No longer can you "search before you post" at this URL for this newsgroup
<https://groups.google.com/g/news.admin.peering>

"Google Groups no longer supports new Usenet posts or subscriptions.
Historical content remains viewable."
<https://i.postimg.cc/RZkhn6bj/googlegroups.jpg>

The question to iron out in this thread would be what are the alternative
web-based no-account Usenet-only search engines for general use which
are updated and which provide a unique pointer to any given message post?

On Fri, 23 Feb 2024 07:26:14 +0530
Indira <indira@ghandi.net> wrote:

> No longer can you "search before you post" at this URL for this
> newsgroup <https://groups.google.com/g/news.admin.peering>
>
> "Google Groups no longer supports new Usenet posts or subscriptions.
> Historical content remains viewable."
> <https://i.postimg.cc/RZkhn6bj/googlegroups.jpg>
>
> The question to iron out in this thread would be what are the
> alternative web-based no-account Usenet-only search engines for
> general use which are updated and which provide a unique pointer to
> any given message post?

And the dozen or so remaining news admins breathe a sigh of relief.

To answer your question, if I had oodles of disk space to create such a
service, then I would lol. I can't imagine how much you would need to
index it all, but since each article has a unique article-id anyway (or
should) have, it should be easy to generate a unique pointer to a given
message.
--
End Of The Line BBS - Plano, TX
telnet endofthelinebbs.com 23

In article <20240222201050.4b479d4f@wibble.sysadmininc.com>,
sysop@endofthelinebbs.com says...
>
> On Fri, 23 Feb 2024 07:26:14 +0530
> Indira <indira@ghandi.net> wrote:
>
> > No longer can you "search before you post" at this URL for this
> > newsgroup <https://groups.google.com/g/news.admin.peering>
> >
> > "Google Groups no longer supports new Usenet posts or subscriptions.
> > Historical content remains viewable."
> > <https://i.postimg.cc/RZkhn6bj/googlegroups.jpg>
> >
> > The question to iron out in this thread would be what are the
> > alternative web-based no-account Usenet-only search engines for
> > general use which are updated and which provide a unique pointer to
> > any given message post?
>
>
> And the dozen or so remaining news admins breathe a sigh of relief.
>
> To answer your question, if I had oodles of disk space to create such a
> service, then I would lol. I can't imagine how much you would need to
> index it all, but since each article has a unique article-id anyway (or
> should) have, it should be easy to generate a unique pointer to a given
> message.

I think the challenge really would be in tracking down all the old
archives. Disk space requirements don't seem too absurd, but don't know
what sort of resources would be required to build a full text search
index of it all.

There is https://usenetarchives.com/ which at a glance seems to be about
as close as you'll get to being as comprehensive as Google Groups and
their statistics page says they've only got 3.54TB of data.
Unfortunately they don't say where they got it from, and they don't show
everything they have or show headers so its hard to know just how
comprehensive it is or build a replacement should it disappear someday.

I'd guess a fair chunk of whats on usenetarchives.com comes from
https://archive.org/details/usenethistorical (~2.6TB uncompressed) which
*appears* to have come from within Google somehow. So I guess at least
if/when Google decides to stop hosting their usenet archives the stuff
only Deja/Google archived is perhaps preserved elsewhere.

In news.admin.peering Indira <indira@ghandi.net> wrote:

> The question to iron out in this thread would be what are the alternative
> web-based no-account Usenet-only search engines for general use which
> are updated and which provide a unique pointer to any given message post?

Polish part of the Usenet has been archived (not by me) at:

https://usenet.nereid.pl/

It's not searchable and not being updated in the real time, but it's
easily downloadable.

If my server (news.chmurka.net) knows an article, you can display it by
entering a Message-ID here:

http://news.chmurka.net/mid.php

For example:

http://news.chmurka.net/mid.php?mid=ur8tvukvca@paganini.bofh.team

Le 23/02/2024 à 16:23, gof-cut-this-news@cut-this-chmurka.net.invalid
(Adam W.) a écrit :

> Polish part of the Usenet has been archived (not by me) at:
>
> https://usenet.nereid.pl/
>
> It's not searchable and not being updated in the real time, but it's
> easily downloadable.
>
> If my server (news.chmurka.net) knows an article, you can display it by
> entering a Message-ID here:
>
> http://news.chmurka.net/mid.php
>
> For example:
>
> http://news.chmurka.net/mid.php?mid=ur8tvukvca@paganini.bofh.team

And we still have :

<http://al.howardknight.net/>

But you need to have the Message-ID too.

gof-cut-this-news@cut-this-chmurka.net.invalid (Adam W.) composa la prose
suivante:

>In news.admin.peering Indira <indira@ghandi.net> wrote:
>
>> The question to iron out in this thread would be what are the alternative
>> web-based no-account Usenet-only search engines for general use which
>> are updated and which provide a unique pointer to any given message post?
>
>Polish part of the Usenet has been archived (not by me) at:
>
>https://usenet.nereid.pl/
>
>It's not searchable and not being updated in the real time, but it's
>easily downloadable.
>
>If my server (news.chmurka.net) knows an article, you can display it by
>entering a Message-ID here:
>
>http://news.chmurka.net/mid.php
>
>For example:
>
>http://news.chmurka.net/mid.php?mid=ur8tvukvca@paganini.bofh.team

Nice !

An other server to display it by Message-Id here:

http://usenet.ovh/index.php?article=ual

For example:

http://usenet.ovh/index.php?article=ual&msgid=ur8tvukvca@paganini.bofh.team

--

Arrêt du support usenet de GOOGLE GROUPS: utilisez un autre serveur.
https://support.google.com/groups/answer/11036538

Liste de serveurs offrant un accès gratuit à usenet:
http://usenet.ovh/?article=faq_serveur_gratuit

llp wrote:

>>If my server (news.chmurka.net) knows an article, you can display it by
>>entering a Message-ID here:
>>http://news.chmurka.net/mid.php

> An other server to display it by Message-Id here:
> http://usenet.ovh/index.php?article=ual

While the Message-ID needs to be known, if it's recent, and if the user is
a Usenet cognoscenti, then they can make use of a message-id engine.

Any others other than these three general purpose message-id lookups?
http://al.howardknight.net/
http://news.chmurka.net/mid.php
http://usenet.ovh/index.php?article=ual

David Goodwin wrote:

> I think the challenge really would be in tracking down all the old
> archives. Disk space requirements don't seem too absurd, but don't know
> what sort of resources would be required to build a full text search
> index of it all.

Thanks for all those pointers which makes these on the short list.
<http://groups.google.com/g/news.admin.peering>
<https://news.admin.peering.narkive.com/>
<https://www.novabbs.com/computers/thread.php?group=news.admin.peering>
<https://archive.org/details/usenethistorical>
<https://usenetarchives.com/>

Any others?

Après mûre réflexion, Indira a écrit :
> llp wrote:
>
>>>If my server (news.chmurka.net) knows an article, you can display it by
>>> entering a Message-ID here:
>>>http://news.chmurka.net/mid.php
>
>> An other server to display it by Message-Id here:
>> http://usenet.ovh/index.php?article=ual
>
> While the Message-ID needs to be known, if it's recent, and if the user is
> a Usenet cognoscenti, then they can make use of a message-id engine.
>
> Any others other than these three general purpose message-id lookups?
> http://al.howardknight.net/
> http://news.chmurka.net/mid.php
> http://usenet.ovh/index.php?article=ual

https://www.novabbs.com/SEARCH/search_nocem.php

A valuable search engine that allows you to find out
if a message is nocemized and to consult the nocem *and* the message.

--
Admin of news.usenet.ovh

llp wrote:

> A valuable search engine that allows you to find out
> if a message is nocemized and to consult the nocem *and* the message.

Thank you for that valuable addition of Message-ID searches.
<http://al.howardknight.net/>
<http://news.chmurka.net/mid.php>
<http://usenet.ovh/index.php?article=ual>
<https://www.novabbs.com/SEARCH/search_nocem.php>

Which adds to the list of message generic web-based searches.
<https://groups.google.com/g/news.admin.peering> deprecated 22Nov24
<https://news.admin.peering.narkive.com/>
<https://pi-dach.dorfdsl.de/rocksolid/search.php>
<https://www.novabbs.com/computers/thread.php?group=news.admin.peering>
<https://archive.org/details/usenethistorical>
<https://usenetarchives.com/>

And where the additional search you suggested is specific to "NoCeM"
<Search NoCeM messages for Message-ID>

Of course, I have absolutely no idea what a "no see em" is, so let me look
it up so that I can seem like I knew it all along (which I simply do not).
<https://metager.org/meta/meta.ger3?eingabe=what%20is%20a%20NoCeM%20usenet%20message-id>

Which resulted in the No See Em FAQ:
<http://cm.org/faq.html>

Wow. It's complicated for a mere user. I suspect this is for the admins.
Is it an A2A (admin to admin) way of removing suspected spams?

Indira <indira@ghandi.net> wrote:
>Is it an A2A (admin to admin) way of removing suspected spams?

The basic story is that back in the eighties, there was a mechanism called
a "cancel" which would allow you (or just about anyone else) to send a control
message to every site on the net and have them delete the local copy of your
message. This mechanism got abused, and consequently most sites today do
not accept cancels.

Therefore, when the spam problem became really bad thanks to Google,
I think some time around 1995, some admins came up with the idea of the
NoCem which is a cancel message that employs PGP signatures so you can
tell where they come from and admins can make the decision about whether
to accept them or not based upon the reputation of the sender. This is
an advance over conventional cancels which could be forged so you could
not necessarily know who the sender was.

If it were not for the nocem process, Usenet would have become unusable
with spam long ago.

You don't have to be an admin to issue nocems, you just have to have admins
trust you. You can read the messages yourself and use them for a personal
spam filter if you want, but the initial idea was for the news servers to
use them automatically. This is how they are primarily used.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

Scott Dorsey wrote:

> Indira <indira@ghandi.net> wrote:
>>Is it an A2A (admin to admin) way of removing suspected spams?

> The basic story is that back in the eighties, there was a mechanism called
> a "cancel" which would allow you (or just about anyone else) to send a control
> message to every site on the net and have them delete the local copy of your
> message. This mechanism got abused, and consequently most sites today do
> not accept cancels.

> Therefore, when the spam problem became really bad thanks to Google,
> I think some time around 1995, some admins came up with the idea of the
> NoCem which is a cancel message that employs PGP signatures so you can
> tell where they come from and admins can make the decision about whether
> to accept them or not based upon the reputation of the sender. This is
> an advance over conventional cancels which could be forged so you could
> not necessarily know who the sender was.

> If it were not for the nocem process, Usenet would have become unusable
> with spam long ago.

> You don't have to be an admin to issue nocems, you just have to have admins
> trust you. You can read the messages yourself and use them for a personal
> spam filter if you want, but the initial idea was for the news servers to
> use them automatically. This is how they are primarily used.
> --scott

Wow, nice overview of cancel -> nocem :)

NoCeM is what was mainly used to combat the recent Google spam flood (Thai spam, etc.) that just ended two days ago.

Take a look at the stats on that page, and you can see just how many messages were removed daily with a majority of them from google groups:
https://www.novabbs.com/SEARCH/search_nocem.php?stats=daily&msgid=

Take a look at the difference between 22 and 23 Feb, then back in Dec 2023. A lot of spam was caught.

--
Retro Guy

Scott Dorsey wrote:

> You don't have to be an admin to issue nocems, you just have to have admins
> trust you.

Your description was so perfectly written that _it_ should be in the FAQ!

One question, related only to that sentence above (and assuming I had all
the PGP stuff and the admin trust all set up beforehand)...

What _software_ is used to send that "nocem cancel request" to all the
server admins? Is it a simple email? Or a special usenet post. Or what?

On 24 Feb 2024 22:02:26 -0000, Scott Dorsey wrote:

> when the spam problem became really bad thanks to Google,
> I think some time around 1995

While the moment Google Groups went online there was "some" spam, didn't
the spam problem really multiply in the thousands only recently?

Like only a few months ago?

Almost as if either Google suddenly turned some kind of filter off, or
maybe the spammers suddenly started selling super-efficient ways around the
normal Google spam filters?

Nick Cine <nickcine@is.invalid> writes:
> On 24 Feb 2024 22:02:26 -0000, Scott Dorsey wrote:

>> when the spam problem became really bad thanks to Google, I think some
>> time around 1995

> While the moment Google Groups went online there was "some" spam, didn't
> the spam problem really multiply in the thousands only recently?

1995 is not only before Google Groups, it's before Google existed at all.
Google the company was founded in 1998. Deja News wasn't acquired by
Google until 2001. The original spam problems on Usenet didn't have
anything to do with Google.

--
Russ Allbery (eagle@eyrie.org) <https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>

Please post questions rather than mailing me directly.
<https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/faqs/questions.html> explains why.

On Sat, 24 Feb 2024 20:33:23 -0800, Russ Allbery wrote:

> 1995 is not only before Google Groups, it's before Google existed at all.
> Google the company was founded in 1998. Deja News wasn't acquired by
> Google until 2001. The original spam problems on Usenet didn't have
> anything to do with Google.

What is hard to understand is the nntp news admins who required a login &
password were apparently able to control spammers, so why couldn't Google?

Gelato <gelato@.is.invalid> writes:
> On Sat, 24 Feb 2024 20:33:23 -0800, Russ Allbery wrote:

>> 1995 is not only before Google Groups, it's before Google existed at
>> all. Google the company was founded in 1998. Deja News wasn't
>> acquired by Google until 2001. The original spam problems on Usenet
>> didn't have anything to do with Google.

> What is hard to understand is the nntp news admins who required a login
> & password were apparently able to control spammers, so why couldn't
> Google?

Spam filtering requires ongoing effort since it's adversarial (spammers
adapt), and Google stopped caring about Google Groups years ago. I
suspect the service has been mostly running on autopilot for a while.
It will be interesting to see how well other servers continue to hold up
against spam now that all the spammers will be looking for new injection
points.

--
Russ Allbery (eagle@eyrie.org) <https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>

Please post questions rather than mailing me directly.
<https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/faqs/questions.html> explains why.

On 24 Feb 2024, Russ Allbery <eagle@eyrie.org> posted some
news:878r3959y0.fsf@hope.eyrie.org:

> Gelato <gelato@.is.invalid> writes:
>> On Sat, 24 Feb 2024 20:33:23 -0800, Russ Allbery wrote:
>
>>> 1995 is not only before Google Groups, it's before Google existed at
>>> all. Google the company was founded in 1998. Deja News wasn't
>>> acquired by Google until 2001. The original spam problems on Usenet
>>> didn't have anything to do with Google.
>
>> What is hard to understand is the nntp news admins who required a
>> login & password were apparently able to control spammers, so why
>> couldn't Google?
>
> Spam filtering requires ongoing effort since it's adversarial
> (spammers adapt), and Google stopped caring about Google Groups years
> ago. I suspect the service has been mostly running on autopilot for a
> while.
Nod agreement.
> It will be interesting to see how well other servers continue to hold
> up against spam now that all the spammers will be looking for new
> injection points.

Seems google could have easily dealt with the most offensive bunch.

2402:800:61ae:79a9:a880:d836:6245:38d9
2402:800:61ae:3567:ede0:c2a8:5dfd:7c8a
2402:800:61a7:4f07:7192:a97:d907:f1f
2402:800:61a7:4f07:4997:dc42:fc1f:17d7

Viettel Group
inet6num: 2402:800::/32
route6: 2402:800::/32
descr: VIETTEL-VN
origin: AS7552
mnt-by: MAINT-VN-VNNIC

On 24 Feb 2024, Russ Allbery <eagle@eyrie.org> posted some
news:87cysl5fjg.fsf@hope.eyrie.org:

> Nick Cine <nickcine@is.invalid> writes:
>> On 24 Feb 2024 22:02:26 -0000, Scott Dorsey wrote:
>
>>> when the spam problem became really bad thanks to Google, I think
>>> some time around 1995
>
>> While the moment Google Groups went online there was "some" spam,
>> didn't the spam problem really multiply in the thousands only
>> recently?
>
> 1995 is not only before Google Groups, it's before Google existed at
> all. Google the company was founded in 1998. Deja News wasn't
> acquired by Google until 2001. The original spam problems on Usenet
> didn't have anything to do with Google.

The original ASIAN spam problems on Usenet.
The CURRENT SOUTHEAST ASIAN spam problems in google groups / Usenet.

No point in being PC about it.

Peter Burns <peterburns@verio.com> writes:
> On 24 Feb 2024, Russ Allbery <eagle@eyrie.org> posted some
> news:87cysl5fjg.fsf@hope.eyrie.org:

>> 1995 is not only before Google Groups, it's before Google existed at
>> all. Google the company was founded in 1998. Deja News wasn't acquired
>> by Google until 2001. The original spam problems on Usenet didn't have
>> anything to do with Google.

> The original ASIAN spam problems on Usenet.

Nonsense. Laurence Canter and Martha Siegel were American. Some of us
were there at the time and remember perfectly well what it was like.

--
Russ Allbery (eagle@eyrie.org) <https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>

Please post questions rather than mailing me directly.
<https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/faqs/questions.html> explains why.

In article <uredd2$irf3$1@solani.org>, Nick Cine <nickcine@is.invalid> wrote:
>On 24 Feb 2024 22:02:26 -0000, Scott Dorsey wrote:
>
>> when the spam problem became really bad thanks to Google,
>> I think some time around 1995
>
>While the moment Google Groups went online there was "some" spam, didn't
>the spam problem really multiply in the thousands only recently?
>
>Like only a few months ago?

Yes, in the last six months, a group of one or two users increased the spam
volume more than 10,000 times.

>Almost as if either Google suddenly turned some kind of filter off, or
>maybe the spammers suddenly started selling super-efficient ways around the
>normal Google spam filters?

If it had been the result of a change Google made, I would think that more
than one or two spammers would be piling on it and the degree of spam would
have increased far more than it did.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

Russ Allbery <eagle@eyrie.org> wrote:
>Nick Cine <nickcine@is.invalid> writes:
>> On 24 Feb 2024 22:02:26 -0000, Scott Dorsey wrote:
>
>>> when the spam problem became really bad thanks to Google, I think some
>>> time around 1995
>
>> While the moment Google Groups went online there was "some" spam, didn't
>> the spam problem really multiply in the thousands only recently?
>
>1995 is not only before Google Groups, it's before Google existed at all.
>Google the company was founded in 1998. Deja News wasn't acquired by
>Google until 2001. The original spam problems on Usenet didn't have
>anything to do with Google.

No, it was due to the green card lawyers on April 12 of 1994, a day that
will live in infamy.

But the level of spam they produced was ludicrously low by modern standards.

Note that cancels weren't intended to deal with spam, but to deal with
accidental posts or posts that needed re-editing. When the green card
spam came out, there was a lot of discussion about the cancel process.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

In article <urelti$tv6$1@rasp.pasdenom.info>,
Gelato <gelato@.is.invalid> wrote:
>On Sat, 24 Feb 2024 20:33:23 -0800, Russ Allbery wrote:
>
>> 1995 is not only before Google Groups, it's before Google existed at all.
>> Google the company was founded in 1998. Deja News wasn't acquired by
>> Google until 2001. The original spam problems on Usenet didn't have
>> anything to do with Google.
>
>What is hard to understand is the nntp news admins who required a login &
>password were apparently able to control spammers, so why couldn't Google?

Because Google didn't have actual admins as far as I could tell. I know
hundreds of people who have worked for Google and always asked them if they
had ever met anyone working for Google Groups and nobody had. The
groups-abuse@google.com address seemed to be unmanned. I think the system
was just running perhaps with some occasional upkeep of the software but
without any actual administration. And why they didn't change that is
likely because there wasn't any money in it.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

Peter Burns <peterburns@verio.com> writes:

> On 24 Feb 2024, Russ Allbery <eagle@eyrie.org> posted some
> news:87cysl5fjg.fsf@hope.eyrie.org:
>
>> Nick Cine <nickcine@is.invalid> writes:
>>> On 24 Feb 2024 22:02:26 -0000, Scott Dorsey wrote:
>>
>>>> when the spam problem became really bad thanks to Google, I think
>>>> some time around 1995
>>
>>> While the moment Google Groups went online there was "some" spam,
>>> didn't the spam problem really multiply in the thousands only
>>> recently?
>>
>> 1995 is not only before Google Groups, it's before Google existed at
>> all. Google the company was founded in 1998. Deja News wasn't
>> acquired by Google until 2001. The original spam problems on Usenet
>> didn't have anything to do with Google.
>
> The original ASIAN spam problems on Usenet.
> The CURRENT SOUTHEAST ASIAN spam problems in google groups / Usenet.
>
> No point in being PC about it.

Oh man, you've really cleared things up by specifying the languages used
and (theoretically) nationalities of the spammers involved. This
definitely casts the whole situation in a brand new light, now that we
have all that PC obfuscation out of the way.

In article <ured45$38ql5$1@paganini.bofh.team>,
Indira <indira@ghandi.net> wrote:
>Scott Dorsey wrote:
>
>> You don't have to be an admin to issue nocems, you just have to have admins
>> trust you.
>
>What _software_ is used to send that "nocem cancel request" to all the
>server admins? Is it a simple email? Or a special usenet post. Or what?

Just like with the creation of a new group or with a conventional cancel,
a message is posted to the "control" newsgroup, with the issuance of a
nocem a message is posted to the "nocem.misc" newsgroup. You can join
these newsgroups and watch sausage being made if you are interested in
doing so.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."