OT Bye bye ....

  • Thread starter Thread starter Ǝиçεl
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Ǝиçεl

The purpose of this communication is to inform you of our plan to strengthen
our technical community and provide a long-term community value to our users,
via the migration of Microsoft NNTP public newsgroups to web-based Microsoft
community forums. This forums plan has been in development and now it
reached a phase where is worthy of your attention.

As a result of our continuous investment in community and the rise of social
media, growth in our forums has been consistently increasing since its
launch, as we are serving today more than 15M customer visits per month with
an average growth of 12% month-over-month. Community participation in
newsgroups has declined by 48% during this time, and trending looks to
reflect this decline month-over-month.

Microsoft’s goal is to unify on one approach so that all community users can
receive maximum value from the knowledge created by community leaders such
as yourself. This move will also eliminate the existing fragmented and
disconnected experience resulting from the multiple platforms that are
offered today. Users will also benefit from the personalization and
discoverability of solutions that we can enable in the forums environment.

Over the past few years, Microsoft has invested in web-based forums
technology to offer a richer and up-to-date online experience to our
community which is fully-aligned with market trends. This facilitates the
addressing of scenarios around discussions and Q&A as well as providing
better integration with our product web properties.

The existing newsgroup platform (NNTP) is running on an outdated version of
Microsoft Exchange that has reached its end-of-life and is no longer
supported due to a business decision taken by Microsoft many years ago.
This makes it impossible to enhance basic functionality, keep the platform
secure and deliver a healthy experience for you and our communities.

Beginning in May 2010, Microsoft will begin announcing the progressive
discontinuance of public newsgroups and start inviting users to use the
Microsoft forums that include Microsoft Answers, TechNet and MSDN. This
move will add substantial benefits for the whole community such as:
centralized searchable content, the improved ability for top contributors
(like yourself) to retain their influence, the reduction of redundancies,
making content easier to find, better indexing and advanced moderation
capabilities
(including offline accessibility). Overall, forums offer a better spam and
user management platform that will improve customer satisfaction by ensuring
a healthy discussion space and minimizing the effect of spam, trolls,
off-topic messages, synchronization, etc.
-=-
 
:
<snip>

Could you point to a link where you found this, Engel ?
For the benefit of everyone here.

Thanks
 
1PW said:
So far, a Google search shows this showing up in an isolated few Spanish
speaking groups.

This /may/ be the author:

<https://mvp.support.microsoft.com/profile=55105F5E-D40F-4355-B9C0-9A5038C77C92>

The MVP Profile *is* who posted this info, but where does it come from, exactly ?

I would understand MS moving the extraneous MS newsgroups to the web only but what of the many English
groups that are available via NNTP.

@bill Sharpe, thanks for the info but I would like to know more than what you provided since it is basically
the same thing as was already posted to this thread.
 
On 05/04/2010 08:05 AM, Randy Knobloch wrote:

Major snipage...
The MVP Profile *is* who posted this info, but where does it come from, exactly ?

I would understand MS moving the extraneous MS newsgroups to the web only but what of the many English
groups that are available via NNTP.

I found it strange that the announcement was published from
non-official, non-Microsoft IP address in Barcelona, Spain and that it
wasn't signed with a more authoritative Microsoft insider's title.
Also, the last name of the OP wasn't used.

It also seems as if the poster is quoting an official Microsoft release,
but a meager search of real Microsoft web sites is negative so far.

Also, I see the post showing up in only Spanish language IE6, XP and
FoxPro newsgroups.
 
1PW wrote:
<snip>

I really don't think it is worth pursuing any further as I have not heard from anyone of any
credibility from the MS or MS MVP Community that what was stated is fact.

Until someone says otherwise, there is no point in going on about it.

MS MVP's are notorious for leaking information that is incorrect, this I know for a fact.
 
1PW wrote:
<snip>

I really don't think it is worth pursuing any further as I have not heard from anyone of any
credibility from the MS or MS MVP Community that what was stated is fact.

Until someone says otherwise, there is no point in going on about it.

MS MVP's are notorious for leaking information that is incorrect, this I know for a fact.

Agreed
 
actually I heard this from a source I have at microsoft on the phone that
they are phasing out their newsgroups because they found more participation
on their forums instead, and that the phase out was going to start sometime
this year but he would not commit when
There are some ms newsgroups that I really would miss especially the windows
update one where I can find out if others have problems with their updates.
But it goes towards progress and technology so I guess newsgroups are old
technology and old news for microsost
robin


(e-mail address removed)> wrote in message
 
Overall, forums offer a better spam and user management platform
that will improve customer satisfaction by ensuring a healthy
discussion space and minimizing the effect of spam, trolls, off-topic
messages, synchronization, etc.

Costs aside, this seems the heart of the explanation. While the last
part is true for very many NNTP groups, I wonder to what degree it's
true for the private groups MS has been sponsoring. What I will miss,
something rarely found on web-based forums, is the "community" and
relaxed friendliness of encountering regular users, such as on this
group. I fear also missing the other brand update notices, which will
presumably be considered off topic or segregated into a single topic at
MS's support forums.

Gene
 
Bye, Jack.

Costs aside, this seems the heart of the explanation. While the last
part is true for very many NNTP groups, I wonder to what degree it's
true for the private groups MS has been sponsoring. What I will miss,
something rarely found on web-based forums, is the "community" and
relaxed friendliness of encountering regular users, such as on this
group. I fear also missing the other brand update notices, which will
presumably be considered off topic or segregated into a single topic at
MS's support forums.

Gene
 
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