Is this forum closeing ?????????

[Wayne-I-M]

OK - I know it against the rules - so ths may be deleted. But ......I have
decided to bump this post up the list onto the General Questions page
____________________________________

Following a post from somone at Microsoft (see below), just wondering. Will
this forum still be here ina few months, next year, 2015, etc

This is the post

Date 5/4/2010
Starting in early summer 2010, Microsoft will begin progressively closing
down the Microsoft public newsgroups to enrich conversations in the
rapidly-growing forum platform. This decision is in response to worldwide
market trends and evolving customer needs.

Microsoft continues to invest in forums to reduce customer effort,
consolidate community venues and make it easier for active contributors to
retain their influence. Forums provide a healthy community environment with
less spam and make answers easier to find by customers and search engines.
Additionally, forums offer a better user and off-topic management platform
that will improve customer satisfaction by facilitating discussions in a
clean space.

We understand that some newsgroups are still active, and important to the
community. In the coming days and weeks, we will be rolling out tools and
resources to minimize disruption to the community discussions.

We are working diligently on providing additional resources and information
in local languages later this week. In the meantime, please refer to the
official Microsoft Newsgroup website
http://www.microsoft.com/communities/newsgroups/default.mspx concerning this
issue. The Microsoft Newsgroup website will be made available in additional
languages in the next few days.

..

 

[John W. Vinson]

OK - I know it against the rules - so ths may be deleted. But ......I have
decided to bump this post up the list onto the General Questions page
____________________________________

Following a post from somone at Microsoft (see below), just wondering. Will
this forum still be here ina few months, next year, 2015, etc

Reread the message. It's quite clear, unfortunately; the answer is No, it will
not.

 

[Dirk Goldgar]

Reread the message. It's quite clear, unfortunately; the answer is No, it
will
not.

Well ... it won't be supported on Microsoft's news server, anyway. Usenet
being what it is, it is possible that the newsgroup will continue to exist
on independent news servers. I remember 10 years or so ago when Microsoft
dropped <microsoft.public.access> in favor of all the subgroups. That
didn't stop people from posting to m.p.a, and eventually MS gave up its
attempts to kill the group and started carrying it on their servers again.

This isn't quite the same situation, because so many ISPs have stopped
hosting their own news servers. Without Microsoft's news server to host
them, it's my guess that the m.p.a.* groups will no longer have the critical
mass to survive on their own. I could be wrong about that; in fact, I hope
I am. But that doesn't mean I'm *hopeful*.

 

[zuckermanf]

This might be heresy, but...
I also read another similar group, comp.databases.ms-access. The
topics, debates, and discussions are very similar (and useful). If, in
fact, Microsoft has some control over m.p.a. and can "kill" it, I
assume they do not have control over other groups, like c.d.m.a. I've
been to the Microsoft forums and do not find them very user friendly
nor as easily searchable as the usenet groups. I currently access
groups via IE & Google.
Fred

 

[nathan gonzalez]

OK - I know it against the rules - so ths may be deleted. But ......I have
decided to bump this post up the list onto the General Questions page
____________________________________

Following a post from somone at Microsoft (see below), just wondering.
Will
this forum still be here ina few months, next year, 2015, etc

This is the post

Date 5/4/2010
Starting in early summer 2010, Microsoft will begin progressively closing
down the Microsoft public newsgroups to enrich conversations in the
rapidly-growing forum platform. This decision is in response to worldwide
market trends and evolving customer needs.

Microsoft continues to invest in forums to reduce customer effort,
consolidate community venues and make it easier for active contributors to
retain their influence. Forums provide a healthy community environment
with
less spam and make answers easier to find by customers and search engines.
Additionally, forums offer a better user and off-topic management platform
that will improve customer satisfaction by facilitating discussions in a
clean space.

We understand that some newsgroups are still active, and important to the
community. In the coming days and weeks, we will be rolling out tools and
resources to minimize disruption to the community discussions.

We are working diligently on providing additional resources and
information
in local languages later this week. In the meantime, please refer to the
official Microsoft Newsgroup website
http://www.microsoft.com/communities/newsgroups/default.mspx concerning
this
issue. The Microsoft Newsgroup website will be made available in
additional
languages in the next few days.

.

 

[Wayne-I-M]

Hi John

I reread the message - a few times.
Englsh is not my 1st language but I really do try (not very well most of
the time) but this has defeated me.
"in response to evolving customer needs" Sound like something a polititian
would write.

what does this mean

Starting in early summer 2010, Microsoft will begin progressively closing
down the Microsoft public newsgroups to enrich conversations in the
rapidly-growing forum platform. This decision is in response to worldwide
market trends and evolving customer needs.

So are they going to close it down, to improve (enrich) things. Hmmmmm ???

Still not a clue :-(

 

[Tokyo Alex]

Wayne,

The confusion may be between two meanings of the word 'Forum'.

In the broad sense, "a place for discussion", the newsgroups are indeed a
forum.
However in the narrow, internet sense, a forum means (usually) a web-based,
moderated, (members-only?) discussion board hosted on a dedicated server(s).

So what MS is saying is that they are going to close the newsgroups in
favour of a different discussion interface that they believe will be better.

Of course, whether it will be better or not remains to be seen.

Hope this helps clear up some of your confusion.

Cheers,
Alex.

 

[David W. Fenton]

So what MS is saying is that they are going to close the
newsgroups in favour of a different discussion interface that they
believe will be better.

My question is:

Where are these forums? Or do they not yet exist?

I have noticed postings about Office 2010 that have URLs from
Technet, but have never been able to find any signficant activity
there. Does anyone know what's going on and what's planned?

 

[John W. Vinson]

My question is:

Where are these forums? Or do they not yet exist?

http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/addbuz/threads

Read 'em and weep. Literally.

I have noticed postings about Office 2010 that have URLs from
Technet, but have never been able to find any signficant activity
there. Does anyone know what's going on and what's planned?

The social.answers seem to be targeted to the mythical "information worker";
tech-heavy issues like VBA would (presumably) be covered in the quite separate
and unlinked TechNet forums.

Neither forum is very active, but presumably MS is going to be driving
discussion from here into those forums over time.

 

[Al Campagna]

John and All,
When you filter for All Threads - All Office Versions - All OPSystems,
and Access Only... you get 139 posts. ???? That's all the posts there
are?

Also, I couls see a post, right on the first page, that had a Subject
of...
"Setting Report Template Default Column Widtch" (sic)
When I Forum Searched on "Template" (w/o quotes), it failed to return
that post. So... something seems amiss with the Search... unlesss I'm
missing
something here...
--
Al Campagna
Microsoft Access MVP 2007-2009
http://home.comcast.net/~cccsolutions/index.html

"Find a job that you love... and you'll never work a day in your life."

 

[John W. Vinson]

John and All,
When you filter for All Threads - All Office Versions - All OPSystems,
and Access Only... you get 139 posts. ???? That's all the posts there
are?

At present. The forum is relatively new and has an expiration policy.

Also, I couls see a post, right on the first page, that had a Subject
of...
"Setting Report Template Default Column Widtch" (sic)
yep...

When I Forum Searched on "Template" (w/o quotes), it failed to return
that post. So... something seems amiss with the Search... unlesss I'm
missing
something here...

I'm sure the search is just as broken as that on the support.microsoft.com
site. And of course these forums won't be backed up on Google Groups or
elsewhere. Sigh...

 

[Al Campagna]

Ditto on the ....sigh.
Al

At present. The forum is relatively new and has an expiration policy.


I'm sure the search is just as broken as that on the support.microsoft.com
site. And of course these forums won't be backed up on Google Groups or
elsewhere. Sigh...

 

[David W. Fenton]

http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/addbuz/threads

Read 'em and weep. Literally.

There's no user interface. No organization. Nothing. A pile of crap.

Why would anyone subject themselves to that?

The social.answers seem to be targeted to the mythical
"information worker"; tech-heavy issues like VBA would
(presumably) be covered in the quite separate and unlinked TechNet
forums.

Neither forum is very active, but presumably MS is going to be
driving discussion from here into those forums over time.

They'd better have an improved UI or they'll kill the whole thing.

FWIW, today they've posted to a number of groups and said they are
being "closed" June 1st. This includes the replication newsgroup,
though there has been nothing useful in that group coming from
Microsoft for about five years, so this is not loss to anyone.

Anyway, I was interested in this:

In addition to offering a compelling online browser experience,
for those users who prefer to use an NNTP (newsgroup) reader to
participate in the newsgroups community, we have developed a
solution called the NNTP Bridge which allows a user to connect a
variety of supported NNTP readers to the forums they would like to
participate in and continue having the NTTP [sic] reader
functionality. You can find instructions on how to download and
set up the NNTP Bridge here:
http://connect.microsoft.com/MicrosoftForums/

The number of WTFs prompted by reading what you find there is pretty
high. They really do not seem to have the slightest clue about open
standards and the fact that NNTP messages should conform to the RFCs
defining them and thus would be readable in all NNTP newsreaders
that are compliant with the relevant RFCs.

What it is is a server that runs on your workstation station and
sits between your news reader and the MS web server for the
discussion groups and retrieves the web server data and converts it
to NNTP format. This is not particularly new technology, and why
they don't just provide the same thing on a centralized NNTP server
with user authorization is beyond me. It's just idiotic.

But I'll try it. I can't do so right now, as I've got an MSDN
download going and I don't want to use my MSDN logon for their
discussions forums.

BTW, one of the items that shows they just don't understand NNTP is
this from the troubleshooting page
(https://connect.microsoft.com/MicrosoftForums/content/content.aspx?C
ontentID=15478):

Some posts show up in my newsreader under the wrong thread.
* This is a known issue, particularly for those users who choose
to download headers only. What happened is that the post was
moved by moderators after the user downloads the header but
before the user downloads the body. When this occurs, the wrong
message body is retrieved since the original is moved elsewhere.
Again, depending on the newsreader, those newsreaders relying
only on XOVER commands to match the body to the header may cause
a mismatch. To avoid this situation, we highly recommend users
of the Bridge to download header plus body at the same time.

The idea of using a news reader and downloading everything instead
of just the headers is just so complete ass-backwards as to defy
description. It betrays a completely lack of even the most basic
understanding of the design and purpose of NNTP (let alone its
history).

But I'll try it and see how it works. I expect it to be crappy.

 

[david]

Unfortunately, 3 of the 4 internet providers I use have already
dropped support for News Groups, requiring me to make a
direct connection to the primary server for any newsgroup.
So the only way to get comp.database as News is to subscribe
to a third-party provider.

I expect to see this trend continuing. Ironically, the loss of peer
servers was going to make it easy for MS to moderate and
control the content of these news groups anyway.

(david)


This might be heresy, but...
I also read another similar group, comp.databases.ms-access. The
topics, debates, and discussions are very similar (and useful). If, in
fact, Microsoft has some control over m.p.a. and can "kill" it, I
assume they do not have control over other groups, like c.d.m.a. I've
been to the Microsoft forums and do not find them very user friendly
nor as easily searchable as the usenet groups. I currently access
groups via IE & Google.
Fred

 

[david]

They are killing off the small groups first -
odbcclientsvr, multiuser
are two I notice.

Those two are moribund groups anyway.

They do seem to be playing favourites though --
replication is already scheduled for deletion, but
modulesdaovba.ado and dataaccess.pages are not.

(david)

 

[Wayne-I-M]

Quote from MS.

Which Newsgroups Are Affected by this Shutdown?
All public newsgroups will eventually be closed between June 1, 2010 and
October 1, 2010. Microsoft will be closing newsgroups in a phased approach,
starting with the least active newsgroups and moving eventually to more
active ones throughout the course of the next six months.


So that's it.
So long and thanks for all the fish ( or - smoke me a kiper, I'll be back
for breakfast.)