Google Groups NO!

Mike Doyle

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I can't believe this hasn't been mentioned- you can no longer search Google Groups back past a month or so.

I thought something seemed fishy the other day trying to seach RGVAC, today I confirmed my fears; Google has ruined the search utility for the old USENET Forums when using Google Groups.

What a tremendous loss, all those old post are now unsearchable.
 
If you goto the advanced groups search on the main page, it still works. It's a pain, but it's still there.

Not sure why the changed it. Let's hope they keep that functionallity - it's awesome!
 
I never knew anything about RGVAC until joining this site. I have used it exactly twice in the almost 3 years I have known about it. Both times were to purchase something someone from here linked me to there. I guess I am not a lifetime internet guy. That makes me happy.
 
I never knew anything about RGVAC until joining this site. I have used it exactly twice in the almost 3 years I have known about it. Both times were to purchase something someone from here linked me to there. I guess I am not a lifetime internet guy. That makes me happy.

Post count = Irony :)
 
I can't believe this hasn't been mentioned- you can no longer search Google Groups back past a month or so.

I thought something seemed fishy the other day trying to seach RGVAC, today I confirmed my fears; Google has ruined the search utility for the old USENET Forums when using Google Groups.

What a tremendous loss, all those old post are now unsearchable.

Up until a few months back you couldn't really search on KLOV and no one overly cared. ;)

Yeah, this sucks about google group search! However, you sure you can't search RGVAC via google.com ? that would almost work better anyhow right?
 
I never knew anything about RGVAC until joining this site. I have used it exactly twice in the almost 3 years I have known about it. Both times were to purchase something someone from here linked me to there. I guess I am not a lifetime internet guy. That makes me happy.

Well, RGVAC is what most people used before the KLOV forum came in to existence. I know I started using it back around 1999-2000. It is not as lively over there as it once was, but at one time was just as busy as KLOV is these days.
 
Imagine my surprise when I searched RGVAC for "space invaders" and came up with FIVE hits...

It's probably just a technique to prevent load on the system. I'm sure that most of the searchers desire recent results anyway.

I recall using it as far back as '92.

Kerry
 
RGVAC is nothing like it used to be. I started reading it in 1999. Just look at the post count drop over the years. http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.video.arcade.collecting/about?hl=en

It wasn't the same after Mark, Zinfer, and the others quit posting. Art is still there so is Aubby.

The one I would miss more is vectorlist. At least they have that backed up every month. Even that is nothing like it used to be. That only had around 50 posts last month.
 
Post count = Irony :)

Lifetime for a guy who's 36 years old or an information highway that's 15 years old in the popular public domain would be either 36 years or 15 years, not 3. Pretty simple math for an angry drive-by smart guy like yourself.
 
Lifetime for a guy who's 36 years old or an information highway that's 15 years old in the popular public domain would be either 36 years or 15 years, not 3. Pretty simple math for an angry drive-by smart guy like yourself.

Gotcha. So no one over the age of 15 can be lifetime.

For the record I'm not angry at all and haven't been for quite some time.

Take a joke pissy pants. Even if it sucked.
 
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Google Groups has been uniformly terrible for a long time.

- Its attempts at pre-collapsing threads you might be interested in is INFURIATING. I love threaded forums in most cases. Usenet is designed to be threaded. Google trying to think for us is maddening.

- The search has been shitty for a while, but yeah, only recently has it been completely broken via default searches like this. They are attempting to merge Usenet searches with "groups" in general. Groups means, "all forums on the internet." Who the fuck would want that? You can just do a normal Google search if that's what you want.

- I use a handle for a few groups, and my real name for a few others. At some point this got messed up, so it exclusively has me post under my handle.

- When search WAS working, you used to be able to sort by relevance or date and - should you click on "date" - it would remember that setting going forward. They removed that functionality. It now always reverts back to relevance.

The spam thing isn't unique to Google, so I won't ding them for it, but it's insane these days. Google has completely eliminated spam through my e-mail service with them, it'd be nice if they could apply the same thing to Google Groups.

As it stands, because they've proven so unreliable, I download all rgvac messages locally. Wish I could have started it years ago, because there really is a wealth of info there, and it saves writing up the same questions over and over again. If I had a complete DB dump of rgvac, I'd host it on the web somewhere so people could easily search it.
 
You're listing them as important rgvac figures?

How about Al Kossow, David Haynes, Rick Schieve... heh.

No, they're the ones that started all of the drama. Sort of like a few guys on here. I don't think most people on KLOV could handle Markline. Look how many people get pissed off at Bhamarcade. Do you remember when Mark tried to sell the Condom machines for home use.. :) I bought one of my first JAMMA boards off Rick. Most of the guys just stopped posting. Too bad they never made it here.

At its peak there were almost 250 posts a day on there. IMHO it's downfall was when ISP's quit offering Usenet to people. I'm lucky, I still get mine for free from my cable company.
 
I've never posted on RGP, but I've searched the hell out of it throughout the process of restoring my Gottlieb Count-Down. Came across the new limited search this week, and I just assumed it was a hiccup or bug or something... sigh.
 
No, they're the ones that started all of the drama. Sort of like a few guys on here. I don't think most people on KLOV could handle Markline. Look how many people get pissed off at Bhamarcade. Do you remember when Mark tried to sell the Condom machines for home use.. :) I bought one of my first JAMMA boards off Rick. Most of the guys just stopped posting. Too bad they never made it here.

At its peak there were almost 250 posts a day on there. IMHO it's downfall was when ISP's quit offering Usenet to people. I'm lucky, I still get mine for free from my cable company.

Same here. Rick sent me a Yie Ar-Kung Fu with adapter which was one of the FIRST games I went after when I started collecting. This was pre-paypal, pre-ebay, mail me a check and cross your fingers was really what you had to work with. But seeing Rick's posts on RGVAC gave me confidence.

I hardly ever posted, just lurked. But yeah, it had it's day. And it's still a wealth of information if you can search them correctly. If that goes away, yeah, we'll lose a lot of info. But as long as there are people in the hobby, and they're wiling to share (again), no big deal.
 
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