Google Groups Left to Die?

[Scott Livingston]

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/23/03/08/172217/google-groups-has-been-left-to-die

 

-ScottL

[Mark Kinsler]

Well, there's groups.io, or perhaps other alternatives.  GMail has become overloaded with adolescent 'internet buddy' features, which is what happened to Hotmail some years ago.  I wonder how tough it is to build a basic newsgroup structure.  What did we have in rec.crafts.metalworking, from which HTW sprang?

Mark Kinsler

512 East Mulberry Street
Lancaster, Ohio USA 43130
(home)  740-687-6368 or (cell) 740-503-1973

https://tinyurl.com/sxckd67 (Amazon author page)

http://www.mkinsler.com (seriously-neglected web page finally under renovation)

On Thu, Mar 9, 2023 at 1:20 PM Scott Livingston <sco...@a2computing.com> wrote:

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/23/03/08/172217/google-groups-has-been-left-to-die

 

-ScottL

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[Paul Koning]

I think of HTW as a mailing list. Wasn't it nothing more than that, at one time?

Mailing lists are easy to set up and maintain, the infrastructure required is straightforward. Maybe the best answer is to revert to that.

Can the current content be rescued from the clutches of Google?

paul

> To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/howthingswork/CAOnJ3j3EqXq0CrmJEGEo5eFoi1L3Bd2nfd6eL-XJ0fE6%2B6vVxA%40mail.gmail.com.

[Dave Typinski]

Usenet was great until it was overrun by spammers. Plus, very few ISPs provide
usenet new feeds anymore. Most quit doing that ca. 2009 - 2015.

Some of the comments in that slashdot thread describe the situation well.
Follow the money.

Nevertheless, until Google pulls the plug, GoogleGroups will rock along just
fine as a basic email list service.
--
Dave


On 3/9/23 18:38, Mark Kinsler wrote:
> Well, there's groups.io <http://groups.io>, or perhaps other alternatives.

> GMail has become overloaded with adolescent 'internet buddy' features, which is
> what happened to Hotmail some years ago. I wonder how tough it is to build a
> basic newsgroup structure. What did we have in rec.crafts.metalworking, from
> which HTW sprang?
> Mark Kinsler
> 512 East Mulberry Street
> Lancaster, Ohio USA 43130
> (home) 740-687-6368 or (cell) 740-503-1973
> https://tinyurl.com/sxckd67 (Amazon author page)
> http://www.mkinsler.com (seriously-neglected web page finally under renovation)
>
>
> On Thu, Mar 9, 2023 at 1:20 PM Scott Livingston <sco...@a2computing.com

> <mailto:sco...@a2computing.com>> wrote:
>
> https://tech.slashdot.org/story/23/03/08/172217/google-groups-has-been-left-to-die____
>
> __ __
>
> -ScottL____

>
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[Paul Koning]

> On Mar 9, 2023, at 7:44 PM, Dave Typinski <dav...@typnet.net> wrote:
>
> Usenet was great until it was overrun by spammers. Plus, very few ISPs provide usenet new feeds anymore. Most quit doing that ca. 2009 - 2015.
>
> Some of the comments in that slashdot thread describe the situation well. Follow the money.
>
> Nevertheless, until Google pulls the plug, GoogleGroups will rock along just fine as a basic email list service.

True, so long as "pulling the plug" doesn't mean "...and discard all content". I wouldn't trust that. Do we have the capability of doing content backups (of the text, minimally) of HTW?

paul

[Dave Typinski]

Setting up an email server and a listserv was easy at one time. Today, with all
the email spam prevention policies in place with most ISPs, it is a minefield of
interoperability issues. One wonders how much longer plain old POP3 and SMTP
email servers will continue to function before we're all relegated to the Hell
that is webmail and social media.
--
Dave

[Paul Koning]

> On Mar 9, 2023, at 7:54 PM, Dave Typinski <dav...@typnet.net> wrote:
>
> Setting up an email server and a listserv was easy at one time. Today, with all the email spam prevention policies in place with most ISPs, it is a minefield of interoperability issues. One wonders how much longer plain old POP3 and SMTP email servers will continue to function before we're all relegated to the Hell that is webmail and social media.
> --
> Dave

Spam prevention is a minefield for open lists, but HTW is a closed list as far as I remember, and if not certainly could be. That way the only source of trouble would be messages with just the right forged sender name. That used to be fairly common, but I don't think is nowadays.

paul

[Dave Typinski]

On 3/9/23 19:50, Paul Koning wrote:
>
>> On Mar 9, 2023, at 7:44 PM, Dave Typinski <dav...@typnet.net> wrote:
>>
>> Nevertheless, until Google pulls the plug, GoogleGroups will rock along just fine as a basic email list service.
>
> True, so long as "pulling the plug" doesn't mean "...and discard all content".

One should not rely on someone else to keep one's data long term, even if it's a
paid service and /especially/ if it's a free service.

If the HTW content is important to a subscriber, one should be using a POP3
account and storing mail locally. I have all the HTW emails going back to Sept
99 in Thunderbird. I do that in case I want to look for something. It's come
in handy a few times over the last two decades -- and I didn't have to rely on
egroups or yahoo or google.
--
Dave

[Paul Koning]

Yes, I could set up POP3. I did not, so I don't have that archive. Knowing that someone did is sufficient (better yet, two or three).

A couple of years ago I was involved with a mad scramble to recover a Wiki, a document repository, and a significant software project, all of them controlled by a single person who suddenly went haywire and deleted it all. Eventually pretty much all of it was pieced back together (the history of the software was lost, though the current state was saved). But it was a major pain. When something like that happened a second time on a different (much better known) supposedly open-source project, I got seriously paranoid about preservation and not relying on the continued mental functioning of a single individual.

paul

[Mike Schietinger]

It's a fundamental problem with the internet. Everyone wants a secure, moderated, free platform, that's around indefinitely, zero down time, and no ads. 

If you tried to make Usenet today it would turn into 4chan in a month. Ask yourself how much you would pay each month for this content and if the answer is zero then you understand why it's platforms keep dieing.

Most interest groups like this one have moved to Reddit. It's got moderator support, secure and maintained, easy enough to use, and multimedia friendly. Probably the best future home.

Mike Schietinger 

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[Dave Typinski]

On 3/9/23 20:01, Paul Koning wrote:
>
> Spam prevention is a minefield for open lists, but HTW is a closed list as far as I remember, and if not certainly could be. That way the only source of trouble would be messages with just the right forged sender name. That used to be fairly common, but I don't think is nowadays.

The issue is getting past all the gates with the different ISPs. I looked into
setting up my own email server and listserv a bit over a year ago and concluded
that email service today is a giant charlie foxtrot.

Even if your server is set up properly with DMARC, DKIM, and SPF, some list
subscribers' ISPs will /still/ block posted list messages based simply on the
originating poster's IP address. If we all had static IP addresses, that would
be okay. But almost all ISPs use dynamic IP addressing, yet still rely on
IP-based blacklists like Spamhaus, et al. to filter incoming email.
--
Dave

[Mike Schietinger]

Reverse DNS is a major part of spam prevention. Honestly SMTP email transport is just about end of life. Most email providers will be rejecting non-tls email within a few years.

We already hard-fail spf and dkim failures for most of our clients. 

Mike Schietinger 

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[Paul Koning]

Those blacklists are CRAP. I keep running into trouble with those braindead morons blocking my email because it's being handled by a Comcast mail server that, at some point in the past, may have handled spam messages possibly sent by another one of the many millions of Comcast customers.

I lost respect for those damned meddlers decades ago, and nothing I have seen since will convince me ever to give them any respect whatsoever in the future. They need to be treated as e-vermin.

paul

[Dave Typinski]

As long as ISPs use dynamic IP assignment, reverse DNS is an idiotic way to do
spam prevention.

And yes, just had to set up all my companies' email with DKIM and SPF due to
gmail.com deciding that plain email should no longer reach their clients.

I liked the internet a lot better when stuff just worked.

https://abstrusegoose.com/347

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Dave

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[Mike Schietinger]

About 75% of all email delivered to a mail system is spam so operators need to use something to keep it out. Usually up blocks are looking at entire blocks of addresses not just an individual Comcast server. People try all manner of dumb stuff though like trying to use those mail servers as relays and running commercial business on home connections. 

The golden rule of blocked email is that's it's almost always the senders fault though.

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[Paul Koning]

That may be, but I keep getting mail service rejects that tell me my mail is rejected because of the mail server involved, which turns out to be one of the many mail servers Comcast uses to do its job.

paul

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[Dave Typinski]

75%? I'm tempted to ask, "So what?" In fact, I will: so what?

About 75% of all the snail mail I get is junk mail. I toss it and move on. It
doesn't bother me a bit.

I've had the same company email address for 25 years. I get over 100 emails a
day. About 2% of them are legit. The rest are junk. I spend about as much
time sorting through them as I do walking to the trash can from the PO Box.

I'd thank my ISP and others to NOT decide for me what is spam and what isn't. I
want them to do the job I pay them for: pass the data to me unfiltered and
unmolested.
--
Dave

On 3/9/23 20:31, Mike Schietinger wrote:
> About 75% of all email delivered to a mail system is spam so operators need to
> use something to keep it out. Usually up blocks are looking at entire blocks of
> addresses not just an individual Comcast server. People try all manner of dumb
> stuff though like trying to use those mail servers as relays and running
> commercial business on home connections.
>
> The golden rule of blocked email is that's it's almost always the senders fault
> though.
>
> On Thu, Mar 9, 2023, 7:25 PM Paul Koning <pa0...@gmail.com
> <mailto:pa0...@gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>
>
> > On Mar 9, 2023, at 8:18 PM, Dave Typinski <dav...@typnet.net

> <mailto:howthingswork%2Bunsu...@googlegroups.com>.

> To view this discussion on the web visit
> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/howthingswork/B9BBB63B-439C-4A4E-9709-BD72FDA8C317%40gmail.com.
>

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[Ray Tayek]

On 3/9/2023 10:20 AM, Scott Livingston wrote:

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/23/03/08/172217/google-groups-has-been-left-to-die

 

maybe discord?

thanks

[Mark Kinsler]

Two decades.  Jeez.

Mark Kinsler

512 East Mulberry Street
Lancaster, Ohio USA 43130
(home)  740-687-6368 or (cell) 740-503-1973

https://tinyurl.com/sxckd67 (Amazon author page)

http://www.mkinsler.com (seriously-neglected web page finally under renovation)

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[Mark Kinsler]

Hokay. Reddit is something else I know nothing about.  I've heard of it, of course, but when you've outlived your Biblical warranty by a few years, ya don't know the British Museum from TikTok. 

Mark Kinsler

512 East Mulberry Street
Lancaster, Ohio USA 43130
(home)  740-687-6368 or (cell) 740-503-1973

https://tinyurl.com/sxckd67 (Amazon author page)

http://www.mkinsler.com (seriously-neglected web page finally under renovation)

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/howthingswork/CAFO25dWW8h%3DcouiS%2BSLhdBu_Ty8NLhXwWsVxJPFXVsUCOHoKkw%40mail.gmail.com.

[Mark Kinsler]

I was afraid of that.  It's getting tough to get anything through Gmail now.

Mark Kinsler

512 East Mulberry Street
Lancaster, Ohio USA 43130
(home)  740-687-6368 or (cell) 740-503-1973

https://tinyurl.com/sxckd67 (Amazon author page)

http://www.mkinsler.com (seriously-neglected web page finally under renovation)

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