Google and uk.d-i-y

[jim_in_sussex]

I have been accessing uk.d-i-y through the Google archive since I discovered it about 2 years ago.

You can see a simple list of postings; a tree list of the threads within a topic was shown at the side & you could select the ones of interest & view (ie download) only those. Posting a new topic was simple, as was responding to a thread within a topic by simply clicking on "Post a follow-up to this message" at the end of a posting.

Now it appears to have gone haywire. An attempt to post a follow-up brings a message like "Unable to retrieve message [e-mail]".

If I revert to my old newsreader it means I have to download the whole set of postings (no braodband here :-(( ).

The problem appears to be associated with 'new google groups' which doesn't seem to be able to handle things in thread-hierarchical order. Anyone any solution please?

[:::Jerry::::]

Yes, get yourself a proper news feed, browse over to

for not having a BB connection, with a news-reader correctly set up for off line reading you shouldn't incur anymore expense than you do logging into Google groups.

[Andrew Gabriel]

Please complain to google. In addition to the problems you seem to have experienced, they have balls-up postings originating from their customers, which is also making a mess of this newsgroup when accessed via proper newsreaders. One would hope they would test such software before letting it loose, but it is just so completely broken, it seems apparently not.

[Andy Dingley]

Try groups.google.co.uk rather than groups.google.com It seems that the country-specific names are (usually) still getiing the old version.

They spent a long time beta-testing the new Google. Then they launched something quite different.

[Dave Stanton]

You should see the postings from N Thornton

Dave

[John Rumm]

You could try

which seems to be a web wrapper round this and a few other groups....

[Owain]

"jim_in_sussex" wrote | If I revert to my old newsreader it means I have to download the whole | set of postings (no braodband here :-(( ).

No you don't. If using Outlook Express:

To mark all messages in a selected newsgroup as read, including messages not yet downloaded, select the newsgroup in the Folders list, and click Catch Up on the Edit menu. This is handy, for example, when you return from vacation and don't want to download all unread messages, but want to start reading the current ones.

Newsreaders should have equivalent functionality :-)

Owain

[N. Thornton]

Yes, all the non .com googles are it seems, but I've not found one of them that works right. If you click 'language tools' on the homepage you get all the possible gurgles, including elmer fudd, klingon, etc. But theyre all 'unable to retrieve' depsite the fact that they just did retrieve. Copy n paste doesnt give all the headers, so it displays out of sequence in the thread.

And to make it worse, some people's newreaders are set so they dont even group posts with the same headings in one thread.

Diybanter carries only a small fraction of uk.d-i-y's posts regrettably, its basically useless.

launched

Why gurgle have set out to make such a bad rep I dont know; the new beta is atrocious. Had they left what worked alone, all would be well.

Human nature is such that we dont want to admit our mistakes, and this costs companies their livelihood many a time. If I was employing the people that put gurgle newgroups beta online I'd cook them over a slow fire.

NT

[John Rumm]

It looked like it had the full feed when I looked... it does order threads based on how recently they have been posted to though which can be a bit confusing.

Perhaps that would be a good remedy for all those people who know about these limitations, know of easy alternatives, and STILL bollox this forum by insiting on posting with google in its current state!

[Grunff]

Instead of complaining, why don't you just use a f#&%ing newsreader, and stop screwing threads up?

[Lobster]

And nor should they be. That's another Google trick which screws things up.

Try searching for, say, messages with the subject "Boiler Problem" in uk.d-i-y. Google turns up a "thread" consisting of 17 messages; the reality is that this is about 4 completely separate threads from 1998 to

2004.

David

[:::Jerry::::]

Why don't you just tell us your true feelings about this ? Well said BTW !...

[fred]

Thank you for posting the correct and polite response.

I only just managed to avoid posting the FOAD/idiot reply to a self serving not-my-problem/you're-all-out-of-step-except-me analysis of the problem but managed to remember my hard learned resolution to post only helpful replies.

As you correctly state, threading of articles by subject name is entirely incorrect behaviour. Googling on single or double word subjects on any group on usenet finds threads of apparently hundreds of articles which in fact are multiple threads erroneously linked by broken software. Here we go, 'nokia unlocking' on uk.telecom.mobile; I'm sure the posts from 1999 linked to those of 2001, 2002 and 2003 will be highly relevant to today's nokias.

The only correct behaviour is to link threads by correct use of the 'References:' header which, for the uninitiated, lists the message ids of all preceding articles which form the branch of the thread to which you are replying. I am at a loss to understand why google and the forums think they can ignore established usenet protocols in this manner and am very bored with the uneducated who think the problem is with other peoples' newsreaders.

Fortunately my reader allows me to filter threads with posting.google or news.diybanter in the header, and have started doing so today, but I do feel sorry for those who post from these sources in ignorance and miss out on replies. Those who continue to post from these sources in arrogance I have no time for

[fred]

In article , :::Jerry:::: writes

As jerry has suggested, there is no need to download thousands of articles. If you get yourself a (free) news server, such as 'individual', and set up an offline newsreader to download and store headers only you can request the bodies of articles in threads that look interesting. I used this very method for many years on dial-up and had no problem with it. It's a different way of working from googling, but easy to get used to and involves very little time actually connected eg. connect - download headers - disconnect; peruse subjects - mark for download - connect - download articles - disconnect and so on. Stored headers and articles can be set to expire at the time you are likely to lose interest in them, say 10 days, or you may be able to tell your reader to keep valued threads as your own mini archive.

A good google should find a few options for an offline newsreader ;-)

Btw, I am a fan of google as an archive (apart from broken threading), I just have problems with the broken posting mechanism.

HTH

[Dave Stanton]

Now who could that be I wonder ....

Dave

[Mathew J. Newton]

As you can see I use Google (sorry! No newsreader at work - only web/e-mail access) and didn't realise posts like mine were causing problems for others. Could someone explain to me in relatively simple terms what's wrong with my posts?

Finally, is there a better alternative for me, give my circumstances? Mathew

[John Rumm]

When you post from Google at the moment it is not including the correct information in the header of the message (i.e. the bit you don't normaly see) that links your post to the one it is replying to.

The result is that instead of your message appearing in the correct place in the thread, it always appears as either a completely new thread, or more usually, as a reply to the person who started the thread, even if you were attempting to reply to someone else. The result is it gets very confusing for people reading though the posts because the hirerarchy of the messaegs and their replies gets all mixed up.

Create yourself a free account at

and get hold of a newsreader package like Mozilla Thunderbird, or Forte Agent. You will then have "real" usenet access (even if your ISP does not have a news server of their own).

[Nick Atty]

The new google groups are horrible and are really mucking up huge tracts of the internet.

Almost every group is infested with postings that don't thread properly, don't quote any context, have leading spaces removed (which is great in programming groups) etc.

I'm on the brink of killing on "Organisation: groups.google.com" and I bet I'm not the only one.

[Mathew J. Newton]

correct

Ah, okay - thanks. I had a look at the headers but couldn't work out the relevant differences that set mine apart from others. So I guess all my posts (including this one!) don't appear in the correct threads for those of you using 'proper' newsreaders? I can see why that'd be a pain...

circumstances?

As mentioned, most of my newsgroup access is from work, and when I said they only allow web and e-mail access that's exactly what I meant... It's not so much the lack of software, but rather that's only what the firewall(s) permit! Here's hoping Google sort things out soon...

Mathew

[John Rumm]

Oddly enough, this one seems to be in the right place.... in fact a quick look back at some of your other replies also shows them in the right sequence. I wonder what you are doing right ;-)

(Which google are you using?)

As others have mentioned it can be a bit odd even for google users since it seems to be grouping completely unrelated threads together just because they have the same name.

Yup sorry, was not reading that bit carefully enough! My fault.

Bit more tricky to get round that one. A web based interface of some sort will be what you need. Since your posts seem ok at the moment, probably best to carry on with what you are doing (unless you fancy the hassle of setting up your own web based usenet gateway!).