NO NNTP News Feed = A loss of a lot of helpful people.

[ilssac]

COPTIED FROM A REPLY, but after I posted I decided I wanted this to be a thread of its own.

As a 'News Group User' of the older forum, I find the e-mail feature to not be sufficient to make up the removal of the NTTP feature.

I, and several like me, answered a lot more questions then we asked.  To do this, we don't hang around the web interface all day.  Rather we connected with our handy news readers to the NNTP feeds.  Thus we could pruse all the new topics since the last time we had a few moments.  See any that we could help with and fire off a reply, then go on to the next message.  No back buttons, multiple web forms or any other huey that slows down serial responders.

We NNTP users may have been a small group, but we where very vocal, at least on the ColdFusion forums where I share much of my knowledge.

I can tell you, if today is the indication that this is the best that these new forums has to offer, I will not be a frequent contributor to these discussions.  And I am not alone.

I don't care if the technology uses E-mail, NNTP or RSS feeds, but it must use it correctly.  The messages must be threaded, they must be complete and understandable and we must be able to read and reply with tools other then a web browser.

I am not going to be able to help with messages like this.  It does not make sense without context to the other messages of this thread!

[Advanced Techniques] New message: "Re: post data" [1i9rpv-1np-7Qx9]

Ian Skinner,

A new message was posted in the thread "post data":

http://forums.adobe.com/message/1870239#1870239

Author  : dchard
Profile : http://forums.adobe.com/people/dchard

Message:
--------------------------------------------------------------
that I don't know...that's why I'm asking if it's possible and how. But I'm thinking is it possible to store the data on a session variable thru onclick? So that when a user pick a choice on the drop down then it will store in the session.

[RoboWizard]

Hi there

I'm going to have to don quadruple layers of Nomex underwear for this as I'm sure I'll be flamed big time. But here goes anyway.

I'm so confused about why loss of NNTP is such a huge ordeal for so many. My own experiences with NNTP led me to conclude that it really isn't all that much different from E-Mail. We have E-Mail with these new forums. E-Mail applications allow configuring of rules to allow sorting to occur. So instead of opening a separate NNTP reader you look in your E-Mail. If you are sorting, it goes to one or more specific folders.

So with NNTP you look in an area for posts. With E-Mail you look in an area for posts. I don't see much of a difference there. Especially if the forums are allowing us to reply back using E-mail.

I suppose if no NNTP is going to equal a loss of helpful people, I'd really question the motive. Are the helpful people only helping because they like using NNTP or are they helping because other users need help?

Okay, let the sparks fly into the tinderbox...

[Guest]

there ya go:

nntp: http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc977.html

smtp: http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2821.html

and now you know.

[Jochem van Dieten]

RoboWizard wrote:

I'm so confused about why loss of NNTP is such a huge ordeal for so many. My own experiences with NNTP led me to conclude that it really isn't all that much different from E-Mail. We have E-Mail with these new forums.

You are right, it isn't all that different. So if Adobe fixes all the bugs in the email gateway I would be happy to run my own email to NNTP gateway (never mind that Clearspace has one builtin that they could just enable and save us all the trouble). So Adobe, what is the ETA on an email gateway that follows the relevant RFCs?

[Jay_Chevako]

jochemd wrote:

So if Adobe fixes all the bugs in the email gateway I would be happy to run my own email to NNTP gateway (never mind that Clearspace has one builtin that they could just enable and save us all the trouble). So Adobe, what is the ETA on an email gateway that follows the relevant RFCs?

Say what?!? Jive/Clearspace has NNTP support built in?

Jay

[RoboWizard]

Think about that for a brief moment.

Don't you think that if Jive had NNTP support built in that Adobe would have simply enabled it?

[Jay_Chevako]

RoboWizard wrote:

Think about that for a brief moment.

Don't you think that if Jive had NNTP support built in that Adobe would have simply enabled it?

.

Not if it conflicted with the customizations that a merger with the web-x forums would have required, But IF that is the case then the NNTP forums are halfway there.

Jay

[Adam Cameron.]

(note to Jochem: I made this reply before seeing your one pointing directly to the relevant docs).

> Think about that for a brief moment.

> Don't you think that if Jive had NNTP support built in that Adobe would have simply enabled it?

I sure would.  Which is quite strange then, given Jive does have NNTP support built in.

The Jive site search is pretty rubbish (which is worrying), but if one uses Google - whilst there's no explicit "this is how one sets it up" - there's a fair bit of commentary on people using it / havign problems using it:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=nntp+gateway+site%3Awww.jivesoftware.com&btnG=Search

Given the wording of the various postings, it suggests it's a built-in "feature".  If possibly a troublesome one 😉

--

Adam

[Jochem van Dieten]

http://www.jivesoftware.com/builds/docs/clearspace/latest/ClearspaceAdminGuide.html#SynchronizingContentwithEmailorNewsgroups

[Jay_Chevako]

I don't pretend to know what it takes to implement NNTP support, But this puts in question many of the statements put forth in thes forums.

Jay

[Jochem van Dieten]

Jay Chevako wrote:

I don't pretend to know what it takes to implement NNTP support

I do: I have an email to NNTP gateway running on my laptop for these forums. Fetchmail from gmail to a local account, script with a few optimizations from local account to NNTP spool folder and you are done. When I have time (mid May or so) I'll put it in the cloud so you can all have a look, but for all of you it will be read-only because the reply-to addresses are personalized.

For me it is read-write and will be fully functional once Adobe fixes the problems in the email feed.

[Jay_Chevako]

I wish I understood half of what you are talking about, My head's in a different cloud. ;•)

Jay

[Kath-H]

I don't care whether I understand, never used NNTP - but I very much wish some people at Adobe would listen and learn. It's obviously a big problem for a lot of people.

[ilssac]

A) If this was going to a normal E-mail or Newsreader feed I would reply

inline so that my replies would match the parts of your comments where

relevant, but the last time I messed with the front part of the email my

entire post turned out to be a blank box.

You are right NNTP versus E-mail is not that big a deal. Me email

reader, NNTP reader and RSS reader are the same tool. *IF THE EMAILS

FOLLOWED THE RFC STANDARDS FOR EMAIL*, I would not be so concerned. Then

the messages would be threaded and show up properly in my reader. But

the emails, as they are coming from this new forum interface are

completely unusable for serial responder like me and many of the other

old 'News Group User' members where.

With the old NNTP news feed, the messages would be downloaded into my

reader waiting for when I have a few free moments to help out fellow

members. Then when I did have a few moments I could read through my new

reader folders scanning a dozen different forums for new posts, see the

titles and quickly zero in on posts that looked like I could help and

did not yet seem to be helped. I could then quickly fire off response

after response, sometimes dozens in a day, without bothering with back

buttons, waiting for DHTML forms to load and render, or any of that web

UI hocus pocus.

I am willing to do the same things, if the email subscriptions will give

me the same capabilities. Even though I will have to go and make a

bunch if incoming message rules to sort the various forums that would be

handled automatically in a NNTP news feed. But, *at the very minimum

*the emails must be threaded, so I can see the entire thread discussion,

in order in my reader. That is currently not true. Currently all

emails sent by this forum system are unique and completely unrelated to

any other e-mail as far as my reader is concerned.

I'm sorry, when I have two or three minutes between tasks to answer

questions, I am not going to spend them sorting through an unordered

list of messages to try and find which ones go together or go to a slow

web page to search forum by forum for what is new and unanswered and

with which I can help.

So we have lost the NTTP news feed and we have not been given an

acceptable replacement. This is going to lead to the loss of a lot of

knowledgeable people such as Adam, Jochem and myself (I'm humbled to be

in that list). If one has a way to see how much content was generated

by us 'News group users' in the old ColdFusion forums, I think it would

be a very interesting study.

[Adam Cameron.]

I'm with Ian 100% on this.  I have spent a good number of years helping out on these forums: according to Google I have made around 3500 posts; almost all of these are helping people out (I've actually only *asked* probably a dozen questions or so).  And unless there's an NNTP feed to them, that's it: I'm finished.

For heavy users of support forums, a basic web UI just doesn't cut it.  And what Ian said about the email is correct too: given the way people here post, the individual email messages are borderline incomprehensible.  This sort of stuff is fine for the people who post the odd question (up to you to determine what I mean by "odd" there ;-), because all they have to do is wait for an email with an answer.  However this absolutely does not work for the people who are trying to give the help: the way we use the forums is quite different from the way people asking the questions use them.  This seems to be a gross oversight on the part of Adobe.  I am very surprised that at no point did anyone approach the regular users here to involve them in beta testing the new forums before rolling them out the door.  I suppose I could have been overlooked for the beta programme?  Can anyone else here comment as to whether there was one, and I missed out?

I'm going to keep an eye on goings-on here for another couple of days, and if things don't get sorted out by then, I'm gone.

To be honest, I think you - Adobe - would be better off returning to the old system until you get a better game plan together.

--

Adam

[RoboWizard]

Hi Adam

I would have to respectfully disagree with you. Please allow me to explain.

I come from the FuseTalk (former Macromedia) forums. I'm in a very similar boat as you are. Except with post count.

You can't convince me that the new format is slower. Why? You say you had 3,500 or so posts all mostly helping others. Well, as I said. Similar for me. I have been operating with a similar setup to these new forums for a long while now. Receive post notification via E-Mail and replying via Web interface. Strictly. I've used two different E-Mail addresses. One had I believe 11,000+ posts and the other had 4,000+ posts. That's more than 14,000 posts using this method. And I'd be willing to bet my actual time involvement (number of years) has been fewer than yours.

So if this new format allows us to reply directly via E-Mail, it's a boon and will save time for me.

Sincerely... Rick

[Jochem van Dieten]

That was me replying directly by email. Don't you love how the forums removed the entire body of my message?

[Curt Wrigley]

A Cameron wrote:

I'm with Ian 100% on this.  I have spent a good number of years helping out on these forums: according to Google I have made around 3500 posts; almost all of these are helping people out (I've actually only *asked* probably a dozen questions or so).  And unless there's an NNTP feed to them, that's it: I'm finished.....

--

Adam

I have no inside information.  But for a few months before rollout I noticed a  significant lobbying effort from a few very vocal people, in a respectful and helpful way re NNTP and how it is used in a significant way in the old environment.   Im pretty sure a good sampling of adobe folk saw these discussions and they still decided to roll out with out NNTP.  So, it was a conscious decision.  Right or wrong?  That depends who writes the history books.

So, Im not defending the decision; just observing it was not made in a vacuum.

[ilssac]

Just to put this into context I just replied to a thread that I original replied to in the old forum as a News Group User.

Save As Function

As you can see in the second post of the thread - which was my reply done last week, we Newsgroup Users collectivily provided nearly a quarter a million responses to these fourms over the last decade.  Considering how few of us seem to make up the NNTP group that seems to be a goodly ammount of content per NNTP community member.

Newsgroup_User                             

238,007 posts since
Jan 1, 1999

While I'm sure that is a minority of the forum's content, it is not a trivial number in my mind.  That seems to be a lot of good stuff to just throw away with an 'Oh Well, its not worth the bother'.

Ian

[Jochem van Dieten]

ianskinner wrote:

Newsgroup_User                             

238,007 posts since
Jan 1, 1999

While I'm sure that is a minority of the forum's content, it is not a trivial number in my mind.  That seems to be a lot of good stuff to just throw away with an 'Oh Well, its not worth the bother'.

The nice thing about the API access is that it is possible to obtain the total number of posts on all forums: 1697652.

Is that the number just for NNTP on the Macromedia forums or does it include NNTP on the Adobe forums?

[ilssac]

jochemd wrote:

Is that the number just for NNTP on the Macromedia forums or does it include NNTP on the Adobe forums?

I could not say.  I just noticed when I replied to that thread yesterday, that it included my original reply from last week that I did via my news reader.  I knew that in the older forum all us NNTP users where considered the same user, even though in the old forum it would show my name under the Newsgroup User.  I wonder if this may not be part of the problem.  That Adobe, for what ever reason, does not want all of us to be lumped together.  I suspect it would play havok with this award point system.

That brings up a question for you Jochem, since you are so knowledgeable about the standards.  Does the NNTP standard require anominity from us users or is there someway that we could be able to be individually indentified by this system when we provide content?  I would assume so, if nothing else by only being able to reply by email and not by NNTP.

Just playing with the numbers we have to date.

238,007 / 1,697,652 = ~.14019 or 14% of the total.  That seems to be a respectable number to me.

P.S.  God, I am really fighting with this interface, why can I not use SHFIT & CURSOR keys to highlight content for editing?

[Jochem van Dieten]

ianskinner wrote:

That brings up a question for you Jochem, since you are so knowledgeable about the standards.  Does the NNTP standard require anominity from us users or is there someway that we could be able to be individually indentified by this system when we provide content?

Individually identifying users is most certainly possible for an NNTP system. The NNTP authentication extensions are standardized by the IETF in some RFC. (Usenet is a multi-milion dollar business, of course they have access control!)

The best example of this is the Adobe Prerelease forum, where users can use NNTP, email and the web interface all under the same account. NNTP and web are authenticated by a password, the email interface by your email address.

[ilssac]

jochemd wrote:

Individually identifying users is most certainly possible for an NNTP system. The NNTP authentication extensions are standardized by the IETF in some RFC. (Usenet is a multi-milion dollar business, of course they have access control!)

I would have thought this was so, I mean the closely related POP|SMTP standards for e-mail obviously have no problem keeping users separated and authenticated.  So why couldn't NNTP do the same.  But I admit, I have never concerned myself with it before.

[ilssac]

P.S.  I wanted to add, that I originaly started using the Macromedia Forums via NNTP and was absorbed into the Adobe NNTP feeds with the merger.  I just have no knowledge of what the Newgroup User post account includes.