Whatever happened to the old D newsgroup?

[jcc7]

I don't want to post to the old D newsgroup, but I'd like to be able to view it as many ways as possible. Some cool historical posts are still there. ;)

The archives aren't there anymore.
The link in the D specification (http://www.digitalmars.com/d/archives/index.html) yields a blank page.

Is there some reason why it isn't an option with the webnews web interface (which rocks, by the way)? All of the other newsgroups seem to work fine, but the old D newsgroup apparently didn't make the cut. 

Is it due to the fear of people getting confused and posting new messages? I'll bet we could make that newsgroup read-only or something like that. It'd be nice to be able to see the threaded view and download attachments from the old newsgroup. (For those that aren't familiar with the webnews, see http://www.digitalmars.com/webnews/newsgroups.php?search_txt=&group=digitalmars.D)

Actually, it'd probably be beneficial if we could prevent any new posts to the old newsgroup. Is there any way to "lock" the ancient D newsgroup so that we can still view the old threads, but disallow new posts? Once a month, some confused newbie asks "Why is this newsgroup so dead?" or "How do I use printf?" or some such new thread. The recent posts are usually not follow-ups to old threads. They might as well start a new thread in one of the many new newsgroups for D than post in the ancient newsgroup where we need to tell them they took a wrong turn.

At least pnews still works for the old group (so that the messages can be viewed without having to use a newsreader): http://www.digitalmars.com/pnews/indexing.php?server=news.digitalmars.com&group=D

jcc7