Is There Demand For A Better Usenet Search Engine?

Anonymous Employee writes: "I was asked for a feasibility analysis to provide high-quality searching in a large Usenet archive (all expect binary/porn groups and several years worth of archives). This is similar to what Dejanews wanted to provide before they re-branded to Deja last year. Do you think there is a need for this or is high-quality Web searching + Usenet browsing meeting your everyday needs in terms of information retrieval? If not, do the existing Usenet search interfaces suffice (Deja, one year worth of archives, not-so-good search interface - Remarq, three months worth of archives, okay search interface)? ...and also, is real-time indexing (i.e., you can search for an article 'very soon' after it has been posted) important?" In light of Deja's recent faux pas, I think this question is rather timely, and I have to admit, I wouldn't mind the ability to search Usenet posts older than one year.

Comments

dogpile dude.

[jon_c]

I ALWAYS use dogpile for my usenet searchs. it searchs deja current, deja-old, and altavista's usenet archives.

it's pretty much the whole freakin thing :)

-Jon

Deja has dropped the ball

[Chairboy]

The Dejanews usenet page has been my home page for years now. Whenever I needed to find something out, it was far easier to see if someone else had asked the same question I had in Usenet then it was to wade through Microsoft's MSDN site or page after page of crappy vendor HTML.

In the last few months, the quality of the results that I'm turning up has decreased markedly. Deja has decided to shelve all their 1995-1999 Usenet archives and concentrate on just the newer stuff, apparently because that older traffic only accounts for 10% or so of their bandwidth.

WHAT? Of course it does! There are enough people using Deja as their Usenet client for this to be obvious. The 10% or so of their traffic that was a result of the 1995-1999 archives was th result of hundreds of thousands of other people like me searching and finding answers.

Deja has made a mistake in alienating the audience that made them one of the most visited sites on the web. For this, I predict that Deja will either fold of massively re-organize within the next year.

They screwed us over and broke a trust. You can't regain THAT in an IPO.

Current state of Deja's archives...

[Masem]

I asked this about 2 weeks ago when it was apparent that the older stuff was shelved. Here's my Deja response (on Jul 5):

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Greetings, Recently we moved the Deja.com servers to a new facility in order to provide greater reliability and performance. The move is now complete and we thank you for your patience.

Please note that currently our Usenet Discussion Service only retrieves messages from the past year (back through June 1999). As announced, we are reconfiguring the service that provides messages posted more than 1 year ago in order to provide greater reliability and performance. This will take some time though, possibly a few months. Have no fear: We're committed to bringing these messages back online as soon as possible.

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So I would wait for a few more weeks, and see if the situation improves.