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From: nntp on 8 May 2010 03:03

What is Happening?
This message is to inform you that Microsoft will soon begin discontinuing
newsgroups and transitioning users to Microsoft forums.

Why?
As you may know, newsgroups have existed for many years now; however, the
traffic in the Microsoft newsgroups has been steadily decreasing for the
past several years while customers and participants are increasingly finding
solutions in the forums on Microsoft properties and third party sites. This
move will unify the customer experience, centralize content, make it easier
for active contributors to retain their influence, mitigate redundancies and
make the content easier to find by customers and search engines through
improved indexing. Additionally, forums offer a better user and spam
management platform that will improve customer satisfaction by encouraging a
healthy discussion in a clean community space. To this end, Microsoft will
begin to progressively shift available resources to the forums technology
and discontinue support for newsgroups.

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 reader
functionality. You can find instructions on how to download and set up the
NNTP Bridge here: http://connect.microsoft.com/MicrosoftForums/

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.

When will this Happen?
Effective June 1, 2010 this newsgroup will be closed.

Where Should I go with the Closure of this Newsgroup?
Microsoft has a large selection of forums, many of which cover either the
same or closely related technologies to the ones found in the newsgroups.
The forums have seen amazing growth and are an excellent place to continue
the discussion. We recommend that you start with
http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/category/officeoutlook.

Should you want to visit the other Microsoft Forums, please go to
http://www.microsoft.com/communities/forums/default.mspx

Who Should I Contact with any Questions?
Send any questions about the process, recommended forums and timing to
NNTP(a)microsoft.com

From: VanguardLH on 9 May 2010 04:39
Ben M. Schorr, MVP wrote:

>> The problem is with Microsoft's interface beyond their NNTP server.
>> Apparently the folks in charge of the NNTP-to-forums interface don't
>> have the budget to get a newer version of Exchange from their own
>> company.
>
> Exchange 2007 (or later) no longer supports NNTP.

Uh huh, and like no one runs old software. Guess Microsoft can't tolerate
supporting their *own* internal servers if the product's lifecycle has
expired for mainstream support. See:

Discontinued featuers in Exchange 2007
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa998911(EXCHG.80).aspx

Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP)
Retain a computer that is running Exchange 2000 or Exchange 2003 in the
Exchange 2007 organization if you need this functionality.

Discontinued features in Exchange 2010
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa998911.aspx

Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP)
If you need this functionality, retain an Exchange 2003 server in your
Exchange 2010 organization.

Apparently Microsoft won't follow their own advice. They can't run an NNTP
server to Exchange? That's probably a question best handled in the
microsoft.public.exchange.* newgroups (until they also get disconnected by
Microsoft). Windows 2000/2003 Server had its own NNTP service. Windows
Server 2008's mainstream supports looks to end in July 2010. NNTP got
removed from IIS 7.0 for Windows 2008. Oh joy. Bet Microsoft won't run a
3rd-party NNTP server on their hosts.

Well, since Microsoft is abandoning NNTP in their server versions of Windows
and in Exchange then the rest of Usenet will just have to survive with the
loss of one peering NNTP node.

Have you tried their NNTP-to-forums proxy ("Microsoft Forums NNTP Bridge")?
It sure looks like unreliable and clunky kludgeware. Right now I can't even
get it to connect because I cannot find the "My Settings" page their
instructions mention and which is where I need to enable the "NNTP bridge"
option to enable that access method.
From: VanguardLH on 9 May 2010 15:23
Ben M. Schorr, MVP wrote:

> I'm not sure why Microsoft is making the strategic decision to kill off NNTP
> in their products, perhaps because the new generation of users don't really
> care about it much. They're all about Facebook and MySpace and want to do
> everything in a browser. Believe me, when I log off the NNTP server and I
> log into the web forums I raise the average age of both groups.
>
> I prefer NNTP and newsgroup clients to the web interface, personally. For
> me they're faster and easier to manage. But that decision is way above my
> pay grade so my only choices are to give up and walk away, or just adapt to
> the new forums and continue to try and support users. The web forums are
> not as bad as I feared them to be, which I realize is sort of faint praise,
> and I'm hopeful that given time they'll continue to improve. At least I
> hope so.

What struck me about their web interface to their forums is how disorganized
they are. They have multiple forum "groups" (Microsoft, Answers, Technet,
Expressions, and MSDN), different layouts, and way too much is flat so
finding a group resorts to do web page searches or using their searchbox.
It's like someone took a bowl of Rice Krispies and tossed it against a wall.
When I tried visiting several different forums which had me bouncing around
to the different groups of forums, the wait time for their server to respond
had my eyelids getting heavy with boredom.

I don't know and don't expect their web-based forums to improve. Yes, they
will change but that's doesn't mean a good change. Once Microsoft has
wrested its newsgroups and those users away from Usenet then Microsoft is in
control. Just look at the moving target they've made of Hotmail which has,
on average, 2 major changes per year since they acquired it and that result
in users scrambling to figure out to use it. The loss of WebDAV was for
their benefit, not for users. We see a service pack for Vista get sold as a
new version of Windows. Microsoft thinks that registering for a *free*
Connect or forum account is going to keep out the spam and trolls despite
that the same procedure hasn't worked for Gmail.

That users are getting pushed to the web-based forums was due to Microsoft's
influence. If they had pushed NNTP and even provided Fix-It wizards (like
they now do for many of their KB articles) then there would've been an
influx of users to NNTP, so Microsoft claiming it was the user's choice to
go web-based just shows how clueless they are, plus there is nothing that
dictates that they create the hodgepodge mess of forums they have now rather
than make it hierarchical as it is with NNTP. I pity the users that are
stuck having to figure out where to go and how to find info with how the
web-based forums are setup now. I think the only way they could go is up
(to improve their forums) since they haven't much leeway to go down.

I suspect the real problem is that Development or IT is letting the
Marketing department push them around. Despite the knowledge being present,
once you get the marketers deciding what to do then logic goes out the
window. Perhaps that's due to the high turnover rate in that department: no
experience, no expertise, no long-term planning.
From: Brian Tillman [MVP-Outlook] on 10 May 2010 10:07
"Ben M. Schorr, MVP" <bens(a)bogusaddress.mvp> wrote in message
news:%23UdLiM67KHA.5808(a)TK2MSFTNGP02.phx.gbl...

> everything in a browser. Believe me, when I log off the NNTP server and I
> log into the web forums I raise the average age of both groups.

Between the two of us, the average age goes up probably 15-20 years.

It's sad that USENET is going the way of the dinosaur. Many ISPs don't even
offer USENET access any more. There are a number of free servers still, but
many are read-only.
--
Brian Tillman [MVP-Outlook]

From: VanguardLH on 10 May 2010 14:57
Ken Slovak - [MVP - Outlook] wrote:

> Even now most of the posters here and in other NNTP groups we've been in for
> so many years are mostly being fed from the Communities forums. Users have
> no clue their posts are ending up being read in NNTP or even what NNTP is.

Yes, Microsoft did a great job of hiding their attempt to usurp Usenet.
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