On 01/02/2018 17:01, superchromix wrote:
Our own programming discussion newsgroup, located at comp.lang.idl-pvwave, started receiving spam messages several months ago. Two weeks ago, access to comp.lang.idl-pvwave was blocked by Google Groups. When trying to access comp.lang.idl-pvwave, a message is now displayed, stating that the group owner needs to remove the spam, and can then apply to Google in order to have access reinstated. However, old public Usenet groups like this have no owner. The comp.lang.idl-pvwave group is more than 20 years old. Hence, there is no way to unblock the group. This is a serious problem, since the entire collection of postings going back many years has been blocked, no just the spam. This resource is frequently used by IDL programmers. Seeing the spam postings in this newsgroup, I expect something similar may happen to comp.lang.python, soon.
Thanks for the heads-up. I'm not sure there's anything we'll be able to do. Google have seemed remarkably uninterested in Google Groups for some years now.
Although I recognise how useful GG is for some people, I wouldn't be sorry [as a list maintainer here] if it were to be blocked for good by forces outside our control. We've wondered several times whether we ought to be block its posts outright, but to date we've simply used refined filters to block the spam and other abuse. If Google essentially close the group down, the decision is taken out of our hands.
TJG -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
