I find monitoring and engaging in the
CommunityServer.org Forums by NNTP indispensable. In my experience there is no more efficient means to stay up-to-the-minute on top of the Forums than NNTP.
What's particularly useful about NNTP is that all new posts are retreived, each and every reply to every thread on the Forums. I'm subscribed to the Forums by RSS in my newsreader as well, but in GreatNews I only receive new thread posts, not replies. Other newsreaders may retrieve forum thread replies as well. I don't know about that.
Here's a screenshot of the CS Forums in Outlook Express. It's small, sorry, but gives you the idea of the view, with access to new threads, replies and the full content of those posts.
To subscribe to the CS Forums (or any CS Forums supported with the Mail Gateway) in Outlook Express, under the "Tools" menu, select "Accounts" and the "News" tab. Then enter the address of the CS Site, or for CS Forums, communityserver.org.
Check "This server requires me to log on" and enter your cs.org site user account and password.
At this point it's only a matter of selecting the forums you want to subscribe to.
What's especially cool about NNTP access to forums is that all security on the site is supported through the Mail Gateway to Forums. You can only subscribe to the forums in Outlook Express that you can view at communityserver.org based on your user account permissions. I love that.
[tags: Community Server, NNTP]