Microsoft Responds to the Evolution of Online Communities

wrote:
Starting in early summer 2010, Microsoft will begin
progressively closing down the Microsoft public newsgroups
to enrich conversations in the rapidly-growing forum
platform.

Translation: Microsoft will force people to use the web interface that they
have maintained so poorly for years and that is the least reliable and least
feature-rich interface for these "forums" that I am aware of.

Confirmation of that fact comes from the official Microsoft Newsgroup
website http://www.microsoft.com/communities...s/default.mspx. In
the Q&A the

"Q: Where can I access these forums from?
http://www.microsoft.com/communities/forums/default.mspx"

The only potentially good thing to come out of this....

"Q: What should newsgroup users prepare for that will be different?
[....]
Additionally, Microsoft newsgroups are not moderated, while the forums will
be."

But the operative word is "potentially".

First, Microsoft has demonstrated complete ineptitude in managing "forums".
Their tools do not work. MS does not respond to problem reports. In fact,
they do not even provide an effective way to report problems with "forums".

Second, moderating a group is either highly labor-intensive or useless (just
a pass-thru).

But if the moderation is real (and effective), that will mean that postings
will incur delays.

Moreover, I have never heard of moderation done on a scale this large.
Consider the traffic in the m.p.excel newsgroups alone. Well, perhaps
Microsoft will depend on MVPs to be moderators.

Oh well....


----- original message -----

wrote in message
...
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...s/default.mspx concerning
this issue. The Microsoft Newsgroup website will be made available in
additional languages in the next few days.