Re: Is the new Google Groups fucking up the Usenet Groups?

From: Active8 (reply2group_at_ndbbm.net)
Date: 01/01/05 

Date: Sat, 1 Jan 2005 14:46:30 -0500

On 01 Jan 2005 16:45:39 GMT, Ian Stirling wrote:

> Active8 <reply2group@ndbbm.net> wrote:
>> On 01 Jan 2005 11:34:29 GMT, Ian Stirling wrote:
>>
>>> Rich Grise <richgrise@example.net> wrote:
>>>> On Fri, 31 Dec 2004 14:01:48 +0000, Ian Stirling wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> James Meyer <jmeyer@nowhere.net> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I do electronic design for a living so I check this group both here at
>>>>>> home with "Agent" and at work with "Google". Recently I've noticed that I see a
>>>>>> lot of "Re: somethingorother" posts here at home without ever having seen the
>>>>>> original posts. That never happened before the "new" Google Groups started and
>>>>>> is annoyingly often now.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Has anybody else noticed this?
>>>>>
>>>>> Yes.
>>>>> Your post has no References: header that lists the messages before it in
>>>>> the thread, so it doesn't thread properly on many newsreaders.
>>>>
>>>> Yes. The new google groups doesn't bother to quote _any_ of the original,
>>>> because they seem to think that just opening the little reply window and
>>>> letting the followupper see what they're following up to is sufficient.
>>>>
>>>> They have no clue.
>>>>
>>>
>>> That's not the point.
>>>
>>> This is (barely) acceptible, if the message threads properly, as it's
>>> fairly trivial in most cases to check back on the last message.
>>> However, as they've also broken threading, it's kind of screwed it.
>>
>> How have they broken threading? I saw a thread yesterday with 2
>> subject changes in it. It used to be that the slightest change
>> started a new thread. I guess that *is* broken.
>
> Their posts have no References: line.

I haven't seen *any* header info at their site. That doesn't mean
it's not there. Here's some header info I got from my reader from
reply I posted via google:

Message-ID: <1104499727.398859.59580@c13g2000cwb.googlegroups.com>
References: <aku7t01h2nudkmkeikbi18eok4grf8jqb8@4ax.com>

looks like a ref line to me.
>
> Every message posted on usenet has a unique ID, that's in the
> Message-ID: header.
>
> With decent newsreaders, if a user hits 'reply' to a message, it lists the
> ID of the message it's a reply to in the References: header.
>
> This can track threads over changes of subject line, very easily.

Yes, I have intimate knowledge of this because I still haven't
gotten the Hamster (personal NNTP server) script that notifies me of
replies to my posts to work properly - possibly because my FQDN is
FUBAR, possible because the script is crap. Time for a new Hamster
group thread. Maybe they sorted it out.
>
> The alternative is to sort by date and subject, which doesn't work very
> well, especially for fast paced threads, as many peoples clocks are off
> by an hour.

When I click "view as tree" on their site, I get a thread view pane
on the left and everything seems to be threaded ok - perhaps better
than I'm seeing here with all the replies to recent OP's I can't
find at all. In the past, there have been complaints here in this
group that changing the subject line in a thread breaks it at google
and starts a new thread, just like in my reader. I just observed a
single thread at google with 2 subject changes, which contradicts
what you wrote above. Unless you mean that they can do the threading
via usenet references, but don't bother propagating references when
one posts from google.

Happy New Year. 

-- 
Best Regards,
Mike
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