Microsoft Responds to the Evolution of Online Communities

[proteanthread]

On May 7, 12:26 am, wrote:

> 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 websitehttp://www.microsoft.com/communities/newsgroups/default.mspxconcerning this

> issue.  The Microsoft Newsgroup website will be made available in additional

> languages in the next few days.





Why? Because, boys and girls, Microsoft can't stand that it still

hasn't obtained control of usenet!

 

[NimbUs]

proteanthread wrote :

> On May 7, 12:26 am, wrote:



>> Starting in early summer 2010, Microsoft will begin progressively

>> closing down the Microsoft public newsgroups ......





> Why? Because, boys and girls, Microsoft can't stand that it still

> hasn't obtained control of usenet!





Exactly ! But, Microsoft doesn't seem to understand how Usenet works,

does it ? They may shut their servers down, they cannot so easily have

the groups closed. As long as these are relayed on a variety of

servers worldwide, and as long as ppl are finding them useful and go on

posting articles, the microsoft.public.* hierarchy will live. Could MS

take action, like suing thousands of nntp providers and relays ? And on

what bases would MS's action be based ?





--

NimbUs