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Alternatives To deja.com's Usenet Archives?

Posted by Cliff on from the just-in-case-something-bad-happens dept.

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."

5 of 11 comments (clear)

  1. In the meantime, use Ija. by Wakko+Warner · · Score: 4
    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.
    --


    "One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad

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    "Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
  2. Privacy concerns with old archives by bluGill · · Score: 2

    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.

  3. An alternate interface by jwag · · Score: 2

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

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    -- jwag
  4. DOGPILE does metasearch of Deja/Altavista/DejaOld by Cy+Guy · · Score: 2

    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.

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    Work for Change & GET PAID!
  5. deja.com alternatives by chmod666 · · Score: 2

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