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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.'"

10 of 230 comments (clear)

  1. 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)

  2. 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.

  3. 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

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

    INVALID WORKSFORME.

    --
    Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
  5. 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)

  6. 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.

  7. Re:Unfortunately... by socsoc · · Score: 3, Informative

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

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

      ---==O <- sarcasm

      *      <- neptune

       o     <- you
      -|-
      / \

    (to logarithmic scale)

  9. 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!
  10. 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.