L
Linea Recta
How come I can't find any news group about Windows 7?
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How come I can't find any news group about Windows 7?
Linea Recta said:How come I can't find any news group about Windows 7?
alt.windows7.general
Ertrnal-September has it.
Ken Blake said:Not to complain to you, <g> but perhaps to help Linea Recta, that's a
giant typo, almost as giant as some of mine.
That should be Eternal-September.
Linea said:How come I can't find any news group about Windows 7?
Linea said:How come I can't find any news group about Windows 7?
How come I can't find any news group about Windows 7?
Paul said:You're not a Google Groups person, so you're in luck.
The alt.windows7.general group exists, but not on all
servers. That's because newgroup in alt.* is handled
manually by administrators, due to abuse.
My two servers, Eternal September and AIOE, happen to have it.
Doing a "refresh" of the groups list, may cause it to be
added to your news client.
The reason I mention Google Groups, is Google Groups does
not tend to honor new_group commands either. And is
not currently archiving alt.windows7.general . That
means we can't search the group, by visiting Google.
I expect it's still stored on a hard drive at Google
somewhere, but they simply don't pay attention to
their configuration at all. Nobody really cares about it.
So it can be found on third-party servers. And
if you haven't refreshed your groups list lately,
that's why it didn't show up. There is also a
group for Windows 8 (alt.comp.os.windows-8).
Linea said:And why has this to be so mysterious? And why the fancy name "Eternal
September"? (At first I thought this was some sort of sign of...)
Why is subject "Windows 7" treated different than other news subjects?
Why are things made intentionally complicated?
thanks,
Paul said:The administrator of the server, has a sense of humor.
You can see the origins of the name, here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_september
*******
The ad-hoc nature of USENET, is half the fun.
There's the official part, with charters, RFDs, and votes...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_8_(Usenet)
And there is alt. When users feel there should be an alt
group, at one time you could newgroup one yourself. That's
where alt.swedish.shef.bork.bork.bork came from.
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/alt.swedish.chef.bork.bork.bork
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_Chef
That led to run-away behavior, and eventually administrators
disabled the controls on alt.*, so that the administrators
did things manually. People were creating vanity groups,
like you could make alt.joe.blow.is.an.idiot if you wanted.
Things can be added to alt, with less effort than for the
Big-8.
If a third-party hierarchy such as microsoft.* no longer
was in operation, or accepting new entries, someone wanting to
discuss "OSes" would need some other place for them. They could
have been put in comp.* in the Big-8, but that would have required
work on selecting a naming convention, which does make the naming
more systematic. But it's still a pain-in-the-rear to get your
discussion group.
So someone asked for a non-systematically named alt.windows7.general,
with no prospects of adding additional hierarchy to it. Because
the participation rate just wouldn't be there to expand it.
The same thing happened with Windows 8, and you can tell the
person who asked for Windows 8, either didn't see the Windows 7
one, or decided "their idea was better".
Groups like that exist for other languages, but I haven't gone
looking for them.
Depending on how poorly named a group is, it can be difficult
to find with the "search" feature in most news clients. You
virtually have to hear about it "word of mouth", while in a
group like the WinXP one. In some cases, it would be *you*
sending an email to your server administrator, asking that
the group in question be added. Someone has to do it.
Strictly speaking, there should not be a microsoft.* group.
The group we're currently using, doesn't belong here any more.
Groups which originate on third-party ("company") servers,
like adobe.*, microsoft.*, mozilla.*, they fill a need.
But if the administrators on microsoft.* issues a signed
rmgroup command, the other servers are supposed to follow
suit and remove it. The companies would normally do this,
for spam control. Say you're adobe and offering a forum
for product discussion. Initially, everything is cool.
Other server admins, ask to connect it up on their
server (as USENET is just a jumble of servers with a
crude protocol for syncing posts on the servers). Eventually,
there's too much spam, or not enough control. The originator
of these third-party servers, has the option of taking them
private again, giving them the ability to remove them
entirely if they want. Microsoft could have done that
with microsoft.*, but it would seem microsoft really
never cared what happened outside the confines of
its own building. And the group we're communicating in
today, is an orphan. Administrators will maintain its
existence, as long as there is traffic in it. (The
last reduction in the size of microsoft.*, to perhaps
1600 groups, was done based on a lack of traffic in
the other 1400 or so groups. Just rough numbers, I don't
keep a record or anything.)
alt.swedish.chef.bork.bork.bork doesn't exist on my
server any more. It would have been removed for traffic
reasons, as it was serving no purpose, and would only
have been popular while there was a Muppets show. When a
commercial server announces "we have 200,000 groups", it
would be because the administrator didn't trim down
the groups, the way some of the smaller servers
have. Maintaining just the traffic bearing groups, means
less work monitoring for spam, less time spent
backing up the server occasionally and so on.
Groups like alt.flame exist, as a place to send
people with bad attitudes. There are a few other
groups that exist to fulfill that role. And quite
a few individuals who belong there, and not in a
regular news group (with a topic).
That's a rough picture of what you're using. It
all has a colorful history.
You can't find it in the microsoft.* hierarchy, for that reason. You'llDon Phillipson said:Because MS no longer monitors or supports newsgroups. Long
before it marketed Win7 MS announced it had switched support
to blog and similar web sites.