August 30, 2001

1:03 PM

Think having the past six years of your Usenet excesses archived and available at Google Groups is embarrassing? Intent on creating "the most complete archive possible" of netnews posts, Google is looking for collections of posts prior to 1995; they already have most of 1992.
posted by tranquileye (12 comments total)

Who would read that ?
posted by martz at 1:06 PM on August 30, 2001

What -- an archive of posts back from before spammers had discovered the 'Net and Usenet was actually about readable human interaction? I would, that's for damn sure. (I'm ego-surfing it right now, actually.)
posted by webmutant at 1:27 PM on August 30, 2001

hey webmutant - define "readable human interaction".

*groaning at some of her posts circa 1995 and before*
posted by gloege at 1:44 PM on August 30, 2001

Well, in brief -- I'd have to say I thought it was, well, interaction, between humans, that's readable. Let me know if I lost you anywhere in there. :)

Seriously, I understand and agree with the point you're trying to make, here, but even semi-literate morons flaming the hell out of each other beats automated spam posts; it's still people trying to talk to each other. (Well, at each other, anyway.)
posted by webmutant at 1:54 PM on August 30, 2001

I can think of several great posts (not by me) from that period that have been lost that I would love for Google to recover.
posted by straight at 2:01 PM on August 30, 2001

webmutant: heh. I deserved that. :P
posted by gloege at 2:16 PM on August 30, 2001

It's nice to see Google reviving the original DejaNews vision. (That was Deja's original plan, too: track down archives from the dawn of USENET and make them searchable.)
posted by kindall at 2:17 PM on August 30, 2001

Great! Let's all club together, create an entirely fake USENET reality for 1991, and then submit it.
posted by wackybrit at 2:55 PM on August 30, 2001

Is it reasonable to think that posters should be able to remove posts from the archive that they no longer want public? Or is the philosophical nature of Usenet such that once it's posted, you've given up control over it?

The authentication needed to verify a depost would probably be impossible to create. That said, I'd favor some system along these lines...
posted by lock at 2:59 PM on August 30, 2001

Oh, man, this is going to be embarrassing! Although, it'd be nice to have the alt.shenanigan posts from back when we invaded alt.clearing.technology...

And, lock, you can remove your old posts. From the Google Groups help page (item 16):

Google will honor requests to remove messages that you have posted yourself. In Usenet parlance, this is known as nuking a post. If you would like to remove one or more posts from our archive, please send an email to [e-mail] that contains the following items:...
posted by nicwolff at 3:09 PM on August 30, 2001

wackybrit...that is a great idea. We could start a psychic's list and predict everything in the last 10 years.
posted by th3ph17 at 5:02 PM on August 30, 2001

Lord help us if they ever get back to Fidonet...
posted by daver at 6:18 PM on August 30, 2001