Google Groups Ending Support for USENET

[Chuck Rhode]

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> Starting on February 22, 2024, you can no longer use Google Groups
> (at groups.google.com) to post content to Usenet groups, subscribe
> to Usenet groups, or view new Usenet content.

> Most of the current Google Groups content is not Usenet content and
> will not be affected.

+ https://support.google.com/groups/answer/11036538?visit_id=638382672714230642-1699016088&p=usenet&rd=1

... so, I am posting this by eMail (from GMail) to
weewx-de...@googlegroups.com. I don't suppose weewx-development
is a USENET group, but...

1. Will this continue to work after Feb 2024?

2. May I continue to subscribe to weewx-development by eMail?

... because — if I have to login to groups.google.com and supply
credentials every day to read the weewx-development group — I probably
won't. This is not meant as a threat. I'm jus' sayin'.

- --
.. Be Seeing You,
.. Chuck Rhode, Sheboygan, WI, USA
.. Weather: http://LacusVeris.com/WX
.. 54° — Wind S 5 mph

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[Tom Keffer]

Neither weewx-user, nor weewx-development, are Usenet groups, and never have been. We are unaffected by this change.

Kind of sad what's happened to Usenet. The feed comp.lang.c++ was a big part of my life in the 1980s and early 90s. Now it's a cesspool of spam.

--
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To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/weewx-development/20231215142207.1f73016b%40BigTimber.LacusVeris.com.

[Chuck Rhode]

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On Fri, 15 Dec 2023 12:32:02 -0800
Tom Keffer <tke...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Kind of sad what's happened to Usenet. The feed comp.lang.c++ was a
> big part of my life in the 1980s and early 90s. Now it's a cesspool
> of spam.

To be fair, spam was part and parcel of USENET from early days. It has
become worse during the intervening 30 years, but this is a
quantitative difference, not a qualitative one. Newsreader software
evolved to cope by blacklisting spammers.

LET IT NOT be said that the death of USENET is attributable to spam.
For one thing, USENET is not dead in spite of what Google wants you to
think:

> Much of the content being disseminated via Usenet today is binary
> (non-text) file sharing, which Google Groups does not support, as
> well as spam.

I find it ironic that Google's GMail is the largest source of USENET
spam by far — both by piece count and by bandwidth.

LET IT NOT be said that the death of USENET is attributable to
graphical newsreaders, either.

> Over the last several years, legitimate activity in text-based Usenet
> groups has declined significantly because users have moved to more
> modern technologies and formats such as social media and web-based
> forums.

The whole point of continuing using USENET is to avoid the tracking and
hucksterism rampant on Szociál Media.

Google acquired the Deja News USENET archive in 2001 and promptly set
about making comprehensive searches of historical USENET traffic
inoperable. Search of Google Groups remains problematic to this day.

+ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet

In that year (2001), Google debuted Groups as a direct competitor for
USENET even though its Web interface has always been inferior to the
various newsreaders which existed then and which have continued to
improve.

The story here is that, in spite of Google's best efforts to crush it,
USENET survived! Decoupling Groups from USENET can only be seen as
vindication of the old store-and-forward technology from 1980. Things
are bound to get better now that USENET moderators can finally feel
free to blacklist all GMail traffic.

- --
.. Be Seeing You,
.. Chuck Rhode, Sheboygan, WI, USA
.. Weather: http://LacusVeris.com/WX
.. 54° — Wind S 5 mph

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[Bret]

Chuck,

I'll try to address your original questions. You may subscribe to weewx-development by email but you'll have to either use a Gmail account to subscribe (and you could forward that to a non-Gmail account) or create a Google account with your non-Gmail email address.  See the end of this article for more details:
https://support.google.com/groups/answer/1067205

Otherwise you can always read and browse the group without signing into any Google account at:
https://groups.google.com/g/weewx-development

This all applies to weewx-user as well.

Hope this helps,

Bret

[Chuck Rhode]

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On Fri, 15 Dec 2023 15:33:12 -0600
Bret <bre...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Otherwise you can always read and browse the group without signing
> into any Google account at:

> https://groups.google.com/g/weewx-development

Of course, ....

But what if Google refuses to serve content to a browser over the TOR
network? Then, I have to use a less-secure browser to interact with
Google.com. I guess this doesn't amount to presenting credentials
... or does it?

- --
.. Be Seeing You,
.. Chuck Rhode, Sheboygan, WI, USA
.. Weather: http://LacusVeris.com/WX

.. 50° — Wind S 3 mph

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[Vince Skahan]

Perhaps you should try and do some experiments.

Currently you can 'read' without logging into anything and without using a particular browser.

I certainly suspect that to subscribe via email would (should) require some verification but I don't know there.  Also suspect posting 'should' require you to either be logged in via the web interface or be posting from an email previously subscribed to the list (spam prevention).

But only doing some testing would say for sure.

And nobody ever knows what product Google will kill next so speculation there is fruitless.

[Chuck Rhode]

On Fri, 15 Dec 2023 14:29:58 -0800 (PST)
Vince Skahan <vince...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Perhaps you should try and do some experiments.

:-) Yes, I should. But what I'm confronted with is a road map from
Google. They are assuring YOU folks at WeeWX that your Google Groups
bulletin board will not be affected by decommissioning their USENET
interface. Hey! That sounds about right, but allow me some
skepticism on that score. Right now, there doesn't appear to be any
way to experiment with the future.

> Currently you can 'read' without logging into anything and without
> using a particular browser.

Yes, that's true. I can view:

+ https://groups.google.com/g/weewx-development

... with the TOR Browser.

> I certainly suspect that to subscribe via email would (should)
> require some verification but I don't know there. Also suspect
> posting 'should' require you to either be logged in via the web
> interface or be posting from an email previously subscribed to the
> list (spam prevention).

Yes, I am subscribed to *weewx-development* via eMail. The
subscription is under my GMail account, and I had to use my GMail
login through a non-TOR browser to set up the Groups subscriptions.

Presumably I can post from the above groups link by logging in. I
don't do that, though. Instead, I post by eMailing a response to:

+ mailto:weewx-de...@googlegroups.com

... from my GMail address. And, no, it doesn't work from my "regular"
eMail address.

... so, it's the future of this asynchronous eMail interaction with
(non-USENET) Google Groups bulletin boards that is in question. I can
only hope the capability is maintained.

What is confusing me is that I use the same mail-user agent (MUA) (in
my case *claws-mail*) for both Groups and USENET. I read and post to
Groups through eMail. I read and post to USENET through a paid
subscription to GigaNews, but, apart from configuration differences,
the user-facing interaction with my MUA including threaded lists
appears identical.

> And nobody ever knows what product Google will kill next so
> speculation there is fruitless.

Ain't it the Truth! I harbor a bit of trepidation that eMail
subscription to Groups is on the bubble.

[Vince Skahan]

Chuck - I don't sweat it at all.

My personal thought is that free Google Groups like the ones we're using will eventually get killed by Google because they can't monetize free nor (maybe) track to the extent they want to track.  Same for free gmail someday and free g-anything if you take it to the extreme.

We'll see what happens when/if it happens and react accordingly as always.

[Chuck Rhode]

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On Fri, 15 Dec 2023 15:33:12 -0600
Bret <bre...@gmail.com> wrote:

> You may subscribe to weewx-development by email but you'll have to
> either use a Gmail account to subscribe (and you could forward that
> to a non-Gmail account) or create a Google account with your
> non-Gmail email address. See the end of this article for more
> details: https://support.google.com/groups/answer/1067205

> Otherwise you can always read and browse the group without signing
> into any Google account at:
> https://groups.google.com/g/weewx-development

Last night, I received a visitation from the Ghost of CompuServe Past,
and it told me — to tell you (contributors to Weewx-users and
WeeWX-development) — that plain-text mail readers are not dead —
either — and to commend to you a resolve to do better in the New Year
to post with **more meaningful context quotes**.

Context quotes — to be sure we're all on the same page — are when you
reply in a (threaded) discussion such as occurs on Google Groups.
Most people will intersperse their thoughts among quotations from
previous posters to the thread. Typically, these quotes show with
special indentation and a marginal symbol. In Þe Olde Days, the
symbol was the greater-than (>) character.

+ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diple_(textual_symbol)

+ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style

+ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater-than_sign

You don't believe in CompuServe Past; do you? No doubt you're
thinking that a post here about netiquette during this Festive Season
of the Year is heedlessly self-indulgent and snobbish. Well, that may
be so, but posting with badly formed context quotes is only slightly
less self-indulgent and snobbish.

> Why is this an issue? Doesn't GMail handle all that quoting stuff
> automagically?

Perhaps. I can confirm that, using the Web interface at
Mail.Google.com, when you copy from the "Trimmed Content," and paste
into a reply, the context quoting shown in the "Trimmed Content" is
preserved. However, using the Web interface at Groups.Google.com, it
is not. Using the mobile GMail Android App interface, it is not.

To add to the confusion, the GMail Android App preserves the
indentation — just not the quoting, so what you see pasted into the
compose window (in both cases) looks identical to what you copied from
the "Trimmed Content," and, in fact, the recipient can see the
indentation in markup — just not in plain-text from the App. This is
because, although quoting involves actual marginal symbols which are
visible in plain-text, mere indentation is just formatting which is
invisible in plain-text.

I did a little study on traffic to **weewx-users** and
**weewx-development** discussion groups since Sep. 2022.

> | | Group A | | | Group B | | |
> |-------|--------:|-----:|----:|--------:|-----:|----:|
> |Month | Replies | NoQ | | Replies | NoQ | |
> |-------|--------:|-----:|----:|--------:|-----:|----:|
> |2022/09| 217 | 10 | 5% | 50 | 8 | 16% |
> |2022/10| 184 | 6 | 3% | 32 | 3 | 9% |
> |2022/11| 250 | 2 | 1% | 99 | 13 | 13% |
> |2022/12| 119 | 5 | 4% | 28 | 5 | 18% |
> |2023/01| 239 | 4 | 2% | 84 | 29 | 35% |
> |2023/02| 171 | 7 | 4% | 51 | 19 | 37% |
> |2023/03| 219 | 8 | 4% | 63 | 25 | 40% |
> |2023/04| 164 | 8 | 5% | 47 | 15 | 32% |
> |2023/05| 222 | 4 | 2% | 49 | 12 | 24% |
> |2023/06| 220 | 7 | 3% | 43 | 16 | 37% |
> |2023/07| 369 | 11 | 3% | 63 | 24 | 38% |
> |2023/08| 272 | 13 | 5% | 61 | 26 | 43% |
> |2023/09| 240 | 13 | 5% | 63 | 23 | 37% |
> |2023/10| 316 | 7 | 2% | 80 | 19 | 24% |
> |2023/11| 232 | 9 | 4% | 59 | 20 | 34% |
> |2023/12| 283 | 24 | 8% | 119 | 55 | 46% |

I didn't count original posts, only replies. Posters were divided
arbitrarily into frequent contributors (Group B containing eight) and
everyone else (Group A containing over 500). The number of replies
containing some kind of blockquoting but no marginal symbols is
counted as "NoQ." These, in my humble opinion, are posts that are
difficult to read in plain-text. They may contain context quotes, but
nothing gives that away except the presence of formatting in markup.

There is a much higher percentage of replies without context quoting
visible in plain-text coming from those in Group B than in Group A.
Presumably this is because frequent contributors are more likely to
quote to begin with.

A couple of things jump out. I expected to see changes in Dec. 2023
because of the single very deep thread titled "V5.0 release candidate
available," and, in fact, the NoQ percentage in Group A did experience
a jump. So did the NoQ percentage for Group B where nearly half seem
to include some kind of context quoting without marginal symbols.

Group B experienced a jump to about double the ratio of NoQ replies
beginning in Jan 2023. There was a mandatory change to GMail about
this time:

+ https://workspaceupdates.googleblog.com/2023/01/

I'm guessing the Ghost of Christmas 2022 Present handed around a lot
of new Chromebooks and iPads and people switched to posting from
mobile apps rather than deal with the new look and feel of GMail's Web
interface.

Be that as it may, how ought one to post while including context
quotes that stand out in plain-text? The quick answer is, "You
can't." I've been buzzing around the Internet for several days,
looking for something (anything) that would give away the secret, and
I haven't stumbled upon a way to do it without getting rid of the
GMail mobile app altogether and forswearing the use of
Groups.Google.com Website.

**You can do it** from the Mail.Google.com Website. There you have to
click to expand the compose window to full screen to see the complete
edit toolbar, including the quote (") tool.

**You can do it** with the FairEmail Android App, not available in the
Apple ecosystem. I tried serveral Android eMail apps ostensibly
competing with GMail that didn't do context quoting — either — before
I encountered FairEmail. I am under the impression that the Apple
Mail app **does facilitate context quoting**.

I don't think CompuServe Past realized what it was asking for, as I'm
sure both of these suggestions are non-starters. And, anyway, why
would WeeWX Users and Developers change their posting habits to
accommodate one reader who happens to be enamored of plain-text?

There is of course always the Ghost of Cross-Site Scripting Yet to
Come. I fear this specter more than any I have seen, and, to avoid
crossing its path, I keep my mail-readers tuned strictly to plain-text
as this old post from LWN proposes:

+ Corbet, Jonathan. "The Trouble with Text-Only Email." 12
Oct. 2017. _Linux Weekly News_. 31 Dec 2023
<https://lwn.net/Articles/735973/>.

- --
.. Be Seeing You,
.. Chuck Rhode, Sheboygan, WI, USA
.. Weather: http://LacusVeris.com/WX

.. 31° — Wind S 6 mph — Sky overcast.

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[Vince Skahan]

[...tl;dr;....]

Actually I did read your post.  Twice.  And I'm totally lost what you point is there.

FWIW, I use Safari on a Mac to post and followup.  I try to quote stuff to hopefully look ok in the reply.  Most times it works.  Some times it doesn't because Google seems to randomly change stuff even browser session to browser session.  They win.  They're bigger than I am.  Google's gonna do what Google's gonna do, right or wrong or WTH????

Just seeing your PGP signature tells me you're old school, which is cool.  I used to run microEmacs back in 1987 when forced to at $WORK.   But stuff has evolved beyond plain-text and running your own sendmail server and the like over 20 years ago, so old-school plain-text only users are going to have issues it seems. So it goes I guess....

[Greg Troxel]

Vince Skahan <vince...@gmail.com> writes:

> [...tl;dr;....]
>
> Actually I did read your post. Twice. And I'm totally lost what you point
> is there.
>
> FWIW, I use Safari on a Mac to post and followup. I try to quote stuff to
> hopefully look ok in the reply. Most times it works. Some times it
> doesn't because Google seems to randomly change stuff even browser session
> to browser session. They win. They're bigger than I am. Google's gonna
> do what Google's gonna do, right or wrong or WTH????

I followed it, even if it was a bit tricky.

1) For most google groups, you can subscribe by email. I think this is
sending an email to:

weewx-develop...@googlegroups.com

It would IMHO be outrageous to exclude people without a google
account.

2) I suspect that plain text is not just for old timers but also an
accessibility issue.

3) I read mail in plain text, in gnus. I cannot imagine using a gui
mail reader for lists -- it would take at least 10x the time. I
frequently see replies where intead of "> " ahead of the quoted text
as it should be (or some other quoting style), instead the quoted text
and the new text looks the same. Probably in html it is a different
color, or something. This is not reasonable; email should have a
plain text part and it should be properly formatted. If tools are
broken people shouldn't use them.

The next thing you know we'll be using discourse :-(

[Chuck Rhode]

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On Fri, 05 Jan 2024 19:53:51 -0500
Greg Troxel <g...@lexort.com> wrote:

> I read mail in plain text, in gnus. [snip] If
> tools are broken, people shouldn't use them.

Hail to thee, Fellow Traveler. I use *claws-mail*.

I looked at the X-Mailer headers on *weewx-users* and
*weewx-development* posts. Here are the most frequent:

> 5463 None
> 43 Apple Mail (2.3731.700.6)
> 39 Apple Mail (2.3731.600.7)
> 28 Microsoft Outlook 16.0
> 18 Apple Mail (2.3774.200.91.1.1)
> 17 Apple Mail (2.3774.100.2.1.4)
> 17 Apple Mail (2.3731.300.101.1.3)
> 14 Apple Mail (2.3696.120.41.1.1)
> 10 Apple Mail (2.3731.500.231)
> 10 Apple Mail (2.3731.400.51.1.1)

Apparently a few of the contributors here are reading/posting via
eMail. I'm shocked, SHOCKED, at the preponderance of Apple users. I
wonder if that's true of the "None" posters.

> The next thing you know we'll be using discourse :-(

Yep! It's easy to find discussions about migrating from Groups to
Discourse. Whether this represents a much of a trend or anything more
than a general ferment of dissatisfaction with Groups, I can't say. I
note that Discourse servers provide an RSS interface as well as the
traditional Web interface.

Discourse servers can be configured to accept inbound eMail:

+ https://discourse.gnome.org/t/interacting-with-discourse-via-email/2336

Discourse users may enable an outbound eMail digest of traffic. This
digest may be viewed as text only, but it bears no resemblance to the
formatting on the associated Web site. Quoted text is suppressed in
the digest.

- --
.. Be Seeing You,
.. Chuck Rhode, Sheboygan, WI, USA
.. Weather: http://LacusVeris.com/WX

.. 31° — Wind ESE 7 mph — Sky overcast. Light snow; mist.

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[Chuck Rhode]

On Fri, 05 Jan 2024 19:53:51 -0500
Greg Troxel <g...@lexort.com> wrote:

> For most google groups, you can subscribe by email. I think this is
> sending an email to:

> weewx-develop...@googlegroups.com

> It would IMHO be outrageous to exclude people without a google
> account.

I think folks who try to post from eMail boxen associated with their
own domain names will have trouble. I have better luck submitting
posts to *weewx-users* and *weewx-development* from my GMail mailbox.
I believe this is because Google arbitrarily and capriciously blocks
inbound eMail from other mail servers, which it occasionally deems to
be sources of spam. Because I share an eMail server with dozens of
DOZENS of other retail customers at my Web hosting service (WHS) —
some of whom may in fact dabble in spam — my eMail domain is from time
to time blocked by association.

I know Google prescribes various techniques for other mail servers to
AVOID SEEMING TO BE origins of spam, but these are onerous or not
available to retail customers.

Meanwhile, major spam generators all seem to use GMail mailboxes on
Google's servers. Pot, meet kettle. Yes, blocking eMail from other
servers DOES SEEM OUTRAGEOUS and violates unspoken covenants about the
ubiquity of eMail services.

Google doesn't block its own servers, though, so, reliably to post to
WeeWX groups, I use GMail.

--
.. Be Seeing You,
.. Chuck Rhode, Sheboygan, WI, USA
.. Weather: http://LacusVeris.com/WX

.. 31° — Wind WNW 8 mph — Sky overcast. Mist.

[Greg Troxel]

Chuck Rhode <charlescu...@gmail.com> writes:

> I know Google prescribes various techniques for other mail servers to
> AVOID SEEMING TO BE origins of spam, but these are onerous or not
> available to retail customers.

Not to defend google, but:

They seem to expect SPF and DKIM, and I sort both of those into "if
you aren't doing that your mail server is not set up right" these days.

If you are coming from an IP address that also hosts spammers, your
house is not in order and you need to find a better hosting service.

I find that my mail does not get filtered as spam by google. (My
mailserver has a dedicated IP address.)