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Comp.lang.c Google Group has been banned

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Re: Comp.lang.c Google Group has been banned

#21

Post by mnd999 »

jcranmer wrote: post #14
chmod775 wrote: post #6

If that group was relying on Google, that's on them at this point. If you use any Google product, you better have an alternative ready. There's no telling when Google will either shut the product down, or just ban you.

comp.lang.c is a Usenet forum, that Google Groups provides access to. You can access it from any NNTP server that provides the core of Usenet without using Groups, and it's better not to use Google's horrible interface anyways.

I guess I’m getting old but I’m always amazed when people don’t know what Usenet is. Or at least aren’t able to spot a Usenet group by name.

Re: Comp.lang.c Google Group has been banned

#22

Post by MattGaiser »

that_guy_iain wrote: post #20
MattGaiser wrote: post #18

Outside of Hacker News, Google's moderation gets a lot less attention, whether it be regarding spam or politics or the complexities of managing communities. I waver between Google's aggressive algo moderation being just because they don't see it as a priority to fix or because overzealous moderation might actually be a better strategy when dealing with a relatively casual userbase. Overmoderate and get a few wrong, b…

If they get it wrong with under moderation then they get people complaining they're allowing nazis, spam, baby eaters, etc. This affects ads. If they get it wrong with over moderation people just think they're stupid. This does not affect ads.

It also never blows up into a major story.

Most news stories about Twitter, Facebook, and even the few about YouTube have been about them failing to ban X. Overmoderate and the criticism comes in bit by bit.

Re: Comp.lang.c Google Group has been banned

#24

Post by erlich »

Tomte wrote: post #16
chmod775 wrote: post #6

If that group was relying on Google, that's on them at this point. If you use any Google product, you better have an alternative ready. There's no telling when Google will either shut the product down, or just ban you.

They don't. It's a Usenet group. Google bought Dejanews and was an acceptable Usenet archive, for a time. Then Google put the Usenet groups under the same umbrella as their proprietary groups. Then their index became spotty (and you could retrieve some posts under groups.google.com, but not groups.google.de, or vice versa). Today, Google Groups is near useless for Usenet.

Google is so bad at product.

Re: Comp.lang.c Google Group has been banned

#26

Post by bachmeier »

that_guy_iain wrote: post #20
MattGaiser wrote: post #18

Outside of Hacker News, Google's moderation gets a lot less attention, whether it be regarding spam or politics or the complexities of managing communities. I waver between Google's aggressive algo moderation being just because they don't see it as a priority to fix or because overzealous moderation might actually be a better strategy when dealing with a relatively casual userbase. Overmoderate and get a few wrong, b…

If they get it wrong with under moderation then they get people complaining they're allowing nazis, spam, baby eaters, etc. This affects ads. If they get it wrong with over moderation people just think they're stupid. This does not affect ads.

That's natural, because the cost of mistakes in the two directions is not remotely close to symmetric. A few delayed messages to comp.lang.c is not the equivalent of [really bad thing].

Re: Comp.lang.c Google Group has been banned

#27

Post by makomk »

jcranmer wrote: post #14
chmod775 wrote: post #6

If that group was relying on Google, that's on them at this point. If you use any Google product, you better have an alternative ready. There's no telling when Google will either shut the product down, or just ban you.

comp.lang.c is a Usenet forum, that Google Groups provides access to. You can access it from any NNTP server that provides the core of Usenet without using Groups, and it's better not to use Google's horrible interface anyways.

You can access the current posts from any good NNTP server, but Usenet isn't used that much these days anyway. What's more interesting is the historic posts from its heyday and I think Google might own the only good archive of them by virtue of purchasing it.

Re: Comp.lang.c Google Group has been banned

#29

Post by sgt »

jcranmer wrote: post #14
chmod775 wrote: post #6

If that group was relying on Google, that's on them at this point. If you use any Google product, you better have an alternative ready. There's no telling when Google will either shut the product down, or just ban you.

comp.lang.c is a Usenet forum, that Google Groups provides access to. You can access it from any NNTP server that provides the core of Usenet without using Groups, and it's better not to use Google's horrible interface anyways.

At some point Google will ask themselves why they are spending money on running Google Groups in the first place. They may just decide to pull the plug.
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