At one time, I did offer News Group access on my network. I even posted a guide to help people configure their computer to access it.
Some of the reasons I no longer offer forums include:
- It took about three times as much effort to offer that resource than anything else because it actually “increased” the amount of “stuff” I had to deal with daily.
- I “had” to check it often because of the amount of “bad” people out there.
- Flame wars and advertising started happening. I pulled the plug because it was much easier than spending the time deleting/reporting abuse and being ignored by the offenders ISP.
- I realized that people tend to check the news groups/forum every 5 minutes, even though only a few messages would be posted per day. My bandwidth/connections on my network skyrocketed.
- People would post questions to the board and send me a copy of the question via E-Mail. Since they never included the “default subject line,” it doubled the amount of time it took to read and sift through E-Mail… not reduce it.
Due to those reasons, I have little desire to provide an open forum.
Note: in late 2007, I started “Black Viper’s BBS” and have been secretly questioning my decision since. On February 13, 2011, I asked my community if it is a viable resource to continue. The jury is still out.