The Future of the NNTP Bridge on MSDN
General discussion
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One of the tools that are required for authentication for the NNTP Bridge was decommissioned on June 18th. We were aware that the URL that was being decommissioned would affect Microsoft Community, we were not aware that the URL for the MSDN forums was also being decommissioned however.
This resulted in the NNTP Bridge becoming unavailable to our customers without prior communication. First and foremost I want to apologize for the lack of communication around this decommissioning; it was never our intention to make these changes without first alerting you, the community.
The unfortunate result of this decommissioning is that the NNTP Bridge will no longer be accessible. Without an upgrade for this tool, the NNTP Bridge can no longer function. We have investigated the amount of resources it would take to get the tool upgraded and it is simply too significant to undertake. Doing so would greatly affect our ability to support new features and improvements for MSDN.
Why was this decision made?
In the last month only 0.178% of our community members used the Bridge as part of their interactions here on MSDN. While we understand how useful the tool is to that .0178%, and how important those members are, based on this usage information we could not justify putting the amount of resources needed into maintaining the NNTP Bridge.
I apologize again for the lack of forewarning, had we realized this was going to happen so soon we would have reached out to the community in a much more timely fashion.
Thank you for your understanding.
- Changed type Jennifer-PMicrosoft employee Thursday, June 20, 2013 9:03 PM
All replies
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The MSDN/TechNet forums team is actively tracking feedback provided across the forums (and other channels), prioritizing issues and suggestions, and implementing changes to address them in as timely of a way as we can.
Based on our assessment the most appropriate focus for our engineering resources is on the Forums web experience. We are not working on restoration of the NNTP access to MSDN/TechNet forums at this time.
We understand that there is a small but very active set of users who prefer to participate in the Forums using the NNTP bridge. We truly value your participation in the Forums. We hope that you will continue participating in the forums at the same level, now and in the future, via the Forums web interface.
Obviously, avid users of NNTP Bridge will be disappointed with this answer (understatement). That said, investments in the web experience provide the maximum benefit to most users in the Forums community.
While I am confident that providing data as context for this decision will not make any difference in how NNTP users *feel* about this decision, I do want to address some concern raised above (and elsewhere).
Here are some facts:
- Of the users who each provided 200 or more answers in the forums over the last 6 months (equivalent to about 1 answer per day), 97.5% posted those answers using the Forums web interface and 2.5% did so using NNTP. Clearly, these very high levels of contribution are achievable using either NNTP or the Forums web interface.
- In January of 2011, over 4000 unique users accessed the Forums using NNTP bridge. Since then, overall Forums usage and answer volumes have consistently increased while usage and answer volumes for NNTP users have steadily decreased. Only 97 unique users have accessed the Forums via NNTP Bridge in the last 6 months. Half of those users answered 10 or fewer questions in total during that period.
Restoring NNTP bridge access to the Forums would require new one-time dev and test investments in server-side components, as well as ongoing maintenance and execution of test cases that are executed with every Forums release. Given the small number of individuals using NNTP to access the Forums, and the clear evidence that high contribution levels are regularly achieved by users of the web interface, redirecting resources from making improvements in core Forums capabilities to focus on NNTP access simply doesn't make economic sense.
I hope that even if you would prefer the outcome to be different, you at least have the context to understand the rationale for the decision.
Thanks,
Doug
- Edited by Doug Laundry (MSFT) Thursday, June 27, 2013 4:27 AM image was broken
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- In January of 2011, over 4000 unique users accessed the Forums using NNTP bridge. Since then, overall Forums usage and answer volumes have consistently increased while usage and answer volumes for NNTP users have steadily decreased. Only 97 unique users have accessed the Forums via NNTP Bridge in the last 6 months. Half of those users answered 10 or fewer questions in total during that period.
Are the 97 Users only for MSDN or for MSDN And Technet Forums? All over the World or will MSFT count users for countrys? How many of the 4000 Users are now active in MSDN and Technet Forums?
Sorry, but i can not believe that only 97 Users Worldwide using the NNTP-Bridge active for participate the MSDN and Technet Forums.
> Of the users who each provided 200 or more answers in the forums over the last 6 months (equivalent to about 1 answer per day), 97.5% posted those answers using the Forums web interface and 2.5% did so using NNTP.
How many NNTP-Bridge User provided less then 200 answers, but more than 100?
Thanks and Regards
Winfried -
How so? As with this reply, I just type and then hit the Submit button.
How is that vexing?
Yes, producing a simple two-liner is trivial in the sleaziset of interfaces. Now try to use the posting window and include five code samples, and interleave five quotes of the article you post. Without using the HTML button.
Also, imagine that you are a newbie and try to paste code from your editor. Do you find the secret button?
Or why not try pasting an image into the post:
Ah, that seems to work! (Except that I since I've tried this before, I know that the image will not be there.)
To be fair, there is one advantage with the posting window in the MSDN forums in difference to many other forums: you still see the rest of the thread while composing the answer, which is quite important. (Not for thread like this one, but when you are actually helping someone.)
Erland Sommarskog, SQL Server MVP, esquel@sommarskog.se
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I installed V 1.1.54.0 and ran Agent as before.
I get the below message from Agent. Any thoughts?
Error reported by server: 503 program fault - command not performed System.ServiceModel.FaultException: Passport Header Not Found.
Ron
