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How to Search Today's Usenet For Programming Information?

Posted by timothy on from the it's-all-been-mined-out dept.

DeadlyBattleRobot writes "I've been using Usenet searches since about 1995 to get programming information, sample code, etc., mostly for those standard APIs that are never documented well enough in the official documentation. At first I used dejanews, and now Google Groups (Google bought dejanews). Over the last few years, I've noticed a steady decline in the quantity of search results on programming topics on Usenet from Google, increasing difficulty with their search UI and result pages, and today I find I'm completely unable to get a working Usenet search on their advanced group search page. I'm used to searching on 'microsoft.*' or 'comp.*,' sometimes supplemented with variations like '*microsoft*' or 'comp*.' As an example, try to find a post from the 1996-1998 time period on 'database' in either the comp.* or microsoft.* hierarchies, and if you can do it, please show your search expression. There should be thousands of results, but I'm getting the result 'Your search — database group:comp.* — did not match any documents.'"

19 of 230 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Wait.. what? by maxume · · Score: 2, Informative

    Nearly the entirety of the alt.bin hierarchy lacks those keywords yet manages to contain a great deal of interesting content.

    --
    Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
  2. Bug by interiot · · Score: 5, Informative

    There's a bug in the advanced search form. After you do the advanced search and it gives you the did not match any documents, just click on the "search" button on that second page. (alternately, removing the lr=selected parameter makes it work also)

  3. Too much spam by whereiswaldo · · Score: 2, Informative

    I used to heavily use the newsgroups as well but for years there has been too much spam on the newsgroups to make them very useful.

    Instead I rely on web based forum posts which are indexed by Google and others.

  4. Code Search by FornaxChemica · · Score: 4, Informative

    Google Group seems boring, not really Google's fault but whenever I browse a topic, I never find anything relevant. Maybe bad luck. Anyway, for code samples, why not using Google Code Search? You can limit your search to specific languages, which is very convenient.

  5. Wrong question by filenavigator · · Score: 5, Informative

    The question you ask is wrong...since people are no longer answering questions on usenet. The proper question is...where can I find answers to programming questions.

    Answer:
    www.stackoverflow.com

  6. Re:groups poorly maintained; link on front page 40 by OverlordQ · · Score: 3, Informative

    INVALID WORKSFORME.

    --
    Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
  7. Re:This has been really ticking me off as well by DougWebb · · Score: 2, Informative

    It's bad that they've got an bug that's gone ignored, but there's another way to search a group which seems to work ok.

    1. Go to http://groups.google.com/
    2. Enter microsoft.public.virtualpc in the Search for a group box, then click on the group name in the results.
    3. Enter vista explorer crash in the search box in the upper right, and click on Search this Group.
    4. Enjoy your three targeted search results.

    I'm not sure if these results will actually address your problem, but maybe your problem hasn't been addressed in that group. In any case, it's certainly possible to search within a particular group, within the context of the group display, which is the way most web forums work too. So you've got a workaround which isn't awful, unless you want to search many groups at once.

  8. Re:Unfortunately... by chis101 · · Score: 4, Informative

    An often overlooked fact about ExpertsExchange is that, although at the top of the page they show the answers blurred out, if you scroll to the VERY bottom of the page, past what you would think is the footer, you will find the answers in the clear (most likely so search engines will pick it up)

  9. Re:Unfortunately... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    Just an FYI, Experts Exchange is free. You just need to keep scrolling after you *think* the pay answers are done. Past the massive ``footer'', they have uncensored answers.

    Something about Google not liking it when they can find and index the answer but their customers not being able to see the answers. Alternatively you could probably use the Google cache for the answers.

  10. Re:Unfortunately... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    Or when you disallow cookies from Expertsexchange.com. Works like a charm.

  11. No, it depends on the server by harmonica · · Score: 3, Informative

    Get a well-maintained news server and there'll hardly be any spam. Unfortunately, such a thing is hard to find, there isn't really any money in text newsgroups, and regular ISPs continue to give up on Usenet altogether and recommend Google Groups (which is a cruel joke). Individual seems to be one of the remaining good servers, for EUR 10 per year, but it has a dedicated team behind it. For technical things like programming languages or databases, Usenet groups in comp.* are still great.

  12. Easy by RulerOf · · Score: 2, Informative

    It's very easy to tell your google you want good ol' Expert Sexchange to fuck off:

    -inurl:experts-exchange.com

    Add that to your search query.  Most of the time I like having their results come up, but every now and then, the results are so polluted that I need them gone.  Rule of thumb is that if an Expert Sexchange result comes up, your problem is either *that* stupid, obvious, or uncommon.

    --
    Boot Windows, Linux, and ESX over the network for free.
  13. Re:Unfortunately... by socsoc · · Score: 3, Informative

    Or you could just scroll to the bottom of the page and see all the content...

  14. Re:Unfortunately... by Antique+Geekmeister · · Score: 2, Informative

    No, there are plenty of active forums. But people have to contribute to them to make them rich in good answers, and alternative approaches. And the Weblogs for specific projects, or bug reporting tools like Bugzilla hosted at Sourceforge, provide a lot of the service that Usenet formerly did, so Usenet is seriously reduced.

  15. Re:yoRu moronsz. by Ant+P. · · Score: 5, Informative

      ---==O <- sarcasm

      *      <- neptune

       o     <- you
      -|-
      / \

    (to logarithmic scale)

  16. Re:Unfortunately... by Jugalator · · Score: 3, Informative

    I noticed they've used Javascript to block that method on some (??) browsers, but that was easy enough to circumvent by disabling Javascript for their domain. Most modern web browsers can do this.

    --
    Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
  17. Google has totally fucked up the usenet archives by harlows_monkeys · · Score: 5, Informative

    Google has pretty completely fucked up in their handling of usenet archives. Some examples:

    1. I was searching for a particular post by message ID. It was a post from someone who used Google to post the damn thing, for God's sake, and Google still could not find it. It was definitely there, because if I went into that newsgroup in Google's usenet reader, and manually found the thread, and expanded it, I could see it. It just could not be found by a message ID search.
    2. I wanted to search for a post of mine. I did a search for my name, in quotes. It returned something like 6 posts. It used to return tens of thousands (I've been on usenet since 1984). I then searched for "bill gates". That returned a whopping 9 hits. I then tried some random troll's name, and got thousands of hits. It took several weeks before they fixed this, and "bill gates" and myself were back to a large number of hits.
    3. Now it's broken again. I get about 2000 results for myself, 3000 for Bill Gates, 3000 for Linux. I haven't found anything that gives more than 3200 now.
    4. The search display is almost completely worthless. They seem to be in the midst of changing this, so I will complain about both the old results and the new results. Old results first. Say a long thread has several posts that match. It shows one of the posts, and then shows indented other matches after that. Good. Except that it seems to do this for each matching posts. Net result is that many posts are displayed multiple times. I've seen cases where the first 10 pages of results are all from one thread, and there's no good way to skip that.
    5. Lately, it's been just showing one result for the whole thread, which you can click on to get the thread. That's better, but there doesn't seem to be any good way to go to the specific posts that match. When you open the thread, it will have highlighted a particular post, but there's no apparent way to then repeat the search in the thread to find other matching posts.
    6. If I find a post of mine, select options, and click the link to find more posts by this author, it is now only finding about 1000 posts. Similar results when I try this for other people's posts.
    7. They've fucked up dealing with their authentication server. If you are logged into your Google account when you go to groups, it sometimes takes up to 20 seconds or so for the page to appear. If you aren't logged in, it appears instantaneously.
    8. When you view the headers of a post, and click the "..." to expand the from address, it takes you to a page where you have to solve a CAPTCHA to get the full address. That used to work. Now after solving it, it just takes me back to where I was, without expanding the address.
    9. They are very inconsistent. I've asked other people about some of the above problems, and the usual result is that some people will be getting them, and some will not. As the problems go away for some, they start for others. It looks like they have multiple servers, and some are working better than others.

    We really need some competition for Google in this area. There's some very valuable stuff in the usenet archives, and that needs to be in competent hands.

  18. Re:Unfortunately... by Urza9814 · · Score: 2, Informative

    experts-exchange (there's a hyphen in that) is actually rather useful. Because they want their solutions to be found by google. So if your referrer says you are coming from a google search page or something, you can view the answers - just scroll down to the bottom of the page. If you find one from their main site you want to view, simply go to google and search for that URL, then scroll down to the answers.

  19. Re:Unfortunately... by Dynedain · · Score: 2, Informative

    No, it doesn't take anything special on Google's part to index these kinds of sites. Most of them just look for the browser's user-agent string, and if it isn't Google, then they force a login.

    Hmm... I wonder if spoofing the user agent string works on expertsexchange

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