3 ms·

Well, I remember a lot of great stuff on Usenet circa 1994, but it looks like Google shut down access to it via Google Groups, which used to archive it in a sea

Well, I remember a lot of great stuff on Usenet circa 1994, but it looks like Google shut down access to it via Google Groups, which used to archive it in a searchable way. There was a ton of great stuff 30 years ago, and I think it's definitely worth saving. The Internet was a very different place, but it was quite real 30 years ago, and I think the idea that the further back you go the more valuable this kind of thing is is the right way of looking at it.

patrickhogan1 2y ago
This. Usenet. Then IRC. I think back to full on conversations I had with friends on IRC that I never kept. Then people stopped using IRC. All gone. Also slashdot. Go back 20 years and start clicking links. Most of them are broken.
Thorrez 2y ago
>but it looks like Google shut down access to it via Google Groups Huh? It still looks accessible to me. https://groups.google.com/g/sci.med.radiology.interventional https://groups.google.com/g/sci.med.radiology.interventional Disclosure: I work at Google, but not on Groups.
- alex_young 2y ago
  That’s cool, I’m glad they didn’t remove stuff. For the life of me I don’t see how one would discover that or other historic groups. It seems like at the minimum they removed the index of them or at least made it hard to discover.
  - Thorrez 2y ago
    It doesn't look like the index is gone to me. E.g.: https://groups.google.com/search?q=%22Has%20anyone%20ever%20did%20a%20CT%20scan%20and%20found%20calcification%20of%20the%20thyroid%22 https://groups.google.com/search?q=%22Has%20anyone%20ever%20... https://groups.google.com/search/groups?q=%22sci.med%22 https://groups.google.com/search/groups?q=%22sci.med%22 Were Usenet groups ever easier to discover in Google Groups than this?
    - alex_young 2y ago
      Here’s an example: http://web.archive.org/web/20120329085532/https://groups.google.com/groups/dir?hl=en&lnk=od&hl=en http://web.archive.org/web/20120329085532/https://groups.goo...
      - Thorrez 2y ago
        Hmm, interesting. That's listing 15 groups out of 6 million. I'm not sure how those 15 were chosen. They seem to be popular groups, so I'm guessing it's ordered in some way that correlates with popularity, however they're not sorted by number or subscribers, number of messages per month, whether they're Usenet or not, or alphabetically. I wonder how many people found that page useful. With 6 million groups, are people going to find the one they want by going page-by-page 15 at a time? Searching for groups still works today.

patrickhogan1 2y ago

This. Usenet. Then IRC. I think back to full on conversations I had with friends on IRC that I never kept. Then people stopped using IRC. All gone. Also slashdot. Go back 20 years and start clicking links. Most of them are broken.

Thorrez 2y ago

>but it looks like Google shut down access to it via Google Groups Huh? It still looks accessible to me. https://groups.google.com/g/sci.med.radiology.interventional https://groups.google.com/g/sci.med.radiology.interventional Disclosure: I work at Google, but not on Groups.

alex_young 2y ago
That’s cool, I’m glad they didn’t remove stuff. For the life of me I don’t see how one would discover that or other historic groups. It seems like at the minimum they removed the index of them or at least made it hard to discover.
- Thorrez 2y ago
  It doesn't look like the index is gone to me. E.g.: https://groups.google.com/search?q=%22Has%20anyone%20ever%20did%20a%20CT%20scan%20and%20found%20calcification%20of%20the%20thyroid%22 https://groups.google.com/search?q=%22Has%20anyone%20ever%20... https://groups.google.com/search/groups?q=%22sci.med%22 https://groups.google.com/search/groups?q=%22sci.med%22 Were Usenet groups ever easier to discover in Google Groups than this?
  - alex_young 2y ago
    Here’s an example: http://web.archive.org/web/20120329085532/https://groups.google.com/groups/dir?hl=en&lnk=od&hl=en http://web.archive.org/web/20120329085532/https://groups.goo...
    - Thorrez 2y ago
      Hmm, interesting. That's listing 15 groups out of 6 million. I'm not sure how those 15 were chosen. They seem to be popular groups, so I'm guessing it's ordered in some way that correlates with popularity, however they're not sorted by number or subscribers, number of messages per month, whether they're Usenet or not, or alphabetically. I wonder how many people found that page useful. With 6 million groups, are people going to find the one they want by going page-by-page 15 at a time? Searching for groups still works today.