Usenet was great in the late 90s and early 2000s. I posted a lot, and met some great people. I got a job doing tech review of books about WAP and WML from my posts in a group about the forerunner to mobile internet, and another job with a company making intranet software from some posts about ASP and vbscript. I've no idea where I'd go for that sort of forum today.
I had tried this site a year or two ago and found it unusable then, but it seems greatly improved now. I found posts as old as 1982, but recent coverage seems to stop around April 2022. Crucially, it supports full-text search on posts within a specific group - something which my own site https://newsgrouper.org cannot do. I find the user interface a little awkward, but it does now appear to be a really useful resource.
weird, it seemed like the search index didn't go back past 2003. And then I tried a few more searches and found some hits. So I guess the index is a little spotty?
But try a few search terms, you might find what you're looking for.
sadly the alts were a bit of a mixed bag. the root problem was that anyone could issue a control message to create a new alt group. which I verified personally. because of that intermediate nodes would choose not to download updates. partially because it was a cesspool, and largely because because bandwidth was quite limited and that's where all binaries were distributed. so alt groups had spotty distribution, which is reflected in the archives.
Dang. I had previously gone back and found some old posts I remember, I believe it was through Dejanews, so theoretically they exist out there. What's your data source?
my data source? I ran a data center in the 80s, including nntp distribution and archiving as was the general practice back then. so, just personal opinion I guess.
It's always fun to realize that USENET is still out there humming along. I still remember the thrill of working on my ancient Delphi/Object Pascal projects, and posting questions... waiting a few hours and checking back for responses. There was no "instant gratification" in those days. (I wasn't really using IRC).
Opening this, and just searching "Delphi" I see that USENET never did get that "censorship" that I always assumed would eventually happen. The group names alone are truly unhinged. The Wild West is still.... wild!
Usenet archives have helped me tremendously. For example, I'm looking for info on an old (non-xenix) Unix for the apple Lisa and it gave me a name (and after a bit of digging, an address) of someone who was trusted with the remaining stock after the company that made it went under
Does anyone know if this is still the most comprehensive archive? I'd like to know if the owner found any of the missing 91-01 datasets or if they are available anywhere.
Usenet must be a generational thing, because it was not widely available or used when I was in university. We were all concerned with if we were allowed to torrent content and how strict they were with enforcement. I recall friends on some campuses had very strict policies where two strikes could mean you had no internet service in the dormitory for the remainder of the year.
I spent over a decade posting so much to comp.lang.c. I've run into a few regulars there in my work since then. I suppose it's still ticking along but I haven't visited in almost 20 years.
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[ 5.4 ms ] story [ 68.5 ms ] threadEven back then, though, it was always under attack by spammers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurence_Canter_and_Martha_Sie...
With 1990's style age "verification" to boot.
But try a few search terms, you might find what you're looking for.
Opening this, and just searching "Delphi" I see that USENET never did get that "censorship" that I always assumed would eventually happen. The group names alone are truly unhinged. The Wild West is still.... wild!
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