Microsoft Responds to the Evolution of Online Communities

[Leslie Milburn]

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.

Does Anyone know who we can respond to about this, as there are two problems
I see immediately.....

1. Microsoft will be in control of what is posted and by whom. This is
censorship at its worst and a very bad idea.
2. Newsgroups allow me to read and keep everything offline - great for those
of us who (STILL) do not have the option of Broadband (including wireless).
This means that reading messages in the future is going to be a big chore as
using a browser is slooooooooooooooowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.

[Darko Miletic]

Post by Leslie Milburn
Does Anyone know who we can respond to about this, as there are two problems
I see immediately.....
1. Microsoft will be in control of what is posted and by whom. This is
censorship at its worst and a very bad idea.

They also moderate these newsgroups. I do not see much difference.

Post by Leslie Milburn
2. Newsgroups allow me to read and keep everything offline - great for those
of us who (STILL) do not have the option of Broadband (including wireless).
This means that reading messages in the future is going to be a big chore as
using a browser is slooooooooooooooowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.

That is true, but everything now is a web and that being a buzz word and
them wanting to have only one set of forums to maintain, will probably
end up closing this joint.

On the side not I HATE their web forum software, it is slow, clunky and
difficult to follow.

[Leslie Milburn]

Post by Darko Miletic

Post by Leslie Milburn
Does Anyone know who we can respond to about this, as there are two
problems I see immediately.....
1. Microsoft will be in control of what is posted and by whom. This is
censorship at its worst and a very bad idea.

They also moderate these newsgroups. I do not see much difference.

I thought about this too, but the difference is that the newsgroups are
propogated and hence multiple copies of can posts exist for sometime even
once deleted. So, deletion of a post on a newsgroup is less effective than a
central Microsoft controlled/owned (??) database.

I just wonder why everyone is taking this lying down. Surely this
contravene's some of the Amercian amendments - or at the very least some
sort of monopoly ruling ?

[Darko Miletic]

Post by Leslie Milburn
I just wonder why everyone is taking this lying down. Surely this
contravene's some of the Amercian amendments - or at the very least some
sort of monopoly ruling ?

Because nobody cares enough to actually do something about that.

[Chris Becke]

Post by Darko Miletic

Post by Leslie Milburn
Does Anyone know who we can respond to about this, as there are two
problems I see immediately.....
1. Microsoft will be in control of what is posted and by whom. This is
censorship at its worst and a very bad idea.

They also moderate these newsgroups. I do not see much difference.

Post by Leslie Milburn
2. Newsgroups allow me to read and keep everything offline - great for
those of us who (STILL) do not have the option of Broadband (including
wireless). This means that reading messages in the future is going to
be a big chore as using a browser is
slooooooooooooooowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.

That is true, but everything now is a web and that being a buzz word and
them wanting to have only one set of forums to maintain, will probably
end up closing this joint.
On the side not I HATE their web forum software, it is slow, clunky and
difficult to follow.

The web interface is *horrible*. At least newsgroup software can thread
replies together.
Although Google Wave has proven that threaded reply chains can be
handled far more elegantly again.