“Please can you remove my email address”

This is the most common request I get. I have decided to remove from display all email addresses from all newsgroup posts (along similar lines to Google Groups) in an effort to stop the email spam harvesters.

The message headers (and the email address of the sender) are still viewable, but are hidden behind a ‘captcha’ screen (one of those ‘copy the letters in the box below’ devices). They appear to be quite effective at determining man from machine.

I also intend to introduce a ‘view raw post’ feature, again behind captcha, where email addresses in the body of posts can be safely viewed.

The downside is it costs for each licence, and I will need a lot of licences.

One of the principles is to bring similar usenet newsgroups together into one collection, as opposed to one site for ten thousand different newsgroups.  e.g. bring together all the Chess related groups into one site, such as ChessBanter. This can then focus on just this aspect along the idea that if you use or are interested in one of the chess groups, there is a fair chance the other groups might work for you as well.

This will give me a core platform on which to build, and I have already made significant progress on improving the interface and adding new features and I will talk about these more in the coming weeks and months.

The rapid advance in other Google products suggest that Groups does not have the same development priority as other areas within Google. My guess would be that G consider Usenet not to have the potential to deliver the big $$$. The inability to make any return from Usenet has seen the demise of many companies in this field. There has been a trend for ISP’s to outsource or even abandon offering a news feed to it’s customers with AOL discontinuing its service in February 2005.

As someone who is trying to better what G is doing in the newsgroup area (and specifically with web-interface access), I do admire what they have achieved. Working efficiently with that volume of data is impressive but they have the skills, infrastructure and resources to support it. I still believe I can develop a more intuitive and feature packed interface than Google Groups (in time!), and maybe by the time their product comes out of Beta I might have an offering that can match it on usability

“The Mozilla Foundation was created to support the development of the best quality software and services to people looking for innovation and choice on the Internet. We know that the Mozilla community has high expectations of us, and we felt that choosing Giganews to host our Usenet capabilities would allow us to continue to adhere to our high standards and offer an excellent service to our developers and other members of our community,” detailed Frank Hecker, Director of Policy at the Mozilla Foundation, when asked about the partnership with Giganews.

Jonah Yokubaitis, CEO of Giganews, says, “The Giganews and Mozilla partnership is a natural fit and we’re glad to offer this free service to their valued developer network. Mozilla’s reputation for developing some of the Internet’s leading browser and e-mail applications has attracted the same type of customers who demand the high quality Usenet service that Giganews provides.”

Anything that helps and supports the Mozilla Foundation is good in my books.