On Fri, 22 Nov 2019 at 16:06, Kurt H Maier <khm@sciops.net> wrote:

On Fri, Nov 22, 2019 at 03:49:58PM -0500, Henry Bent wrote:
>
> Has anyone definitely proven that any of the contents of these files are
> not in the searchable Google Groups interface? I don't really see any need
> to duplicate their efforts.

That data is essentially unavailable to people without Google accounts.

Why do you say that? I used a browser that was fully logged out of Google and in paranoid/private settings mode and I could browse newsgroups, do basic searching, etc. eg: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/net.unix-wizards/iris%7Csort:date

Even back when it was, the search had degraded to the point where you
could paste explicit quotes from messages and those messages would not
be in the results page.

I alluded to this sort of problem in my previous email, but in my recent experience the search results have been satisfactory and I consider the degraded search problem resolved. I have been able to search for very precise text strings with entirely satisfactory results over the last few months.

-Henry