has anyone seen comp.lang.python.announce?

[rodisi01 at my-deja.com]

In article <iBQv4.4$wCn.135467520 at newsa.telia.net>,
  "Fredrik Lundh" <effbot at telia.com> wrote:
> on all newsservers I have access to, c.l.py.announce has
> been empty for about as long as I remember,
>
> they all list the newsgroup.
>
> but I never see any postings in there.
>
> (except for today, when an escaped slashdotter posted
> an "I'm first!" message on one of the servers ;-)
>
> and what's worse, it doesn't show up on deja.com either.
>
> can this be fixed, or should the newsgroup be scrapped?
> I find it hard to believe that the python universe doesn't
> produce enough new stuff to keep the newsgroup alive...
>
> </F>
>
>

Deja.com is my only access to newsgroups, and it keeps changing in odd
ways. I have never had problems getting to c.l.p.a before the latest
big redesign, but things seem *really* strange now:

1) If you go to the "discussions" level of deja (
http://www.deja.com/usenet/ ), there is a nice search box called "Find
a forum by name:" which responds to c.l.p.a with a surprising error
message:

~~~~~~~~
No Matching Forums

There are no matching forums, because they either do not exist in our
database or do not have enough activity at the present time to show up.
~~~~~~~~

What! What's up with that?! So, on to other approaches:

2) Searching for "comp.lang.python.*" with the same "find forums" box
generates the same error message. Grr.

3) Ok, so I go into my deja account, go to my forums, of which c.l.p.a
is one, and I go to the c.l.p.a link (
http://www.deja.com/topics_md.xp?group=comp.lang.python.announce&search
=topic ) which works fine....except for the fact that the *only* posts
available are from feb-26 to mar-1. There is no "next threads" link at
the bottom of the list. But there is further oddness...

4) At the top of the page referred to above, there is the "breadcrumbs"
trail: "Home >> Discussions >> comp . lang . python . announce". Aha!
finally we can get to the *real* c.l.p.a! Yeah right. Following the
last crumb, "announce", (
http://www.deja.com/bg.xp?level=comp.lang.python.announce ) gets you to
the same annoying error above. Huh?!


5) However, doing a simple deja search for "*" within c.l.p.a:  (
http://www.deja.com/dnquery.xp?ST=QS&DBS=2&groups=comp.lang.python.anno
unce&QRY=*&svcclass=dnserver ) generates 1200 matches that go back much
further than feb-26. Though they are annoyingly not organized into
threads, this isn't a problem for a "threadless" list like c.l.p.a.
(This kind of threadless results output is *very* annoying for other
newsgroups.)

So, I've decided to stop using deja for c.l.p.a. Now I just use the
archives at python.org:
http://www.python.org/pipermail/python-announce-list/ , but of course,
this is no good for people who want to use newsreaders.


I suspect that señor /F is referring to problems *outside* the
deja-system (no, not the dagobah system), and that *those* problems
might be causing the deja problems, but I have no way of assessing
what's going outside of deja.

I find deja's interface details very strange and inconsistent (the
major, general stuff is great for a free service). I would like to
manipulate their url's better, but find them very confusing. Does
anyone know of any pages that explain some of the deja url components?


Here's an amusing deja/python interface anecdote:

I wanted to find out if there were any other newsgroups with python in
their title or otherwise related to python. I knew that I would pick up
a few monty groups, but I figured there wouldn't be *too* many of them.
The search originated from a search box on "my forums" page...which is
apparently different from doing a power search for: groups with names
like *python*. At the time, July '99 I think, the results were:

alt.fan.monty-python
alt.revisionism
alt.religion.scientology
alt.fan.eddie-izzard
rec.pets.herp

I thought that these results were incredibly amusing, and I'm glad I
copied them to a text file, 'cause now the results are much less
amusing, just c.l.p and rec.pets.herp. I wonder what happened to the
monty python group.

Cheers

Rodisi



Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.