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Gmane is in danger of disappearing. It's an important gateway between mailing lists and usenet. The Gmane sysadmin is apparently getting too many threats, and it has made him ill. Here's his announcement and ensuing discussion.
Is there anyone that could help gmane stay alive?
-- hendrik
Wikipedia summarizes Gmane as follows:
Gmane (pronounced "mane") is an e-mail to news gateway. It allows users to access electronic mailing lists as if they were Usenet newsgroups, and also through a variety of web interfaces. Gmane is an archive; it never expires messages (unless explicitly requested by users). Gmane also supports importing list postings made prior to a list's inclusion on the service.
Alexa reports Gmane has a global rank of 12,037 (up 280).
[At the time of accepting this story, I am getting a 523 error when attempting to reach http://gmane.org/ --Ed.]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by MrGuy on Friday July 29 2016, @06:21PM
Why?
I grew up on usenet. Loved it to death. Good people who were actually helpful and didn't call you a newb all the time. I loved cutting and pasting binaries back together to see other people's photos in the days before there were other ways to do it. Got into flamewars on which newsreader was "the best one." (slrn!) Good memories.
And yet, I ask "why bother?" What's the utility of putting information into usenet anymore? Almost all the interesting features of usenet are performed somewhere else, and generally better. Mailing lists are dying too.
I don't have a problem recommending we save an archive of the information of a bygone time, but trying to maintain a tool that links one outdated tech to another in a cool way feels like trying to restart a business that made reel to reel tape drive parts for PDP-11's.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Francis on Friday July 29 2016, @06:58PM
I think one of the big issues with it now is that it seems like the only access to the usenet these days is through paid directories. Granted, I didn't get online until the late '90s, but I don't think there's much awareness that it exists or what's actually on there and the lack of accessible indexes is a bit of an issue.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Hyperturtle on Friday July 29 2016, @07:22PM
If it means that such data is kept in a format that works on my old devices, and is in text format, and has figures or pictures that don't take up 80% of the page, and has no native advertising -- or "mobile first" nonsense -- then I'd donate money to keep it.
Have you tried visiting any tech vendor's help section lately? The ones that have 'modernized' have become challenging to use -- instead of a high page density of information, it's all airy and light with over sized icons instead of actual details. With an integrated search feature that suggests "did you mean -- run the initial setup wizard?" Or ones that show "HOT! Trending topics" for... a KB support library? What? Just give me a searchable index. I dont want the tags or the social integration, I just want to access the fricking manual that wasnt included in the box.
It may be that gmane dies not because people do not recognize the value as you stated and see no reason for it to continue its existence, but that because the value it has is recognized by those that wish it to be gone for a variety of reasons. DDOS anything enough and it takes someone with good funding to keep it online. People that use it clearly are not complying to the narrative. Knowing how stuff works... that's hacker stuff!
I am the type that still has Cisco UniverCDs copied onto a file share because it is faster to look through those sometimes... and that Cisco's site is not immune to having links to their own documentation that have since been removed.
To that extent, I imagine there is real value in a resource like gmane probably could help fund itself if they provided a searchable database of archived threads. It is always valuable for a network engineer like myself to have off-line material, because when you are in a metal vault underground, you might not be able to just 'go online'. Then anyone wanting to help support a client with some far out elderly stuff may have another avenue to pursue to helping fix the problem... or just because it can be cool to read through and see how far we've come.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Bot on Friday July 29 2016, @07:30PM
Why USENET? my question is, Why web2.0?
USENET was based on a clean protocol, which means I could pick the client I liked more, and automate tasks to my liking. No need to beg for API keys, no need to curse when sites alter the user interface, remove features, and so on, no need to execute obfuscated code from 14 sources to load a 1MB page for a 300 word article.
USENET was distributed and kind of content addressed.
USENET was almost intentionally snuffed, instead of dying of mere obsolescence. No improvement on the protocol, few ISP maintained decent servers, unimaginative trolls, smelling like the paid kind (one of them was traced down to a telecom company, in one of my fave groups), and the association with illegal material (in fact we all see how snuffing USENET effectively made illegal material unavailable, right? right?) killed it. Dejanews, the archive, went to google, which does not miss a comma on web yet cannot seem to make old usenet articles entirely available), and now Gmane seems actively fought. I guess that for good ol internet experience we need to go gnunet, or ipfs or i2p.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 4, Informative) by number11 on Friday July 29 2016, @08:25PM
No need to use the past tense. USENET is still there. Some of it is swamped with spam and idiots, but some of it is in remarkable good condition, including a number of computer-related groups. You can get free server access at eternal-september [eternal-september.org] for text groups. Binaries you'll probably have to pay to get access to (I use blocknews [blocknews.net], but there are other vendors.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 29 2016, @09:47PM
IE6 saved the old internet for the longest time, with it gone you'll have to welcome your Web 2.0 overlords :D
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 30 2016, @01:30AM
helpful and didn't call you a newb all the time
What usenet were you using?! I must have been in very different groups than you.
What killed it was the eternal September. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September [wikipedia.org]