Re: What Is Going On Here With Google Newsgroups?
- From: galathaea <galathaea@xxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2007 12:33:56 -0700
In article <1184855805.422806.323950@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
amzoti <amzoti@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
!! On Jul 18, 6:17 am, DGHdgh <perin...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
!! > .
!! >
!! > Google newsgroups (Deja or DejaNews) has not posted a single newsgroup
!! > post for over 24 hours now, Is Google broken, have they decided to
!! > shut down, or what?
!!
!! In addition to the things Arturo mentioned, Google does not a good job
!! of filtering script kiddies.
!!
!! Some angry idiot has made sci.crypt a joke of a NG.
!!
!! Someone has figured out a way to take names and posting from many NGs
!! and they post them.
!!
!! They have posted thousands of items this way - and there is no one at
!! Google to contact on the matter.
!!
!! Lastly, do Google even monitor these dropouts of sci.math?
!!
!! It happens frequenctly enough - that you'd think they would actually
!! notice - or perhaps the NGs were just another medium which one of the
!! super consumers took over just cause they can.
!!
!! I miss Deja!
it's not just sci.math but all groups accessed through google
(everything is still running if you have another newsserver though)
a good friend of mine got tired of this the other day
and emailed three of the VP's of google who had responsibility
over the groups project and the deja acquisition
they mentioned the regular and repeated issues
and implored them to assign more responsible management to the project
(i think they've been hitting them up for a job... :p)
there really is no excuse for the issues
everything should be qa'd on a backend server before committing to the main site
and as my friend pointed out
the functionality is pretty much the same as needed for gmail which works just fine
anyway
benjamin treynor replied back and asked for an issues list!
my friend forwarded me the list they sent in case i might have more suggestions
but it looks pretty complete to me
i think they compiled this from some discussions they had
over in the programming/scripting groups they habituate
maybe you guys have experienced other issues?
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1) Usability
--------------------
- The system regularly returns a page with "Server Error" in big letters while navigating
between pages. This can happen when looking at the group list and at individual posts, and cannot
be reliably repeated, though it happens _very_ frequently.
- Sometimes a message appears that says "The archive for this group is currently
unavailable". This can appear in the group list and individual posts, including in the tree-view
frame and the drop-down "My Groups" window.
- When posting (pressing the post button), the site frequently returns "Server experienced
a problem" and the post operation fails. No data is lost, but the attempt must be repeated.
- Infrequently, when the previous problem is encountered, the post actually succeeded,
resulting in multiple posts when retried.
- When posting, post operation appears to succeed (the system returns something like "You
have successfully posted"), but the post never appears. This appears related to the time spent
typing the post, the longer the more likely the failure. Note: THIS CAUSES DATA LOSS (and it is a
nasty data loss, since if one spent time typing it, it is likely longer than an average post [and
less likely to be a childish "You are like Hitler!" or "I don't like Ayn Rand 'cause she's selfish"
type of post and more likely actual communication among peers]).
- Recently, posting has started failing with a new error message "session timed out". Not
sure why there are session times here, and this may not be a literal bug, but no other newsserver
interface, including web, has session times, and it really limits usability. It is certainly not
necessary for security.
- Frequently, groups will "freeze" in time, failing to update with new posts for hours or
days.
(Also, the following 3 may be related to Safari because that is where I have encountered them most -
the previous are found on all systems I use).
- Not all messages load at all times when viewing a thread. Sometimes multiple reloads are
required. This has become worse of a problem of late. By "not loading" I mean they are not
expanded, they refuse to expand when clicking on them, and they have no text in the tab that shows
when they are not expanded. When this fails, it fails no matter how many times clicked on.
- Expanding the arrow next to My Groups fails infrequently. Clicking on the arrow does
nothing and does not try to load any pages.
- Clicking on "More Options" fails every now and then. The area that normally expands
giving the extra options is not shown.
2) Search Issues
----------------------
- Quite a number of search terms fail to recall posts in a Google Groups search even though
a Google Web search brings them up (and points to the Google Groups pages!). This has caused a lot
of confusion, and in some cases fear, as a number of posters have noted not being able to find old
posts of theirs, even though they search the exact name of thread.
3) Formatting errors
----------------------
- Web addresses "eat" spaces and newlines, often concatenating with previous lines into an
unreadable mess when replies are autoquoted.
- Sometimes inserts "Show Quote" / "Hide Quote" text from Google Groups view. This
particularly happens towards the end of a post, causing signatures to get this inserted.
- Fails to insert entire post when post length is longer than the "Show More" limit. Must
navigate to the show more page and then reply.
- For reasons I have still not been able to figure out, sometimes inserts a > in some posts
unrelated to quoting a previous post (usually in the middle of a line that the respondent has typed).
- When viewing threads, the "hidden quote" functionality regularly hides responses inside
the hidden quote. Not just the lines prefixed with a ">" are interpreted as the quote, but also
lines immediately following the quote are often hidden. This can make it confusing following
threads where many of the posts seem empty except for quoted material.
4) Tally summaries
----------------------
- The tallies for number of views and number of direct replies are broken. There have been
times when the number of direct replies made through Google Groups is larger the number of times
viewed over the same period. I've even had friends view to get a clear idea of behavior, and
noticed views not tallied. Also, direct replies have been less than the number of hand counted
direct replies at times.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
if you guys can add anything to the list
i will forward them along to my friend and maybe something can be done about this...
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
galathaea: prankster, fablist, magician, liar
.
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