip Eastham... |
| Posted: Sat Jul 04, 2009 2:49 pm |
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On Jul 4, 7:48 pm, jdo... at (no spam) math.UUCP (James Dolan) wrote:
[quote:fb9d4d325c]my basic question is in the subject header: how badly broken is
google's usenet archive?
i've often heard people complain about it, but i've usually found it
to be not as badly broken as the worst complaints seemed to suggest,
until i tried using it this week and found it to be just about
completely dead. is it true that it's just about completely unusable
now? about how long has it been that way?
i apologize if i'm repeating questions that people are already sick of
answering, but because of the archive problems i haven't even managed
to find out to what extent the problems have already been discussed.
--
jdo... at (no spam) math.ucr.edu
[/quote:fb9d4d325c]
I noticed that some of the summary stuff,
indexing of recent posts by author, was
broken over the last couple of months,
but I think this got caught up in the
last week or so. Google Groups does
have folks who respond to reports of
broken functionality, though I imagine
not everyone hears back about specific
fixes.
regards, chip |
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| Bill Dubuque... |
| Posted: Sat Jul 04, 2009 6:42 pm |
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jdolan at (no spam) math.UUCP (James Dolan) wrote:
[quote:6211a4690f]
my basic question is in the subject header: how badly broken is
google's usenet archive?
i've often heard people complain about it, but i've usually found it
to be not as badly broken as the worst complaints seemed to suggest,
until i tried using it this week and found it to be just about
completely dead. is it true that it's just about completely unusable
now? about how long has it been that way?
i apologize if i'm repeating questions that people are already sick of
answering, but because of the archive problems i haven't even managed
to find out to what extent the problems have already been discussed.
[/quote:6211a4690f]
It appears to be badly broken. Many of my posts have links to
prior posts (using the message-id) and many of these links no
longer work (though they all used to). Many keyword searches
no longer find posts they used to. Attempting to browse the
prior posts of someone via "View Profile" often yields links
that give errors or far fewer posts than the displayed count.
Etc, etc. These problems appear to have been introduced in the
last half year or so. Coincidentally Google Groups acquired
a new manager in that time frame (according to a post in the
Google Group support forum). It's a crying shame that we no
longer have a reliable archive. So much for Google's motto
"do no evil". |
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| William Elliot... |
| Posted: Sat Jul 04, 2009 11:04 pm |
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On Sat, 4 Jul 2009, James Dolan wrote:
[quote:0a5de212c3]my basic question is in the subject header: how badly broken is
google's usenet archive?
As badly broken as your punctuation.[/quote:0a5de212c3]
[quote:0a5de212c3]i've often heard people complain about it, but i've usually found it
to be not as badly broken as the worst complaints seemed to suggest,
until i tried using it this week and found it to be just about
completely dead. is it true that it's just about completely unusable
now? about how long has it been that way?
i apologize if i'm repeating questions that people are already sick of
answering, but because of the archive problems i haven't even managed
to find out to what extent the problems have already been discussed.
--
jdolan at (no spam) math.ucr.edu
[/quote:0a5de212c3] |
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| Phil Carmody... |
| Posted: Sun Jul 05, 2009 4:02 am |
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jdolan at (no spam) math.UUCP (James Dolan) writes:
[quote:4f35adebca]my basic question is in the subject header: how badly broken is
google's usenet archive?
[/quote:4f35adebca]
Google groups sucks.
[quote:4f35adebca]i've often heard people complain about it, but i've usually found it
to be not as badly broken as the worst complaints seemed to suggest,
until i tried using it this week and found it to be just about
completely dead. is it true that it's just about completely unusable
now? about how long has it been that way?
[/quote:4f35adebca]
I think while they were just replicating DejaNews, which was great
before they sold out and became a 'portal', things were pretty OK.
I suspect they changed primary key at some point, and they bollocksed
up their joins so searches simply stopped working.
My favourite demonstration that google groups sucks is to simply
search for "Google groups sucks" (in quotes). If you add my surname
to the search, you'll find an explanation why as the first hit, but
that explanation won't be found if you do not include my surname.
So a subset of the results contains something which wasn't in the
original results. That's simply broken. Google groups sucks.
[quote:4f35adebca]i apologize if i'm repeating questions that people are already sick of
answering, but because of the archive problems i haven't even managed
to find out to what extent the problems have already been discussed.
[/quote:4f35adebca]
It's not really a sci.math question - try alt.google-sucks perhaps?
Phil
Crosspost & Followup-To: alt.google-sucks
--
Marijuana is indeed a dangerous drug.
It causes governments to wage war against their own people.
-- Dave Seaman (sci.math, 19 Mar 2009) |
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| Bill Dubuque... |
| Posted: Sun Jul 05, 2009 6:27 pm |
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Guest
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Chip Eastham <hardmath at (no spam) gmail.com> wrote:
[quote:c7522aeffb]On Jul 4, 7:48 pm, jdo... at (no spam) math.UUCP (James Dolan) wrote:
my basic question is in the subject header: how badly broken is
google's usenet archive?
i've often heard people complain about it, but i've usually found it
to be not as badly broken as the worst complaints seemed to suggest,
until i tried using it this week and found it to be just about
completely dead. is it true that it's just about completely unusable
now? about how long has it been that way?
i apologize if i'm repeating questions that people are already sick of
answering, but because of the archive problems i haven't even managed
to find out to what extent the problems have already been discussed.
I noticed that some of the summary stuff, indexing of recent posts by
author, was broken over the last couple of months, but I think this got
caught up in the last week or so.
[/quote:c7522aeffb]
It's been broken for much longer than that - at least a few months
and it remains badly broken. I haven't seen any fixes. Indeed,
rather, it seems that it's breaking more, nor being fixed.
[quote:c7522aeffb]Google Groups does have folks who respond to reports of broken
functionality, though I imagine not everyone hears back about
specific fixes.
[/quote:c7522aeffb]
Correction. A long time ago Google Groups had support people who
fixed bugs. The handful of problems I reported many years ago
were fixed and I actually received personal replies. Now they
no longer appear to offer an email address for bug reports and
only offer a Google groups support group, which does not appear
to be monitored by Google nowadays. I suspect the new manager is
someone too young to understand the value of newsgroups. Indeed,
many 20-somethings have never even heard of usenet newsgroups,
and, when they do, view them as antiquated compared to blogs etc.
But, of course, interesting math stays fresh for much longer periods
of time than most any other body of knowledge, so it will be a shame
if Google lets the usenet archive atrophy to the point where it can
no longer be reliably searched, etc. |
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