[opinion] <Hello Anne, I'm hoping you don't axe this.> It has been suggested that there *MAY* be a move within the Autodesk camp to eliminate the nntp based newsgroups and instead develop and pour even MORE funds into the <cough> web hosted newgroups. I don't mean to start rumors, be chicken little or even a drama queen, but if there is ANY truth to this I just want to clear and have you (the desk) understand, that my parti- cipation here will reduce to a mere trickle (I recognize this may cause some cheering; thas alright) if this comes to fruition. <Oh no, what if that's what they want?!> Who on earth convinced you all that the web hosted news groups were better, preferred or effective? Was it an ... enterprising web development team perhaps? They simply are not. Not a single person I've talked to about this thinks it would be an improvement or "a good thing". Mind you none of them are web developers at Autodesk or have vested interests in web based advertising to pollute our viewing space either. But I digress. Amongst other things, and just just off the top of my head, I can say that the web side is inferior to the nntp side because the interface is clunky and slow, you cannot peruse and graze as quickly, the search engine is under powered, you cannot keep a cache of select threads without copy / paste / filing calisthenics, formatting is a pain, the thread hierarchy is difficult to impossible to discern in the average sized conversation ... .... and on and on ... <don't get me going> ... In short PLEASE do not kill the nntp side. I recognize there needs to be a web web side, for presence and those poor sots that don't have news readers, but lordy, I do believe there are far more of us that use the nntp side than the web side. An aside ... do you need a good, free news reader? Check out ThunderBird: [URL]http://texturizer.net/thunderbird/[/URL] It is excellent. To close, thank you for taking the time to consider my thoughts, as negative as they may be. Sorry, I know that's generally the way I come across. Really, I'm not mean spirited. Thanks for hearing what I have to say and not necessarilly how I say it. ~ ~ ~ If the intrepid newsgrouper has any thoughts on this topic I'd let the desk know what they are. Who knows, maybe my opinion is contrary to the masses. Perhaps you feel the opposite. Better share your opinion, lest I speak for you. Akkk, surely you don't want that. LET THE DESK KNOW. NOW. <Betting this gets yanked.> Sincerely, Michael. [/opinion]