There are several things that I think are strong disadvantages of moving to
the forums:

1. The fact that they are web/html increases the size of downloads (extra
tags, formatting, and images along with the messages)
2. Less simplicity, newsreaders are much more basic and allow you to watch
messages so that you know when someone has responded
3. I have had much more trouble with the NNTP Bridge than getting stuff from
the NNTP servers that still exist
4. Since the NNTP Bridge requires a Windows Live Passport (even though I
have one and they are free, I am willing to bet that not everyone will like
this idea), I have a feeling some people will not be willing to use the
forums
5. Since the forums are country and language specific and are not directly
mapped to newsgroups, I think that some of the users that currently share
stuff will be split, therefore resulting in less interaction
6. I have found it hard to figure out which forums to use for the stuff I
used the newsgroups for. Even though Microsoft said they would tell us which
one we should move to, they have only given us categories, which I have not
found very helpful

Can Microsoft at least make NNTP servers for some forums out of the current
ones? Or build a better NNTP Bridge into the newsreaders?
--
Nathan Sokalski
njsokalski (AT) hotmail (DOT) com
http://www.nathansokalski.com/

<nntp (AT) microsoft (DOT) com> wrote

On 13/05/2010 04:05, Nathan Sokalski wrote:
monitors on which to view all this web-y nonsense *and* a permanent,
100% reliable, Gigabit connection to the Wibbly-Wobbly-Web. 8-}

It makes browsing a complete nonsense.

But, of course, Our Friends in Redmond couldn't care less care about
that because, from now on, it will be their Moderators and contributors
who will be answering all the questions.

Goody! Let them deal with the flurry of newbie questions at the start
of each (and every) semester. Things like:

"How do I get the Command Line Arguments ... ?"
"Where is my program running?"
"How can I do 'something' in a completely different [Office] product?"

Remember them? Ah; Those were the days.

finally use the Forum interface if only in pure frustration and/or
resignation. I don't see it lasting more than a version or two (Oh;
just like everything else O.F.I.R. have released in the last decade!).

released and haven't touched it since.

And AltaVista's Babel fish service will see less traffic as well,
because we won't be translating all those fun posts in French or
Italian. (No offence intended to any French or Italian readers).


Allow me to add a another significant reason for not moving - the
complete absence of anything to do with VB "Proper", i.e. VB versions
1.0 through 6.6. Every Forum I've looked at [albeit /very/ briefly;
can't stand the things] has explicitly stated "Not for VB6 questions" or
something very similar.

Actually, I've just found this one:

Title: "For Visual Basic 6 questions, please read..."
Replies: 0 Views: *50006*
http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/vbgeneral/thread/6a0719fe-14af-47f7-9f51-a8ea2b9c8d6b

But all it is is a list of /other/ places you can go - one of which is
an appalling, web-ified version of the very newsgroups they're currently
killing off!

So, with Usenet support pulled and the Forums (a) ignoring and (b)
actively removing any and all content pertaining to VB "Proper", what
chance to we stand?
See you all at comp.lang.basic.visual.misc. :-)

Will they? Not a snowball's chance in Hell.

They don't like Usenet. Period. They don't own it, they can't control
it, ergo: they want to get rid of it. Until they do, peer-to-peer
support for VB "Proper" will continue "Out There". And that's no way to
kill off a product.

Regards,
Phill W.

On Thu, 13 May 2010 13:17:12 +0100, "Phill W."
<p-.-a-.-w-a-r-d-@-o-p-e-n-.-a-c-.-u-k> wrote:

I installed the NNTP bridge and started downloading from
Msdn.en-US.vbgeneral. A lot more traffic, but as you suggest, a lot of
what seems like homework problems. I wish folks would teach these people
how to find the answers themselves instead of writing the code for them.

--

Dennis

always direct answered with code anymore.

However, I remember me that I've seen in this newsgroup in the begin also a
lot of homework questions, which got an answered by many with code.

The crowd visiting the newsgroups becomes older. Many newbie's don't even
know anymore what newsgroups are.

Not that I don't regret it that the Microsoft newsgroups are closed.
However, that there are more beginner questions in the forums is in my
because of the reason above.

What is wrong by the way for some code answers, sometimes I also did not
know that for something, which I did very difficult, there is a namespace or
class and then I'm glad to see that in code instead of a long message, which
could have been done with one row of code.

Cor