Comp.lang.forth: banned on google groups?

[Dave]

I was looking for an old post on comp.lang.forth, and was surprised to discover that the group doesn't appear to be hosted on google groups any more.  Searching the group pulls up a "banned group" message, and selecting the "continue to the group" button shows 0 messages in the group.  This appears to be due to spam showing up in the unmoderated group.

Google bought Dejanews years ago, and, as I understand, was the defacto main usenet repository.  Is is all really gone, or just temporarily hidden?  How long ago did this happen?  Is the full comp.lang.forth archive available anywhere?  

I wonder if it's time to set up some NNTP mirrors and gather as much historical usenet content as possible.  Much of the overall content is garbage, but there's some priceless stuff in there, and even more that will become interesting in light of future developments.

Dave