Meta: How to read this forum/board now that Google Groups is busted

[J S]

As many of you are no doubt aware, GG broke its interface this week so that you have to be logged in in order to read group content. I had been using email to post to this forum (vim) and using GG to read it. I can no longer read GG, because of the aforementioned breakage. None of my old GG ids work and it is impossible to create a new one (so don't even go there).

Are there any alternatives for reading this forum? I tried the Yahoo version of the archive, but soon ran into the same security nonsense as GG is currently infected with.

Any other ideas?

P.S. Be sure to CC to my email any response on this thread, as (obviously) I won't otherwise be able to read them. Thanks.

[Ottavio Caruso]

On Sat, 22 Aug 2020 at 18:02, 'J S' via vim_use
<vim...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>
> Are there any alternatives for reading this forum?

Can you not read it in a mail client, like most of us do?

> P.S. Be sure to CC to my email any response on this thread, as (obviously) I won't otherwise be able to read them.

Which one? I can't see it. (EDIT: I had to wade into the headers to find it).

--
Ottavio Caruso

[Richard Mitchell]

Most, really?

I've always read and post to groups using groups.google.com.

Google's new format sucks.

The most irritating thing (for me) is it does not show which groups have new messages.

I've tried and reverted back many times just to give more negative feedback.

[Ottavio Caruso]

On Sat, 22 Aug 2020 at 18:37, Richard Mitchell <rwmit...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Most, really?

A quick loot at posters' email reveals most don't use gmail; I assume
they check their emails in an email client, as you do.

Maybe time to move this mailing list away from Google Groups?

And, as per list footer:

> Do not top-post! Type your reply below the text you are replying to.


--
Ottavio Caruso

A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

[Bram Moolenaar]

Not sure what you are doing. I can can read your message using an
incognito window, thus without logging in, through:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/vim_use/EceYG0L5Vyw

The Yahoo archive has been broken for a long time, and the account I
used to maintain it is no longer valid, and Yahoo refuses any way to fix
that. I can't even delete the contents there.

--
hundred-and-one symptoms of being an internet addict:
267. You get an extra phone line so you can get phone calls.

/// Bram Moolenaar -- Br...@Moolenaar.net -- http://www.Moolenaar.net \\\
/// sponsor Vim, vote for features -- http://www.Vim.org/sponsor/ \\\
\\\ an exciting new programming language -- http://www.Zimbu.org ///
\\\ help me help AIDS victims -- http://ICCF-Holland.org ///

[Eric Weir]



On Aug 22, 2020, at 1:25 PM, 'Ottavio Caruso' via vim_use <vim...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

On Sat, 22 Aug 2020 at 18:02, 'J S' via vim_use
<vim...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

Are there any alternatives for reading this forum?

Can you not read it in a mail client, like most of us do?

P.S.  Be sure to CC to my email any response on this thread, as (obviously) I won't otherwise be able to read them.

Which one? I can't see it. (EDIT: I had to wade into the headers to find it).

I take it you’re asking about which email client. The answer is any. Whatever’s in you application folder, or that you may choose to install. You have to set up you accounts within whatever client you choose.

----------------------------------------

Eric Weir

Decatur, GA  USA

eew...@comcast.net

"It has all been combustion.”

- W.G.  Sebald

[Benjamin Esham]

Richard Mitchell wrote:

> On Saturday, August 22, 2020 at 3:01:22 PM UTC-4, ottavio2006-usenet2012

> wrote:
>
>> A quick loot at posters' email reveals most don't use gmail; I assume
>> they check their emails in an email client, as you do.
>>
>> Maybe time to move this mailing list away from Google Groups?
>

> Yes, I have an email address, but I don't read this or any other lists I
> regularly read via email nor do I have any desire to do so.
>
> I'm all for moving back to newsgroups, where did they go anyway? This
> seems to be the closest resemblance to what they were, except there were
> independent news readers to choose from.

You can read (and post to) this list as a newsgroup by connecting to the
Gmane NNTP server (news.gmane.io). The vim_use list corresponds to the
gmane.editors.vim group.

Since you need to be subscribed to post, it's still necessary to send a
"subscribe me" email from the appropriate address. One wrinkle is that you
need to log in to Google if you want to turn on the "don't email me"
setting, so if you're using an email address that isn't associated with a
Google account--or if you just can't log in to Google for whatever
reason--there's no way to turn off the emails. I ended up using an email
filter to automatically discard messages from the list, since I only want to
see them in my newsreader.

This is obviously not a great state of affairs. I don't know of any ways to
run a mailing list that don't have the potential for vendor lock-in.
Sourcehut has a mailing-list offering, but it seems like it might be geared
more toward submitting and reviewing patches, and the site's user interface
tends to be (sometimes intentionally) obtuse.

By the way, the newsreader I settled on was Gnus, which is part of GNU
Emacs. I wanted something that was going to be super configurable. I still
use Vim to actually edit my posts, though, and let me tell you: it is *not*
easy to find information on how to use an "external editor" from Emacs ;-)

Hope this helps,

Benjamin

[Ottavio Caruso]

On Sat, 22 Aug 2020 at 22:40, Eric Weir <eew...@comcast.net> wrote:
>
> 

>
> On Aug 22, 2020, at 1:25 PM, 'Ottavio Caruso' via vim_use <vim...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>
> On Sat, 22 Aug 2020 at 18:02, 'J S' via vim_use
> <vim...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>
>
> Are there any alternatives for reading this forum?
>
>
> Can you not read it in a mail client, like most of us do?
>
> P.S. Be sure to CC to my email any response on this thread, as (obviously) I won't otherwise be able to read them.
>
>
> Which one? I can't see it. (EDIT: I had to wade into the headers to find it).

No, I meant which email address. The google forum interface strips the
OP's email address and replaces it with a custom email address. But
it's visible in the headers.

[meine]

On Sat, Aug 22, 2020 at 08:00:52PM +0100, 'Ottavio Caruso' via vim_use wrote:
>
> Maybe time to move this mailing list away from Google Groups?

Last year we had trouble with the International Slide Rule Forum and
moved to groups.io

groups.io lets you post and read through email as well as in a browser.
The basic account is free, but is somewhat limited on server space --
see features and pricing for the details.

groups.io also has a service for payed accounts to transfer all from a
Google or Yahoo account to their servers. For the slide rule forum we
chose to have a separate archive outside groups.io for the old treads
and our huge photo archive, and use the groups.io service only for
discussion, files and a limited wiki with some links.

Just as a suggestion...

//meine

[Jerry Peek at sites4people.com]

It's been a couple of weeks since this thread ended, but FWIW...

I've had good luck with groups.io. We've had zero problems. The owner/programmer is dedicated to email, and the web interface has lots of features. You get the paid account for a year, then switch to a free one unless you need any feature of the paid account other than transferring all content from the old group. I asked people in the group to pitch in a few dollars, and a few people stepped up with larger amounts... we quickly got to the $240 for a year.

Jerry

[Tony Mechelynck]

FWIW, it is still possible to revert (for the time being) to the
former look & feel. I think it involves a rolldown widget near top
right of the Google Groups page, but now that I've made the changeback
and that it works (for me) I don't want to break it by going even
temporarily to the new style.

Also, Vim aficionados like me can opt to receive an email copy for
every new post to the group, and that (I hope) isn't gonna change.

Best regads,
Tony.

[Ottavio Caruso]

On Tue, 8 Sep 2020 at 02:30, Tony Mechelynck
<antoine.m...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> FWIW, it is still possible to revert (for the time being) to the
> former look & feel. I think it involves a rolldown widget near top
> right of the Google Groups page, but now that I've made the changeback
> and that it works (for me) I don't want to break it by going even
> temporarily to the new style.

I still don't get it. Why not use email instead?

[Richard Mitchell]

On Tuesday, September 8, 2020 at 4:38:30 AM UTC-4, ottavio2006-usenet2012 wrote:

On Tue, 8 Sep 2020 at 02:30, Tony Mechelynck
<antoine....@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> FWIW, it is still possible to revert (for the time being) to the
> former look & feel. I think it involves a rolldown widget near top
> right of the Google Groups page, but now that I've made the changeback
> and that it works (for me) I don't want to break it by going even
> temporarily to the new style.

I still don't get it. Why not use email instead?


--
Ottavio Caruso

 

- because new message are few enough here, checking at work is just a nice short break

- checking both at work and home would require getting the emails twice.

 - because I don't want my mail cluttered up with this sort of junk, nor do i want to have to manage it.

- this is vim, everyone has their own use-case. getting this in email is not how i want to read it.

[Anton Shepelev]

J S:

> As many of you are no doubt aware, GG broke its
> interface this week so that you have to be logged

> in in order to read group content. I had been us-

> ing email to post to this forum (vim) and using GG
> to read it. I can no longer read GG, because of
> the aforementioned breakage.

Google is growing worse every year. I access all my
mailing lists via GMane -- a excellent service that
exposes mailing lists as newsgroups through an
anonymous NNTP server news.gmane.io . You subscribe
for a mailing list the way you would subscribed to a
newsgroup. GMane is especially convenient for me
since my mail client, Sylpheed, supports NNTP. Here
is what it looks like on my machine:

https://freeshell.de/~antonius/img_host/syl-gmane.png