Any suggestion for Access forums after June 1?

[Dennis]

Hi,

Assuming that Microsoft does not listen to their users (surprise) and they
do shut down this forum on June 1st, can anyone suggest other forums?

This forum has been a GREAT source of information and it will be so sad to
see Microsoft close it.

 

[golfinray]

UtterAccess.com

 

[Bill]

I've been away for awhile and not up to date on
the demise of Access forums. All forums? Or,
just selected ones?
Bill

 

[Mike B]

I think there is already some migration to the comp.lang.* heirarchy by the
VBers and there is some activity in the comp.databases.ms-access NG. There
is no reason Access users cannot utiilze these existing NGs as a landing
spot.

 

[Bill]

Thanks.

I hate web-based forums, but I guess they're better than
nothing.

 

[Mike B]

Thanks.

I hate web-based forums, but I guess they're better than
nothing.

I was indicating that others, also not especially liking web-based forums
were also seeking safe haven in existing usenet heirarchies.

 

[Marshall Barton]

Assuming that Microsoft does not listen to their users (surprise) and they
do shut down this forum on June 1st, can anyone suggest other forums?

This forum has been a GREAT source of information and it will be so sad to
see Microsoft close it.

You know, I don't think Microsoft can close down a
newsgroup. They can take their servers out of the internet,
but the newsgroups should continue to exist on many other
news servers. I plan on continuing to use them just to see
what happens (and put off the bleep web based forum thingie
as long as I can).

If you were connecting directly to the MS servers, then you
would have to find another news server to connect to. That
may or may not be a problem for some or many folks, but I
have always connected to the news service available from my
ISP (who contracts it out to giganews).

The big question is how many folks will be bothered to do
that instead of bowing to MS and switching to the web based
junk.

 

[Bill]

Thanks Marsh,
I'm glad you described things as you did, as I do have ready
access to an ISP news server and will subscribe to the various
Access NGs there. If MS shuts down their NG server, as I
gather they're about to, I hope others will have the same
opportunity that I do.
Bill

 

[Mike Painter]

I've been away for awhile and not up to date on
the demise of Access forums. All forums? Or,
just selected ones?
Bill

It may be all but the message was not all that clear.
If 50 or so groups land on
http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/accessdev/threads at one time
it should be fun to watch.

 

[Mike B]

You know, I don't think Microsoft can close down a
newsgroup. They can take their servers out of the internet,
but the newsgroups should continue to exist on many other
news servers. I plan on continuing to use them just to see
what happens (and put off the bleep web based forum thingie
as long as I can).

There has been some discussion in the VB groups about this.
If MS issues an authenticated rmgroup command and it is honored by others,
it will remove the MS heirarchies from those servers.

Time will tell.

 

[Bill]

What's this: "authenticated rmgroup command",
remove a group? If so, it begs the question why
would they do that, as there's no liability regarding
the contents of a public forum.

Bill

You know, I don't think Microsoft can close down a
newsgroup. They can take their servers out of the internet,
but the newsgroups should continue to exist on many other
news servers. I plan on continuing to use them just to see
what happens (and put off the bleep web based forum thingie
as long as I can).

There has been some discussion in the VB groups about this.
If MS issues an authenticated rmgroup command and it is honored by others,
it will remove the MS heirarchies from those servers.

Time will tell.

 

[Marshall Barton]

There has been some discussion in the VB groups about this.
If MS issues an authenticated rmgroup command and it is honored by others,
it will remove the MS heirarchies from those servers.

Time will tell.

I was unaware of that capability and have no idea what an
"authenticated" command is, but if MS can and does do that,
I would think of it as them doing it out of spite. Whatever
justification they make up for doing it, will, in my mind,
be some legalistic mumbo jumbo and may turn me off to this
entire exercise. OTOH, I feel the need of those less
knowleddgable to get answers and the need to continue to pay
forward for all the assistance I have received, so I don't
really know what I will do in the future.

 

[Larry Linson]

If your ISP no longer provides a news server, get one -- I'm using
news.individual.net, operated by the Free University of Berlin -- solid,
stable, and inexpensive (10 euros a year); there are also other for-fee, and
many for-free servers (Eternal September is one free one that is often
recommended). See you in comp.databases.ms-access... many MVPs and other
knowledgeable developers answer questions there.

Traffic there is lower than what it once was, but I expect it to pick up
when Microsoft shuts down their support of these newsgroups.

"social.answers.microsoft.com" is Microsoft's suggestion. Doesn't seem very
appealing to me, judging from feedback I read about it.

 

[Mike B]

What's this: "authenticated rmgroup command",
remove a group? If so, it begs the question why
would they do that, as there's no liability regarding
the contents of a public forum.

There is a fair amount of opinion in the orphaned VB community that this
might happen as an overall strategy for MS to utilize the forums equally
from a marketing stature as with a source of help for users and developers.

Beyond that I don't have any personal desire to speculate the future, but
rather adopt a wait and see. I personally don't like the forum format, but
if that is all there was then, well.....

Bill

 

[Mike Painter]

Mike B wrote:

Beyond that I don't have any personal desire to speculate the
future, but rather adopt a wait and see. I personally don't like the
forum format, but if that is all there was then, well.....

Properly managed and with features similar to what PhPBBS has it can be OK.
This is especially true for the user who goes there for a single answer and
subscribes to that particular thread.

 

[David W. Fenton]

I've been away for awhile and not up to date on
the demise of Access forums. All forums? Or,
just selected ones?

Microsoft is ending its public newsgroup support. That means the MS
news server (msnews.microsoft.com) will cease to exist, and that the
website that is their front end for that will cease.

However, because of the way Usenet works, the microsoft.public.*
newsgroups will continue to be propagated across the world on all
the Usenet servers that have always carried them, unless the only
source for the ms.public newsgroups on a particular news server was
MS's news server itself.

I expect nothing is going to happen except an approximately 50%
dropoff in traffic in the ms.public newsgroups due to the fact that
a large number of the people who have historically ended up there
don't understand that there's an easier interface than the MS web
forums. Those people will end up in the replacement forum, and some
of the people who've posted in the public newsgroups will follow.

I'm not sure I will, but it depends on how low the traffic drops in
the public newsgroups. I'll still be posting in
comp.database.ms-access, on Stackoverflow and on
www.access-programmers.co.uk.

 

[David W. Fenton]

I hate web-based forums, but I guess they're better than
nothing.

I don't know that they are.

 

[David W. Fenton]

You know, I don't think Microsoft can close down a
newsgroup.

They can't. Nobody can shut down a newsgroup that's propagated to
more than one news server.

They can take their servers out of the internet,
but the newsgroups should continue to exist on many other
news servers. I plan on continuing to use them just to see
what happens (and put off the bleep web based forum thingie
as long as I can).

If you were connecting directly to the MS servers, then you
would have to find another news server to connect to. That
may or may not be a problem for some or many folks, but I
have always connected to the news service available from my
ISP (who contracts it out to giganews).

The big question is how many folks will be bothered to do
that instead of bowing to MS and switching to the web based
junk.

100% correct, Marshall.

 

[David W. Fenton]

If MS issues an authenticated rmgroup command and it is honored by
others, it will remove the MS heirarchies from those servers.

I strongly doubt there's very many news servers out there that honor
rmgroup messages, because of the long history of forgery of such
command messages.

 

[Arvin Meyer [MVP]]

The Microsoft NNTP newsgroups will close. There are several choices.

1. There will be other Microsoft forums, although, at least now, they are
somewhat less organized and harder to find.

2. Third party forums like UtterAccess

3. UseNET newsgroups like: comp.databases.ms-access

4. Off line help like a user group. I have one in Orlando, and there many
others around the country.

5. You can always go to the links in my sig where there are pointers to
dozens of websites and thousands of code snippets.

6. My book, co-authored with Doug Steele, and dozens of others.
--
Arvin Meyer, MCP, MVP
http://www.datastrat.com
http://www.accessmvp.com
http://www.mvps.org/access
Co-author: "Access 2010 Solutions", published by Wiley