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From: Paul Randall on 6 May 2010 14:47

<nntp(a)microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:OKJDWk$6KHA.5476(a)TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...
> 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.

The link above contains the following Q & A:
Q: How will I know if a newsgroup that I am active in is closing?

A: Microsoft will post notice in impacted newsgroups well in advance of the
close date in order to give newsgroup participants ample notice. Newsgroup
users will be directed to the equivalent forum for further participation in
Microsoft's online communities.

I assume the OPs post was the "notice ... well in advance of the close date
...." for microsoft.public.scripting.vbscript

When does the "Newsgroup users will be directed to the equivalent forum"
thing happen for microsoft.public.scripting.vbscript? Or is it possible
that we have not been directed to the equivalent forum because there will be
none?

-Paul Randall


From: Al Dunbar on 6 May 2010 21:37


"Paul Randall" <paulr901(a)cableone.net> wrote in message
news:#DqWCzU7KHA.980(a)TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl...
>
> <nntp(a)microsoft.com> wrote in message
> news:OKJDWk$6KHA.5476(a)TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...
>> 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.
>
> The link above contains the following Q & A:
> Q: How will I know if a newsgroup that I am active in is closing?
>
> A: Microsoft will post notice in impacted newsgroups well in advance of
> the close date in order to give newsgroup participants ample notice.
> Newsgroup users will be directed to the equivalent forum for further
> participation in Microsoft's online communities.
>
> I assume the OPs post was the "notice ... well in advance of the close
> date ..." for microsoft.public.scripting.vbscript
>
> When does the "Newsgroup users will be directed to the equivalent forum"
> thing happen for microsoft.public.scripting.vbscript? Or is it possible
> that we have not been directed to the equivalent forum because there will
> be none?

Good questions to which I have no answers.

I followed the "where can I access these forums" link, but could not see a
useful way to track down scripting forums of any sort. It seems to me that
the offerings seems to revolve around MS product lines rather than following
technology or community threads. In the event our favourite newsgroups
disappear it may be a tossup between the MS forums and google to find
solutions to problems.

This trend on MS' part has been developing for a number of years. At the
last MVP global summit I attended there were discussions about how the
traditional newsgroup approach could be maintained in parallel with the web
based forums because they had a type of value lacking in the forums. Looks
like they have finally decided to follow user trends that have resulted from
MS products sending users looking for help to the forums.

In a way it's hard to blame them. Newsgroups such as this one do not seem to
have the volume they once had. I find I follow them more out of habit and
because of the sense of community amongst the regulars. There are still
questions asked and answered, but I don't think as many.

/Al


From: Mayayana on 6 May 2010 23:22
| When does the "Newsgroup users will be directed to the equivalent forum"
| thing happen for microsoft.public.scripting.vbscript? Or is it possible
| that we have not been directed to the equivalent forum because there will
be
| none?
|

There used to be a page listing groups. I can't
seem to find it now. It listed various topics and
told where to go for discussion. For VB6 it was
newsgroups. For .Net it was forums. For quite
some time now, anyone who pays for MS support
and asks a question in the .Net newsgroup has
been asked to repost in the equivalent forum.
So the main MS customers are effectively blocked
from using newsgroups already.

In the case of VB, MS has left the newsgroup
operational up until now. There's no forum. There's
no support. There's no future. :)

I suspect that VBS comes under the same
category, but I'm not sure. I think it depends on
whether VBS per se is still officially supported. I'm
not so sure that it is. (They have jscript for .Net,
after all, but not VBS for .Net.)

If I run across that page I'll check the situation
for VBS. Personally, though, I have no plan to
use forums either way. You have to sign up for a
"Live ID". The groups are moderated. And the simple
fact is that webpage forums are nearly unusable. You
can't easily check for new posts and within a posting
thread there's no way to track the order, or branches,
of posts. I suspect that the MS forums will quickly
become little more than official marketing sites for
new product, serving as a combination focus group,
datamining operation, and salespitch forum.


From: ekkehard.horner on 7 May 2010 03:25
Mayayana schrieb:
> It looks like this group will be going dead any
> day now. I don't think there are any non-MS
> vbscript groups on Usenet, but I'd be interested
> to hear if anyone knows of any.
>
>
Have a look at

http://www.visualbasicscript.com/
From: Bob Barrows on 7 May 2010 07:47
Paul Randall wrote:
> <nntp(a)microsoft.com> wrote in message
> news:OKJDWk$6KHA.5476(a)TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...
>> 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.
>
> The link above contains the following Q & A:
> Q: How will I know if a newsgroup that I am active in is closing?
>
> A: Microsoft will post notice in impacted newsgroups well in advance
> of the close date in order to give newsgroup participants ample
> notice. Newsgroup users will be directed to the equivalent forum for
> further participation in Microsoft's online communities.
>
> I assume the OPs post was the "notice ... well in advance of the
> close date ..." for microsoft.public.scripting.vbscript
>
> When does the "Newsgroup users will be directed to the equivalent
> forum" thing happen for microsoft.public.scripting.vbscript? Or is
> it possible that we have not been directed to the equivalent forum
> because there will be none?
>
This appears to be the place:
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/ITCG/threads


--
Microsoft MVP - ASP/ASP.NET - 2004-2007
Please reply to the newsgroup. This email account is my spam trap so I
don't check it very often. If you must reply off-line, then remove the
"NO SPAM"


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