OT: google groups bug, or worse?

[Peter Hansen]

aaronwmail-usenet at yahoo.com wrote:
> I'm concerned that google groups is not correctly reflecting the
> python lists.  A month ago I announced the xsdbXML framework to the
> python list and the python-announce list.  As you can see from the
> links
> below the python announce submission was approved by the moderators
> (thanks!)
> and the python list submission also went out, but the messages cannot
> be found at google groups.
> 
> http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/2004-December/254479.html
> http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-announce-list/2004-December/003583.html
> 
> Is it a google bug?  Or is it something darker, like an anti-Python
> conspiracy at google?

You didn't post via Google, right?  Just sent to the mailing list?

I believe that Google knows nothing about mailing lists, but
watches a news feed, so if the list/Usenet gateway failed to
deliver those messages, Google would never see them.

Furthermore, news delivery is not necessarily guaranteed.
(Actually, I don't recall how reliable the protocol is,
but I doubt it's foolproof.)  If any one of the news
servers between yours and Google's happened to drop some
messages, it's quite possible Google would never see
them.

Given the "architecture" of Usenet, I wouldn't be surprised
if Google missed messages consistently, a very small percentage
of the time.

-Peter