Microsoft said it plans to end support for more than 4,000 old-style newsgroups, starting next month, pushing users instead to discussion forums such as those found on the Microsoft Answers, TechNet and MSDN sites.
Although venerable, Microsoft said that so-called Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP) newsgroups are past their time in terms of being usable and secure.
"Newsgroups run on an outdated and discontinued platform that is no longer supported, making them vulnerable to spam and other usability issues," Microsoft said in a statement. The company said that its forums get 15 million visits a month and have been growing, on average, 12 percent each month. By contrast, it said that participation in newsgroups has dropped nearly in half over the past year.
For more on this story, see Microsoft hitting 'unsubscribe' on newsgroups on CNET News.
Talkback
Bring back Archie and Gopher and WAIS to keep Usenet company. Who needs these new fangled FidoNet boards anyway. What? Oh, web-based discussion forums you say. What are they then? ;-)