Cannot search forum

  • Thread starter Thread starter Liz
  • Start date Start date
L

Liz

No results are showing anytime I try to search this forum with the most basic
word....I never had problems before....anyone else having problems with
querying the forum today?
 
and since this test post took, i would guess it has decided to work. at least
for a while. so search quick.

Regards
FSt1
 
Liz said:
No results are showing anytime I try to search
this forum with the most basic word....I never
had problems before....anyone else having
problems with querying the forum today?
Click to expand...

Common complaint among users of the MS Discussion Groups web interface. Its
search feature is unpredictable, at best. Consider yourself lucky not to
have encountered any problem before.

No "perfect" alternative. Google Groups works best; but it has its share of
problems.

Success with a news reader that connects directly to the MSnews server or
other archive of MS newsgroups depends on the reliability and features of the
news reader/server.
 
FSt1 said:
this is why some users have switched to news readers.
Click to expand...

Not a panacea. The MSnews server per se does not provide a search feature.
(Don't know about other news servers that mirrior MS newsgroups.) Moreover,
the MSnews server deletes articles older than 90 days. So search success
depends on the features of the news reader as well as how complete your local
cache of MSnews articles is.

PS: I switched to accessing the MSnews server directly because that is the
most reliable way to see articles archived there. Google Groups, for
example, fails to archive some articles posted using the MS Discussion Groups
web interface. I have yet to find a consistent rule to explain why. And of
course, I cannot know if articles posted by other interfaces are also ignored
by Google Groups.


----- original message -----
 
hi
you're right. but i was just pointing that out because of the "reliability"
problem not the search.

regards
FSt1
 
Hmm,

I use the Microsoft news server directly with Windows Mail,
but "reliability"?
The news server has filters and some totally inoffensive words
cause posts to be blocked. Interestingly some - not all - of those
posts show up in Google.
Then there seems to be some posters banned from MS news.
In one thread I participated, about 10 days ago, one poster
was totally blocked by the news server, his three posting can
be found via Google, but I never got them from the news server.
microsoft.public.vb.general.discussion, "Executables", Terry Austin.

Helmut.
 
Helmut Meukel said:
Then there seems to be some posters banned from MS news.
Click to expand...

I doubt that very much.

The MSNews server might reject articles posted from some IP addresses,
presumably based on well-known blacklist sites. (I object to the
blacklists. In the past, "good" addresses have found their way onto
blacklists; e.g. some of the many servers used by AOL.)

However, I expect that articles posted from blacklisted IP addresses are
never accepted by the MSNews server; I expect the TCP connection is rejected
immediately. Ergo, they could never appear on sites that mirror the MS
newsgroups, like Google Groups.

On the contrary, since Austin's articles, posted to the MSNews server, do
appear in Google Groups, the MSNews did accept those articles initially.

microsoft.public.vb.general.discussion, "Executables", Terry Austin.
Click to expand...

Aka "Gutless Umbrella Carrying Sissy".

Although I cannot spoof the IP address of Austin's news client, I did
successfully post an article spoofing everything else, including Austin's
"From" line. The article was posted successfully, and it survived on the
MSNews server. Ergo, Austin is not "banned from MS news".

The news server has filters and some totally inoffensive words
cause posts to be blocked.
Click to expand...

All of Austin's postings include the mail header record "X-Suck-My-Dick:
Suck.My.Dick", replacing periods with spaces. It is the phrase
"suck.my.dick", replacing periods with spaces, that causes the article to be
removed from the MSNews server.

Interestingly some - not all - of those posts show up in Google.
Click to expand...

It depends on when Google (actually Giganews) pulls articles from the MSNews
server.

The MSNews server does not block articles immediately. Instead, there
appears to be a process that runs either periodically or after an article is
accepted. The process scrubs a newsgroup or newsgroups of articles with
"offensive" strings. Sometimes, the process is delayed, presumably due to
the load on the MSNews server. If the delay is long enough -- I have
experienced delays of more than 5 minutes -- other news servers might have
time coincidentally to pull the article before it is removed from the MSNews
server.

In this case, the "offensive" string is understandable, although I object to
censorship of any kind. (Except for spam, ideally. But in practice, spam
cannot be avoided without innocent casualties.)

However, I have also noted in the Excel newsgroups that articles with the
strings "on o" and "xy z", without spaces, are removed from the MSNews
server, presumably due to an unintentionally overly-aggressive filter
configuration.

Some MVPs have forwarded these observations to people within MS. But I
would not hold my breath for a correction, at least for the latter two
examples.


----- original message -----
 
Back
Top