Alternatives To deja.com's Usenet Archives?

wtfcca asks: "deja.com decided to revamp again. What are the chances it will drop its Usenet archive/search section in the future? Are there alternatives to Deja.com for searching/archiving Usenet? What would it take to set up a Usenet archive/searching site? Besides the obvious hardware requirements, anybody know if deja.com's Usenet searching software is available? I'd consider donating time/equipment to archive a subset of Usenet if so (since I happen to like Deja's power user interface). Some time ago Deja News said it would acquire old article archives, dating back to the mid-80s or some such. Did that ever happen? Every once in a while I see an old articles, but not consistently to lead me to believe that it did."

Comments

quit whining.

[Anonymous Coward]

wah wah wah.

why don't you just bookmark the powersearch page?
http://www.deja.com/home_ps.shtml
or if you want usenet, on the front page, up at the top, where it says "Looking for usenet?" there is a link. click on it. you're right. one click off the main page is "leafing through the site" and so you don't have to leaf through one link, here's the URL:

http://www.deja.com/usenet/

In the meantime, use Ija.

[Wakko Warner]

Though I doubt Deja will ever drop its Usenet archive, I'm sick and tired of leafing through their site to find it. Instead, I use a handy command-line Perl program called "ija", which cuts through all the bullshit and gives me what I want: results from a Usenet search.

Ija can be downloaded from here.

- A.P.
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"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad

Re: In the meantime, use Ija.

[InitZero]

I'm sick and tired of leafing through their site to find it.

I totally agree. A few redesigns ago, I grabbed a copy of their seach interface and put it up on my own site (http://matt.steinhoff.net/deja.html). Since doing that, I've not been back to the real site.

Better than a perl application, my simple web site allows me to do USENET search using the old school style from any PC, not just my own.

InitZero

Privacy concerns with old archives

[bluGill]

Others have come up with the idea of getting backup tapes from old news servers (These appearently really exist). They have all changed their mind when reminded that at the time usenet was a two weeks and it is deleted. X-NO-ARCHIVE was not an option meaning that people would post things expecting they would be deleted in a couple weeks and their word would not come back to haunt them. Bringing those archives online leaves on open to lawsuits since unanonymous postings that orginially only went to a small group are now avaiable.

That two weeks estimate is because that is how long it took for some remote sites to get a post after it was posted.

Re:Privacy concerns with old archives

[erice]

...are nil.

Back then, people actually understood how usenet works rather get it get into a huf that "ooh. Someone might see that I was a dork once. Oh my god! Nuke! Nuke! Nuke!".

With longer latency and less volume, typical expire times were longer. Two weeks was the standard for a long time.

Seriously, usenet has been archived for as long as it has existed. (~1980) And it's still being archived, even the postings with X-no-archive. Get over it.

An alternate interface

[jwag]

Deja Power Search - Friendlier front-end to the Deja power search by Jeremy Nixon

Re:altavista

[crisco]

The biggest problem I find with Remarq (AKA Supernews) is that they don't seem to archive newsgroups, they just keep a longer selection of current articles. IMO, they are better for reading news through a browser (though nothing beats a good newsreader).

altavista

[Jose]

altavista can search newgroups, just click on discussion groups on the main search page (then you have to switch to searching messages instead of disscussion groups). Looks like it is using remarqs database though. (not that that is bad)

Also, you don't have to wade through all the deja.com crap to search the news groups, just go to www.deja.com/usenet. If you use netscape, just put it on your personal tool bar, so you can get at it easier.

DOGPILE does metasearch of Deja/Altavista/DejaOld

[Cy Guy]

The Meta-Search site DOGPILE has a Usenet option. It sends your search to Deja's current database, Altavista/Remarq's database, and Deja's archive database.

Their sister site Metacrawler also provides an interface for Deja's database.

Bandwidth

[cybermage]

If you want to archive any reasonable amount of USENET, you'll need some bandwidth.

If you don't already have it, the good news is that nearly all web hosting companies use a lot of bandwidth in the other direction. Find one and co-locate your news server with them. Chances are, they'll have more than enough incoming bandwidth for you to have an incoming (from the server's point of view) feed.

If they're interested in USENET, and can access your box, they may not charge you anything at all for the bandwidth.

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deja.com alternatives

[chmod666]

I think it's competitors are www.remarq.com and www.talkway.com but neither of them are quite as good...