Re: New lua-l hosted at Google Groups

[Mouse <mouse@...>]

> as a sidenote, I'm frankly surprised that google groups doesn't
> already number among the services google has summarily discontinued.

I'm told they sort-of have.

Some time ago (March 2009), I was force-subscribed to four Google
Groups.  Google, of course, ignored my spam reports and continued
pushing their stuff at me, even though two of the groups were entirely
in an alphabet - never mind language - I couldn't, and can't, read.  I
then blocked it based on a header signature.  Over seven months later,
despite my rejecting 100% of their spew, they were still trying - they
didn't even have working bounce processing.

After I mentioned this to an acquaintance who turned out to be a Google
customer in a more traditional sense (ie, buying something other than
advertising eyeballs from them), he investigated.  He told me Google
Groups had been running unstaffed for years.  (Listowner, you might
want to check into whether that's still true before moving the list.)

Something like seventeen months later, I heard that the "issue" had
been fixed; apparently their idea of the issue was that people could be
force-subscribed to Google Groups lists; the other problems don't seem
to have been issues for them.  Other problems such as having set it up
wrong, something any competent email admin would have known better
than, to start with.  Such as ignoring spam complaints.  Such as
completely (as far as I can tell) lacking bounce processing.  Such as
running an attractive nuisance (unstaffed Groups) with no oversight for
years.  And that's in addition to all the other offenses Google has
inflicted on the net.  If Google is still providing Groups, it's
because they think they can extract enough value from the list and its
subscribers to cover the resources it's costing them.

In any case, Google has earned themselves the dubious honour of the
hardest email block I know how to implement.

No, I will not be participating in any Google-hosted list.

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