Managing Google Groups headaches

[Roy Smith]

In article <52a290ed$0$30003$c3e8da3$5496439d at news.astraweb.com>,
 Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python at pearwood.info> wrote:

> In contrast, that is not the case with nearly all web forums. By 
> deliberate design, or mere ignorance and neglect, they mix up the message 
> you care about ("Hi Bob...") and the stuff you need to get that message 
> (the HTML and Javascript code) in one big ball of mud, and don't have 
> APIs for getting messages.

BTW, I was going to bring up vBulletin as an example of a typical web 
forum which suffers from the "big ball of mud" syndrome.  Then I 
discovered that it does indeed have a reasonable looking API 
(http://www.vbulletin.com/vbcms/content.php/367-API-Overview).

Beautiful Soup is an awesome tool.  Even more awesome is when you don't 
have to use it :-)