Dan C finally acts:
Well, I resisted as long as I could. I kept receiving the spam and garbage posted by Google Gropers here on Usenet, far longer than was wise, largely for the entertainment value of some of the moronic posters. But as of today, I can't take it any more. All GG posts are now filtered out. Thanks to Blinky for leading this revolution. One day nobody will be left to read their drivel, except the other drooling Gropers.
Sure are a lot fewer posts to wade through! Long live the UIP!
sittingduck's observation on GG:
They are obviously more interested in letting any idiot with a keyboard clutter up usenet, than actually providing a service for those that would benefit from it.
And adds:
Thank you for raising awareness, and creating the UIP. :)
To Dan C and sittingduck: We do what we can. Thanks for noticing. Enjoy.
Geoff Realname makes his world better:
First day of using Hamster with Thunderbird: complete newb here, but following your directions (on UIP) removed 30 spam posts. I believe in heaven, but when I get there it may only be a little bit better than this. :)
William Poaster assesses the situation:
Googlegroups is a sewer. Blinky isn't the only one blocking it.
Most of the time I spend in GNU/linux mailing lists, no trolls, no spam. I lurk in Usenet groups from time to time, & blocking googlegroups has somewhat improved reading the groups.
James E. Morrow comes aboard:
Great site Blinky. Keep up the good work. I just killed 54 Google posts. The slaughter continues unabated.
Leonard Blaisdell is awakened by the roar of GG spam once too often:
I finally followed your advice. I used to argue against it, but a hundred thousand whacks over the head convinced me. I'm now googlegroups free thanks to the recent spate of crap. Enlightenment comes hard for me.
XS11E on The Project:
I've finally had to join the Usenet Improvement Project, it took me a very long time to do so but I finally became convinced yesterday. I've been analyzing posts from GG and have to agree the percent that contain useful info is way too small to worry about.
I've had to refer people in other newsgroups to the Usenet Improvement Project so often that I finally had to add Blinkynet to my bookmarks/favorites.
He adds, later:
I can say that spam has ceased to appear in several groups now that I joined the UIP.
The reason I joined is that in many of the groups I frequent ALL the spam showed GG headers, that convinced me and the results are even more convincing.
Tony Sivori does some cleaning up:
Well, Mr Shark, I took your advice. I recently added all posts from googlegroups.com to my filters, in every group that I read. The stench from the damn googlegroups sewer is just too much. Usenet is better off without google.
More on Eternal September, from Harold Stevens:
I didn't think anyone could top the annual autumn spewage when college classes resumed--then along came the AOL/WebTV crowd. They're now morphing into GoogleGropers, like some biblical sequence of plagues.
In fact, when AOHell dropped Usenet, they emailed their clueless users and suggested that they start using Google Groups.
Bergamot's insightful evaluation:
Google groups is the worst thing that has ever happened to Usenet.
Hey, here's the voice OF a Google Grouper:
hello buddy !!! how r u ?? Y u all r here ?? hmmmmmmmm ?? to give salutions of troubleshooting ??? .. well so i m facing a troubleshooting ...OPTICAL MOUSE NT WORKING ON WOODDEN COMPUTER TABLE .. BUT ITS WORKING ON SOFT SURFACE ,, LIKE A PIECE OF CLOTH .. OR MOUSE PAD
CAN U TELL ME WHT IT IZ ??? PLZZZ N THNX !!
Now, how did THAT get in here? :)
Magus observes:
An ungodly large number of numbskulls use google groups and think they're posting to "Google Groups" when they're posting to USENET.
Pepi discovers the Usenet Improvement Project:
A sound idea! Effective immediately. :-)
Ohmster* paints the picture:
Some serious Usenet contributors tend to frown on Google posters. It is felt by some that if you cannot install and use "a real news reader" then you are unlikely to abide by Usenet netiquette, will probably ask for an email reply, will top post, will multi post, and are the least likely to contribute anything to the newsgroup. By "contribute", the very least of which means to post a followup to the newsgroup to tell the responder, whether or not his advice actually "helped" you or not. This is very important to the scads of others that will be viewing your post and are waiting for a reply. Google posters tend to "hit and run" in that they come here for answers and are gone, they don't stick around to see the final threads or to help anyone else. Many of the serious "helpers" in the Usenet newsgroups actually set filters to block Google posts.
*Resistance is futile.
This voice belongs to Ben Shimmin:
I've been killing everything posted with GG for about a year now, and everything posted with Outlook for well over two years. Perhaps I miss the odd good post now and again, but, on the whole, this has seriously improved my usenet experience.
I'm not just talking about poorly-formatted news articles, either -- I genuinely find that people who use Outlook or GG have little to say which is of interest to me. Particularly with GG, people just seem to turn up, ask a question, and then disappear. That's not cricket. With Outlook, they just seem to post unintelligible guff.
We don't filter Outlook/OutlookExpress, but we've certainly seen others besides Ben doing so.
Karl Groves reports his experience:
Blinky's advice to automatically filter out posts from googlegroups has worked swimmingly for me. I hardly see any spam or kooks on aww now.
Thinking about removing your GG filter? Looks like William Poaster tried:
Deleting the googlegroups filter is like opening a manhole cover on a sewer. While it's in place, it's fine, but if you remove it, you get a terrible stench.
It's an extensive article, rich in history -- and analysis, of which the following is but a small part.
Web-to-Usenet gateways often hide the fact from users that they are actually on Usenet, and that it would be a good idea to learn and follow Usenet customs and established rules. They further hide the fact that Usenet is still at its core a decentralized store-and-forward system and, therefore, articles do not simply appear "everywhere" once they have been posted. This typically leads to multiple posts with the same contents and/or expressed dissatisfaction about why there are no answers within minutes and/or why there are multiple answers which essentially say the same thing.
Web-to-Usenet gateways often cut away or hide "overhead" information (e.g. header information like message IDs) or, even worse, signatures. This leaves Web-users puzzled about what people are talking about when they write things like "See my sig" or "See msgid ...".
Web-to-Usenet gateways typically provide fewer features than conventional News Reader software. For example, the ability to filter (users, subject lines, etc.), to sort threads in multiple ways, draft articles, etc., is typically missing.
Web-to-Usenet gateways enable less technically savvy people to enter Usenet. These people tend to be less familiar with the Usenet system and Usenet etiquette, and can cause annoyance for other users.
Web-to-Usenet gateways lower the entry barrier to Usenet. The slightly higher entry requirements, and the degree of obscurity Usenet possesses required users to have a higher level of knowledge and capability and as such tended to exclude those who were not at least mildly computer savvy, which in turn had the effect of tending to guarantee at least a minimum level of education, which in turn, overall, tended to ensure at least a minimum level of decency in behaviour. This is not an iron rule of course, but merely a tendency overall, which of course when applied to millions of people, had a profound effect on the overall culture of Usenet.
