Urgent question: forum or newsgroup?

I am trying to convince Spanish speaking users "from the other side" (ex MM forums in Spanish) to post here their opinions about the changes that are almost here, but have not been succesful. All of them do not use browsers as such to access the forums, and they seem convinced that they are participating, not in a forum, but in a newgroup, housed but not controlled by Adobe. In fact, in the topic lists they are identified as "newsgroup users" while browser users are identified by their screen names.

One of the oldest and most respected participants there has just posted a message in which he states that NNTP users do not access those forums through the Adobe site, so they don't need an Adobe ID, just an email address which doesn't even have to be a real or existing one.

I find this strange, as it would discriminate against those of us using normal browser access. I cannot post in there if I'm not a registered Adobe user, and that means that at some stage I have to provide a valid email address, an identificator (the Adobe ID), and a screen name. But he insists that they don't have to register and have never done.

Could someone please clarify this matter for me?