Many subscribers who read the newsgroups in the "w" hierarchy have gotten the mistaken impression that WebTV is responsible for these newsgroups and for the behavior of users in these newsgroups. To clarify this relationship, or rather its absence, the newsgroups in the w hierarchy are being moved into the alt.discuss hierarchy. In other words, w.announce will become alt.discuss.announce, etc. This transition will occur during the downtime on Tuesday, November 11. Moderated "w" groups will continue to work as moderated "alt.discuss" groups. No action will be required on the part of the moderators and the secret posting addresses will not change.

It is not practical to move the existing articles from the w groups to the alt.discuss groups. Because of this the new alt.discuss groups will be empty when you go to them. You should save copies of any article that you want to keep.

Part of the misconception regarding the relationship between WebTV and the w groups arose because a WebTV employee was acting as an administrator for the w hierarchy. This will no longer be permitted. As a result, no new alt.discuss groups will be created and no existing alt.discuss groups will be deleted. At some point in the future, we may create a mechanism to allow WebTV subscribers to create or delete alt.discuss groups without the assistance of WebTV personnel.