[German]A quick note for people who may have published content in the Microsoft Technet Wiki or would still like to access it. I have just noticed that Microsoft will probably remove or delete (decommission) this content in the future. This process had already been announced from time to time. But now there is an initial date for the next steps. The Technet and MSDN platforms decommissioning have been on the hit list for years. Here is a brief review and an explanation of what is at stake.
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MSDN/Technet disappear
For administrators and developers, the pages of the Microsoft Developers Network (MSDN) and Technet were often a treasure trove of technical information. Microsoft employees and many MVPs (Most Valuable Professionals) have published documents on technical issues that were often very helpful and still are.
Q&A should fix it
But this "love" has been growing cold at Microsoft for four years. At the end of October 2019, I mentioned in the article Microsoft Q&A replaces Technet and MSDN where the journey should go. From this point onwards, interested parties can post their own information on Microsoft Q&A under their Microsoft account. For me, the question was how to proceed with the old MSDN and Technet pages.
Everything deleted, restored again …
Then, in an overnight operation, Microsoft shut down these Technet and MSDN servers and deleted the content. This caused quite a bit of trouble for the contributors and probably also for the readers. In the blog post Microsoft restores deleted Technet- and MSDN-Blogs, I reported in 2019 that Microsoft was attempting to restore the most content of deleted employees blog posts on Technet and MSDN following massive protests.
Slow farewell announced again and again
It has now been clear for three years that this content is to disappear. Im had already addressed the topic in March 2020 in the article Technet Gallery will be retired in June 2020. In July 2022, Microsoft then published the article All English MSDN and TechNet forums are now read-only, which announced the deactivation of the forums. The content can still be accessed, but it is no longer possible to post there.
In September 2022, Microsoft provided an update in the form of the article An Update on the MSDN and TechNet Migration to docs.microsoft.com, which provided information on the migration of various articles from MSDN and Technet. There seems to be an attempt to save certain content. In the meantime, however, I am noticing that links in the blog to articles in MSDN and Technet are breaking more and more frequently. Sometimes they can redirect to the WayBack Machine (Internet Archive)
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The Technet Wiki is next
The Technet Wiki is a collection of information pages about Microsoft products, primarily aimed at IT professionals. The content was written by members of the community (at the time, only a Live ID was required to be able to post). The Technet Wiki is located under Microsoft TechNet. The page here provides some information about the Technet Wiki.
This wiki is maintained by a Community Council, currently consisting of 12 people (Microsoft employees, MVPs and representatives of the community). While searching for this article, I came across the Microsoft post TechNet Wiki has moved and we never felt a thing! from February 2019. It still says that Microsoft "loves" this wiki and the community and has even moved the content. But in view of the developments outlined above, it was only a matter of time before the wiki would "be axed".
My sources (post by Ronen Ariely, Ex-MVP and member of the Community Council) now say that the Community Council has now been officially informed that the Technet Wiki will be "decommissioned" (shut down). It is an official announcement from Microsoft that they will be decommissioning the MSDN and TechNet platforms as part of an ongoing effort.
The Technet Wiki will therefore be switched to read-only on December 5, 2023. Users will still be able to access the content, but will no longer be able to edit it, add to it or add new information. However, Microsoft is working on archiving a small proportion of the English articles. If you still have an article that you would like to save, you should do so immediately. You can also use the web archive via the original article link to continue to retrieve a copy of an article.
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