Updating definition of "bogus" groups?

[Eric Abrahamsen <eric@ericabrahamsen.net>]

Hi all,

In bug#60078[1], there's some discussion about Gnus's check-bogus-group
functions and whether they're buggy, or what exactly they're supposed to
do, and eventually what "bogus" actually means.

Near as I can tell, "bogus" once upon a time meant something very
specific in the Usenet world, but that was 20+ years ago, and it's no
longer a term of art. If you look at `gnus-check-bogus-newsgroups', the
20-year-old code that determines if a newsgroup is bogus is:

(unless (or (gnus-active group) ; Active
	    (and (gnus-info-method info)
		 (not (gnus-secondary-method-p
		       (gnus-info-method info))))) ; Foreign
  ;; Found a bogus newsgroup.
  (push group bogus))

So if a group is active, or if it belongs to a method that isn't a
secondary method, then it isn't bogus.

That seems like an odd and arbitrary criteria for weeding out groups.

Based on what I think "bogus" once meant (just that a newsgroup is being
superseded, or otherwise discouraged, and dropped from servers' lists),
it seems like a more reasonable update of the intention would be:

A group is bogus if it belongs to a select method that has a
`gnus-request-list' function, but the group itself doesn't appear in the
list.

This seems like it would be more handy for cleaning up "dangling"
groups.

Does anyone have an opinion on that idea, one way or the other?

Thanks!
Eric


[1]: https://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=60078