This newsgroup (comp.lang.python) may soon be blocked by Google Groups

[Chris Angelico]

On Fri, Feb 2, 2018 at 4:50 AM,  <markb77 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thursday, February 1, 2018 at 6:01:58 PM UTC+1, superchromix wrote:
>> Our own programming discussion newsgroup, located at comp.lang.idl-pvwave, started receiving spam messages several months ago.
>>
>> Two weeks ago, access to comp.lang.idl-pvwave was blocked by Google Groups.
>>
>> When trying to access comp.lang.idl-pvwave, a message is now displayed, stating that the group owner needs to remove the spam, and can then apply to Google in order to have access reinstated.
>>
>> However, old public Usenet groups like this have no owner.  The comp.lang.idl-pvwave group is more than 20 years old.  Hence, there is no way to unblock the group.
>>
>> This is a serious problem, since the entire collection of postings going back many years has been blocked, no just the spam.  This resource is frequently used by IDL programmers.
>>
>> Seeing the spam postings in this newsgroup, I expect something similar may happen to comp.lang.python, soon.
>
> The problem I have now is that there is no public, searchable archive of comp.lang.idl-pvwave available.  This was the real benefit of Google groups, from my point of view.
>
> There is something called "narkive", but its search function seems to be broken, and it doesn't archive very far back in time.
>

Which is why you don't rely on proprietary services if you don't have
to. They can go away at any time, without notice.

Fortunately, python-list has its own archive, so you can access that
from python.org independently of the newsgroup's availability
elsewhere on the internet. It doesn't have all the posts that are on
the newsgroup and not on the mailing list, but IMO that's a feature,
not a bug. (With the possible exception of the "no-archive" posts.
Possible exception only.)

ChrisA