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Old May 8th 10, 11:32 PM posted to microsoft.public.windowsme.general
98 Guy
External Usenet User
 
Posts: 2,951
Default Update - Microsoft Responds to the Evolution of Community

Noel Paton wrote:

it's NNTP server.


Come back and post that here again when you've learned proper
English....


You quoted 2 words and an acronym. What exactly was the problem? Was
it my spelling, grammar, or punctuation? Was it the ' I use in "it's" ?

Is that the strongest criticism you can deal out to me?

Oh - sorry, you won't be able to, the groups will have closed.


One server that shuts down does not take the rest of usenet along with
it.

In the meantime, MS's closure of their servers may well precipitate
a domino effect on the leeches


It's funny that you call the rest of usenet "leeches".

It was Microsoft itself, back in 1996, that exuberantly proclaimed that
they were peering themselves with the rest of usenet, with the express
intention of improving problem-solving and trouble-shooting
accessibility for users.

And it's Microsoft that has been peering their NNTP server with the rest
of usenet ever since. It's their choice. They wanted it like this.

- around two-thirds of the traffic in the groups comes through
the MS servers


Do you have any authoritative source for that metric?

so once they die, so does two-thirds of the traffic.


You are assuming that nobody that currently uses Microsoft's
web-interface to these groups will start using a news-reader, or that
those that do use a news-reader will point it to an alternate server. I
would call that an unfounded, even ignorant assumption.

I don't think many people will bother going elsewhere for NG
access, they'll simply go to the forums.


And what of the current forums that Microsoft will not duplicate? IE6?
Win 9x/me?

This deadline period of June - October 2010 corresponds with the end of
all support for Windows 2000 and IE6. My guess is that there will be no
new forums created for products that pre-date:

- Windows XP SP3
- IE7
- Office 2003

And no forums for

- Visual Studio 6
- Back Office
- Outlook Express