What's the story behind these "newsgroup retirement plans"?

[VolkerBarth]

On several of the NNTP newsgroups, someone called Aniruddha Khole (Sybase) has made an announcement that these newsgroups will be made read only on Dec 1, 2012, and will be merged into SCN. Furthermore, they "will continue to be accessible in read only mode till Feb end."

Reimer and me have asked for more information, as can be seen in this little discussion from the "ianywhere.public.general" NG:

newsgroup retirement plan

So what's the story here? And what does it mean for this forum? - I'm just asking as 2012-12-01 is not that far away...

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Note: Such a message has not (yet) been sent to the "main" NG group sybase.public.sqlanywhere.general.

[VolkerBarth]

Hm, any official statement?

[VolkerBarth]

...still waiting for a Dilbert-free clarification...

[Breck_Carter]

[VolkerBarth]

One of the best ones, for sure:)

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

The following started to go out on Friday.

Based on feedback from our community, we have decided that our original plan to migrate to the SAP Community Network (SCN) requires additional time. Therefore, we are postponing the transition to read-only status for all newsgroup until sometime in 2013.

We recognize that changing from a system, especially one as full and useful as our NNTP newsgroup, is a difficult process. Our current NNTP system, however, is nearing the end of its software life and we believe it is best replaced by a system that is more web friendly and provides for our communities future. During that process, we want to make sure that we address all concerns from our users as we move to our new web based platform.

In the meantime, none of the valuable content here will be lost. We have set up an archive site at http://nntp-archive.sybase.com to hold all of our existing content. That site will be migrated to SCN and will continue to exist after the transition is complete.

We want to thank our users for all of their feedback and patience during this process. We are working hard to make this transition to the SAP Community Network as painless as possible, and we welcome your continued feedback.

Major announcements regarding this migration will be published to all groups, but details will be on the newsgroup 'news.announcements'. Please subscribe to this group to keep track of our migration status. Feedback is also welcome, but as we can not monitor every one of our hundreds of groups, please put all comments in the group 'news.feedback'.

Thank you. Sybase Newsgroup Administration

[Chris_Kleisath]

@Volker stated: "...still waiting for a Dilbert-free clarification...".

I will attempt to provide this ... and fail:

The SQL Anywhere team is still trying to get clarification on exactly what will happen, and when. At the moment, we don't know anything more, so we haven't said anything, for fear of entering into the pointy-hair realm. When we know more, we will tell you more.

< sigh >

[graeme_perrow]

I love how there are four upvotes (including mine) on an answer that essentially says "I dunno". But it's an official "I dunno". 🙂

[VolkerBarth]

Well, sometimes it's fair enough to tell customers what is not yet known... I'm aware that this kind of statement is not easily made - and certainly appreciate your answer.

About the "we're waiting, too:" - Seems to be a facet of being the new part of the big family where one doesn't know what the father-in-law is planning to do:)

[justin_willey]

With still no SQLAnywhere "communities" showing in the list, I've emailed akhole@sybase.com (who posted the announcements) to ask what the plan is as there are now 4 days to go!

I've noticed that there is an entirely different index page http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-19361 that does list a "SAP Mobile" group - I wonder if that's where we are meant to be going?

[VolkerBarth]

I wonder if that's where we are meant to be going?

I'd rather stay here:)

(Since I'm strongly believing that the forum's future is out of discussion...)

[Former Member]

Let me share what I know (or at least, what I think I know...)

There is a SQL Anywhere Community being built. The url for the community will be: http://scn.sap.com/community/sybase-sql-anywhere

We are also working on a SQL Anywhere developer center. Currently it is only a document (http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-31795), but the plan is to expand it into a full developer site, similar in layout to the SQL Anywhere Community site. We are hoping everything is live before the end of the year. It will take time to migrate the content into the new site, and I expect this will happen in stages.

Whats the difference? Well, as far as I can tell, the SQL Anywhere community site is meant for business level information (eg. data sheets, success stories, architecture docs, introductory material, etc...), while the developer center is meant for the technical information (eg. downloads, betas, tutorials, whitepapers, technotes, etc...).

Finally, as far as I know, there is no current plan to retire this forum.

I hope this helps clarify things a little. If there are more specific questions or concerns, please feel free to ask and we will do our best to answer/address them.

[justin_willey]

That's good to hear! One of the strengths of SQLAnywhere has always been the usefulness of the online forums and the quality of the whitepapers / tech docs etc that have been available. It would be a great shame to lose that in some huge corporate morass!

[VolkerBarth]

Well, AFAIK the general NG (sybase.public.sqlanywhere.general) has not yet been marked as "will be read-only from 2012-12-01". Does this mean it will "stay alive" for a while?

I'm asking because that NG has still as much (or as less) traffic as this forum...

[Former Member]

I expect all of the newsgroups will be marked read-only in the near future. I do not know what the exact definition of "near" is in this case, but if I had to guess, I would say sometime between now and March of next year. The new communities mentioned above and this forum will be suggested as replacements for the newsgroup users.

[justin_willey]

I had this reply "We are going to continue with current state of newsgroups for 2 more months at least so don't worry. Working on the plan to migrate them on SCN soon where new discussions can begin." which ties in with Jason's comments below about a delay in "read-only" being applied.

[VolkerBarth]

Well, it would be fine if this valuable information would not have to be shared among customers, wouldn't it?

The whole information hidandling seems not half as professional as one is used to from the highly appreciated SQL Anywhere team... - but I'm well aware that this is not their responsibility.

[Breck_Carter]

The referenced page at http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-18971 contains exactly one line with the keyword "SQL".

The link to http://scn.sap.com/community/getting-started promises more detail, where "more" is German for "infinite amounts of" 🙂

[VolkerBarth]

Not sure if I'm willing and able to consider that an answer:)