Accessing medieval genealogy discussions in Usenet group soc.genealogy.medieval

[GEN-MEDIEVAL Administrator]

With the imminent demise of Google Groups' access to Usenet, I am again posting these instructions for those interested in participating in the group in its original format, on Usenet. (There is nothing new here, I am just repeating what has been discussed here before, so it is near the top when Google Groups shuts down, and to incorporate more potential search terms into the Subject line.)

Usenet consists of newsgroups, collections of messages on specific topics that are shared in a massive peer-to-peer manner. To access soc.genealogy.medieval on Usenet, one needs two things: a newsgroup feed and reading/posting software.

I. For the newsgroup feed, it used to be common for Internet service providers to include access to a newsgroup feed as part of their package. Most now do not, though yours may still do so. If they do, then you are set for this part - you just need to get from them (from their website or by talking to them) the address of their news server. If not, then there are several newsgroup feeds that are available for free or subscription.

Eternal September is just one example of a free service. To access it, you will need to go to their website and sign up for an account, which will entail creating a username and associating it with your preferred email address (which will appear on the posts you make). They will then mail you a password at the provided email, that you then use to log into Eternal September, and which you can subsequently change. Once you confirm the account in this manner, they will tell you the necessary server information that you will give to your newsreader.

II. Usenet is not a World Wide Web-based system. Google Groups just provided a behind-the-scenes conversion to a web-accessible format, and back. With its demise, we are back to accessing the group the old fashioned way, with a newsreader. Again, there are several options. A popular one is the open-source free Thunderbird, made available by the same volunteers behind the Firefox browser. It will need to be downloaded and installed (unless you are using it already for email), and has the option of accessing newsgroups. Eternal September (or whatever news feed you decide to use) has provided the necessary information - news server name, username and password, that you will need to feed into Thunderbird to have it access the newsgroups. Then you will need to 'subscribe' to the newsgroups you wish to follow, which is not a formal subscription, just the act of telling Thunderbird you wish to follow that group. You will want to subscribe to soc.genealogy.medieval

Detailed instructions for t he Eternal September/Thunderbird implementation are given here:

https://www.big-8.org/wiki/Getting_Started_with_Usenet

(Note that at least when I did it, I had to make a test post in an Eternal September group before it would show me the full list of available newsgroups. Also, at the end of the instructions, there is an alternative approach that replaces the full list of newsgroups with a highly-selective short list. Don't do that - soc.genealogy.medieval is not on the abbreviated list.)

I will add that there are any number of alternative implementations, using other newsgroup feeds or a different newsreader. I am sure with some judicious Googling, one can find good instructions or setup help for the common alternatives.

Accessing old Messages:
Google says it will maintain the current soc.gen.med archive, just cutoff new additions after 22 February 2024. Currently one can search the archives by using an advanced Google search and specifying the 'site or domain' as:
https://groups.google.com/g/soc.genealogy.medieval/
It is unclear if they will maintain this as the address of the archives. If it fails to produce results, then just do a generalized search with terms specific enough to flag a soc.gen.med post on Google Groups, and see what site name Google is then using for the group.

For the archive going forward, Narkive maintains an up-to-date archive that will continue to add newer posts made after Google Groups stops. It can be searched by limiting a Google search to the site:
https://soc.genealogy.medieval.narkive.com/

One can limit these search based on date, but test-runs of Narkive using date ranges have returned inconsistent results.

And that, as they say, is that. See you all on the flip side.