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    From Jason Evans@21:1/5 to All on Wed Jun 16 10:55:12 2021
    out of curiosity, I took a look at the latest newgroup control messages
    from control.newgroup and cross-referenced them with the ISC file at https://ftp.isc.org/pub/usenet/CONFIG/newsgroups, with my own server, and
    with Google Groups.

    Here are a few of the latest newsgroups:

    free.rocks
    free.snipe
    alt.comp.software.seamonkey
    alt.comp.software.firefox
    alt.comp.software.thunderbird

    All of these are in the ISC file. However none of them are available on
    Google groups which leads me to believe that Google groups is becoming
    even more irrelevant every day. Now, every news administrator has the
    right to include or exclude any newsgroup or hierarchy that they want.
    For example, I exclude binary groups. However, it seems like Google is
    now completely automated and there may not even be any functionality to
    honor control messages.

    One more thing... If it's possible, would it be worth it to filter out
    all new articles from Google since they are possibly the biggest producer
    of spam on Usenet? The downside would be that there are genuine on-topic non-spam conversations from Google Groups users that would not be carried
    by my group and it would be a real shame for me not to include those.

    Jason

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Jason Evans@21:1/5 to Blueshirt on Wed Jun 16 12:58:31 2021
    On Wed, 16 Jun 2021 13:25:56 +0100, Blueshirt wrote:

    Once upon a time, when Blinky was around (RIP Lee) there was a project
    that tried to do exactly that, as Google Groups always was the main
    source of spam on Usenet.

    I wouldn't want to do it on the entire Usenet, just on my own server.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Blueshirt@21:1/5 to Jason Evans on Wed Jun 16 13:25:56 2021
    On 16/06/2021 11:55, Jason Evans wrote:

    One more thing... If it's possible, would it be worth it to filter out
    all new articles from Google since they are possibly the biggest producer
    of spam on Usenet?

    Once upon a time, when Blinky was around (RIP Lee) there was a project
    that tried to do exactly that, as Google Groups always was the main
    source of spam on Usenet.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Adam H. Kerman@21:1/5 to Jason Evans on Wed Jun 16 16:37:32 2021
    Jason Evans <[email protected]> wrote:

    out of curiosity, I took a look at the latest newgroup control messages
    from control.newgroup and cross-referenced them with the ISC file at >https://ftp.isc.org/pub/usenet/CONFIG/newsgroups, with my own server, and >with Google Groups. . . .

    Note that per one of Russ's readmes, the same newsgroups and active
    files at ftp.isc.org are not updated with newgroup messages lacking the Newsgroups file line. But the archive of control messages is updated
    even if the newgroup message lacks the Newsgroups file line. I never
    knew what the procedure was to request free.* or alt.* group creation in
    Google Groups.

    One more thing... If it's possible, would it be worth it to filter out
    all new articles from Google since they are possibly the biggest producer
    of spam on Usenet? The downside would be that there are genuine on-topic >non-spam conversations from Google Groups users that would not be carried
    by my group and it would be a real shame for me not to include those.

    It's not my place to offer an opinion. I read a few people who post
    through Google Groups who don't wanna subscribe to a News server.

    If there's someone you read on Google Groups, I say offer them an
    account. Offer accounts to anyone you read before you filter them out.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)