Newsserver
We have observed the usage of the news server and the forums on our website and we have come to the conclusion that most of you are using the forums on the website.
Originally we had planned to setup a synchronization task between the news server and forum, so you could choose the front end of your preference, but that appeared to be more complicated than we originally thought.
We have therefore decided to end the news server service and to focus on the forums only.
We know that some of you prefer the news server NNTP protocol over a webforum, because of the possibility to access information off-line.
We apologize for the inconvenience that this brings for you.
We are looking into a way to make forum messages available offline. That will be easier to implement than a two way synchronization between a news server and the forum.
As soon as we have more information about that we will let you know through the website.
This news server will be switched to Read-Only mode and will remain online for the coming months.
We will merge the existing messages on the appropriate forums on the webserver so the contents of these messages will not be lost.
New German and Italian Language forums
We have received requests to open a German and Italian language forum on this website. We have opened these new (public) forums today. These are public forums. To post to the forum you need to have a user account and login first.
The intention is to keep the conversations in these forums in the designated language. Threads in English will be moved to other forums.
Wolfgang Riedmann is going to help us to moderate these forums when needed.
Bytheway, I wonder what is going to become of the content of the old VO\Vulcan NG of Grafx now that they are out of business. It contained some useful things... I think I won't need those very long anymore, but there are possible other users who might. This is off course not directly related to this XSharp decision.
The GrafX newsgroups have been online for half a year now. Not many people seemed to care.
We could consider to upload the contents of the messages on these newsgroups (at least the public ones) in an archive forum on this server if people think that this will be useful.
I am not sure about the legal issues involved with this. Who "owns" the messages on a public newsgroup/forum. The owner of the forum, the person that wrote the message or the community ?
Robert
regarding the Italian an German forums: IMHO it is important to lower the barrier for many people that does not feel secure enough to write in English. I don't think that important content goes lost.
Wolfgang