out of curiosity, I took a look at the latest newgroup control messages
from control.newgroup and cross-referenced them with the ISC file at https://ftp.isc.org/pub/usenet/CONFIG/newsgroups, with my own server, and
with Google Groups.

Here are a few of the latest newsgroups:

free.rocks
free.snipe
alt.comp.software.seamonkey
alt.comp.software.firefox
alt.comp.software.thunderbird

All of these are in the ISC file. However none of them are available on
Google groups which leads me to believe that Google groups is becoming
even more irrelevant every day. Now, every news administrator has the
right to include or exclude any newsgroup or hierarchy that they want.
For example, I exclude binary groups. However, it seems like Google is
now completely automated and there may not even be any functionality to
honor control messages.

One more thing... If it's possible, would it be worth it to filter out
all new articles from Google since they are possibly the biggest producer
of spam on Usenet? The downside would be that there are genuine on-topic non-spam conversations from Google Groups users that would not be carried
by my group and it would be a real shame for me not to include those.

Jason

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On Wed, 16 Jun 2021 13:25:56 +0100, Blueshirt wrote:

Once upon a time, when Blinky was around (RIP Lee) there was a project
that tried to do exactly that, as Google Groups always was the main
source of spam on Usenet.

I wouldn't want to do it on the entire Usenet, just on my own server.

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On 16/06/2021 11:55, Jason Evans wrote:

One more thing... If it's possible, would it be worth it to filter out
all new articles from Google since they are possibly the biggest producer
of spam on Usenet?

Once upon a time, when Blinky was around (RIP Lee) there was a project
that tried to do exactly that, as Google Groups always was the main
source of spam on Usenet.

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Jason Evans <jsevans@mailfence.com> wrote:

out of curiosity, I took a look at the latest newgroup control messages
from control.newgroup and cross-referenced them with the ISC file at >https://ftp.isc.org/pub/usenet/CONFIG/newsgroups, with my own server, and >with Google Groups. . . .

Note that per one of Russ's readmes, the same newsgroups and active
files at ftp.isc.org are not updated with newgroup messages lacking the Newsgroups file line. But the archive of control messages is updated
even if the newgroup message lacks the Newsgroups file line. I never
knew what the procedure was to request free.* or alt.* group creation in
Google Groups.

One more thing... If it's possible, would it be worth it to filter out
all new articles from Google since they are possibly the biggest producer
of spam on Usenet? The downside would be that there are genuine on-topic >non-spam conversations from Google Groups users that would not be carried
by my group and it would be a real shame for me not to include those.

It's not my place to offer an opinion. I read a few people who post
through Google Groups who don't wanna subscribe to a News server.

If there's someone you read on Google Groups, I say offer them an
account. Offer accounts to anyone you read before you filter them out.

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