Anthony Buckland wrote:
> Someone was asking, what happens to all our postings
> in Microsoft groups that are about to be discontinued.
> The response was, everything disappears and can no
> longer be accessed. But what about, say, Giganews,
> which has text retention currently of 2518 days? Will
> all the postings in the 2518 days before shutdown stay
> there, gradually disappearing one day at a time for the
> next six years plus? Okay, I could ask them; but I
> assume there are other providers that might or might
> not keep their copies of our postings while not allowing
> new ones. Is anyone here informed on how this stuff
> works?
That Microsoft kills their NNTP server does not force the discontinuance
of continued peering amongst the rest of the worldwide mesh network of
NNTP servers. Whether some of them also drop the microsoft.public.*
newsgroups depends on just what the operators of those servers want to
do. They may continue carrying those newsgroups even with the
significant reduction of traffic due to the absence of all the
webnews-for-boobs users of Microsoft's "Communities" gateway to Usenet
that pretended those were forums. They may follow suite and also drop
those newsgroups. I've seen reports from some users of other NNTP
servers that they are dropping the microsoft.public.* groups (and doing
so even before Microsoft has dropped them from Microsoft's NNTP server).
Some NNTP operators will use any excuse to reduce bandwidth and disk
space. Microsoft dropping the newsgroups (because they kill their NNTP
server) may be sufficient for some NNTP operators to do the same. Some
may continue carrying those newsgroups and not give a gnat's fart about
Microsoft's need for control which they could never exercise over
Usenet.
I've visited the web forums at Microsoft. They don't have as many as
there are newsgroups, so dropping NNTP means many newsgroups will simply
disappear because there is no matching web-based forum. That interface
sucks. It is slow, flat (i.e., no hierarchy), and has limited
functionality (i.e., many features in newsreaders are not available in
their forums), and not all their forums have been rolled together under
one umbrella (e.g., the SysInternal forums are still separate).
You would need to check if an NNTP operator has already dropped some or
all of the microsoft.public.* newsgroups. If not, all you can do is ask
them what are their plans for after Microsoft drops those newsgroups (by
killing off their NNTP server). For Giganews, only Giganews can comment
on what they plan to do with their own NNTP service.
