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Posted by on July 4, 2008, 12:21 pm
If you were Registered and logged in, you could reply and use other advanced thread options
A number of Usenet posters have made very nasty complaints about
Google Groups, a service where many people, including me, post to
Usenet. I don't understand why. Could someone explain it?
One says Google uses "non standard" displays and adds extraneous
characters. I haven't seen any such thing, nor has anyone reproduced
what they saw.
Another says Google allows abuse. I'm not sure what that means.
Google does limit posts per person, so you can't go out and flood the
Internet.
Let's be honest: when it comes to Usenet posting, some people get
extremely emotional about it, as if any deviation from some supposed
'standard' (which may not even exist) will End Life As We Know It.
This could be a technical standard, definition of newsgroup scope
(always contentious), or what constitutes a fact vs. opinion.
Consequently, I take such complaints with a grain of salt. However,
the number of complainers seem to be growing.
Also, there's been talk about loss of Usenet access by some ISPs.
Pulling such acess seems very odd to me since many people still use
Usenet. I wonder if there's confusion because certain risque groups
are being pulled, but only those groups.
Any comments appreciated. [public replies, please]
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Posted by Who Me? on July 4, 2008, 5:10 pm
>A number of Usenet posters have made very nasty complaints about
> Google Groups, a service where many people, including me, post to
> Usenet. I don't understand why. Could someone explain it?
>
It's pretty simple, really. They are totally unresponsive to complaints.
Therefore, they have become an open portal for posting of USENET
spam......which was, incidentally, the original channel for the distribution
of spam.
The effort to police Usenet spam is one factor that pushed the spammers over
to email. Now that the efforts to curb it there have been much more
successful in recent months (due in large part to some legal decisions
favoring the ISPs over the spammers), some of them have come back to Usenet.
They need a entry portal that does absolutely no screening of new users AND
an abuse dept. that is either non-existent or totally incompetent. Google
groups seems to serve the purpose nicely.
They are not a good "team player". The reasons are immaterial.
Take your own survey. Look at the spam in the groups you frequent;
"commercial" spam, that is.
My unscientific sample indicates 100% of it comes in via Google Groups.
That probably isn't true but it IS a VERY large percentage.
Male enhancement not your thing? How about breast enlargement.....or
narcotic drugs.....or watch knock-offs....or cheap tennies.... ad infinitum.
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Posted by Barry Margolin on July 6, 2008, 7:31 pm
>
> >A number of Usenet posters have made very nasty complaints about
> > Google Groups, a service where many people, including me, post to
> > Usenet. I don't understand why. Could someone explain it?
> >
>
> It's pretty simple, really. They are totally unresponsive to complaints.
>
> Therefore, they have become an open portal for posting of USENET
> spam......which was, incidentally, the original channel for the distribution
> of spam.
It's more than just the spam problem. Many people complain about the
cluelessness of people who post regular articles through GG. I coined
the term "googliot" a few years ago, but it never caught on. :(
A big problem is that GG gives the appearance of being a web forum, so
most of its users don't realize that they're posting to a more
widespread network, and that most of the readers don't see their
forum-style view. They rarely quote the posts they're replying to, and
virtually never cross-post properly (I know these problems aren't
limited to GG users, but they seem to be the worst about it).
We've seen this phenomenon before, whenever some system makes it easy
for clueless people to post to Usenet. It first happened when AOL made
Usenet available, then WebTV, and now Google Groups.
--
Barry Margolin, barmar@alum.mit.edu
Arlington, MA
*** PLEASE post questions in newsgroups, not directly to me ***
*** PLEASE don't copy me on replies, I'll read them in the group ***
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Posted by Who Me? on July 6, 2008, 10:16 pm
> It's more than just the spam problem.
OK, but that is the part that THEY control......or could.
The rest is just inconvenient.......and transitory.
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Posted by Barry Margolin on July 8, 2008, 6:46 am
>
> > It's more than just the spam problem.
>
> OK, but that is the part that THEY control......or could.
True, but I didn't think we were discussing blame. I thought he was
asking why people are killfiling GG.
--
Barry Margolin, barmar@alum.mit.edu
Arlington, MA
*** PLEASE post questions in newsgroups, not directly to me ***
*** PLEASE don't copy me on replies, I'll read them in the group ***
The address for email submissions has changed: if you submit posts via email,
send them to
telecomdigestmoderator atsign telecom-digest.org.
If you submit posts via a newsreader or Google groups, you don't need to change
anything.
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