Microsoft Community Contributor Award
Yesterday I got a nice surprise in my inbox from Microsoft. It was an award (a fairly new one) given for contributions to the online community -- specifically the MSDN and TechNet forums in this case. The details of the award follow. Just wanted to say thanks to Microsoft for the recognition. It's an honor to be a part of a thriving technical community.
About the MCC (Microsoft Community Contributor) Award
Through the Microsoft® Community Contributor Award, we express our thanks to individuals who freely volunteer their time and energy to help improve the Microsoft online technical community experience for others.
More and more technology users are seeking ideas and solutions for enhancing their technology experience through online resources. At Microsoft, we help our customers find answers when and where they want them through online forums such as TechNet, MSDN® and Answers.
Today, up to 4,000,000 people gain valuable information through Microsoft online forums--and that number is growing.
These valuable resources are enhanced by the contributions of Microsoft Community Contributor awardees, who help other participants in a range of ways, such as providing helpful answers, translating online resources into local languages and serving as moderators.
Source: https://www.microsoftcommunitycontributor.com/overview.aspx
I’m a SharePoint Overflow “Fanatic”
This weekend I apparently became the first person ever to earn a Gold badge on SharePointOverflow.com when I earned the "Fanatic" badge. The badge does not really speak to my participation or problem-solving abilities (the reputation metric does that), but it does speak to my consistency in visiting the site.
I mistakenly reported on Twitter that I had earned the "Enthusiast" badge, but that was weeks ago. James Love jumped in quickly to set me straight on the badge name.
If I ever make it to the UK, I hope to meet "Jimmy" in person. We have tag-teamed a few answers in the forums together...the guy knows his stuff. You talk about a "Fanatic" -- the guy has earned an incredible reputation on the forum seemingly overnight. He darted up to the top 4 in reputation in record time. That, my friends, is a "Fanatic." Still, I'm honored to be in such good company.
I thought it would be a good time to follow up on my July post on Comparing SharePoint Forums. I'm obviously enthusiastic and even fanatical about SharePoint Overflow. I have visited it every day for over a hundred days -- both answering questions and asking questions. One of my questions was recently answered by a newbie on SharePoint Overflow for which I am grateful. A more difficult question about Excel Services has been posted since August 20 and has no solution (although apparently information I included in my question was able to help another reader). The question has had 291 views on SharePoint Overflow in just over two months. I posted the same question on the Microsoft SharePoint forums on the same day. It has had 674 views there and, although one thoughtful person tried to help, still no resolution. I would have thought it would have fared better on the Microsoft forums since the product teams are said to monitor those forums as well.
So I have been staying active on both forums still -- and there are still things I like about both of them. However, I find that I do gravitate to SharePoint Overflow on a daily basis, so if I had to choose a favorite it must be my favorite. I still appreciate the fact that SharePoint Overflow has only one forum for all questions, and I still cringe every time a moderator on the Microsoft forums moves a question to a different category or spends more energy correcting a user on the proper way to post a question than on providing a solution (although they are necessary evils considering the current taxonomy). On the other hand, I hope that more people will start participating on SharePoint Overflow by posting questions/answers and by voting for questions/answers they found helpful.
Ironically, I may be the only one who even cares about comparing the two forums, and I really do like them both. So that really makes this whole exercise a little futile. I wish I could say I only brought it up because I was bored, but it has been at least a decade or two since I have had time to be bored. I guess I must have a little OCD in me after all!
Comparing SharePoint Forums
I have long been a fan of newsgroups and forums. I am appreciative to all of the professionals that give of their time to post questions, answer questions and moderate them. The questions that they answer continue to help others weeks, months and sometimes years later. Like many others, I try to give back when I have opportunity. My first love is definitely blogging, but I am trying to make browsing the forums more of a priority.
The two forum sites I participate in are the MSDN/TechNet SharePoint forums and SharePoint Overflow. Their are things that I like about both of them and some things that I don't. Here is a short list.
Voting System
Both forums have a voting system that allows the community to show support for good questions and good answers. Votes are accumulated for the question/answer authors and are applied toward the points system.
Points System
The points system (a.k.a. "reputation") of both forum sites are a great way to gain recognition in the community for a job well done. On the MSDN site you earn medals based on the number of points you have acquired. At SharePoint Overflow (which is based on the popular StackOverflow developer forum) it gets a little more interesting than that: you can earn new functionality at point thresholds. For example, a newbie cannot vote or flag questions as offensive, but can just after 15 points. As the points continue to accumulate, you may leave comments, vote down, create new tags, retag questions, edit other peoples' posts, vote to close or reopen questions and eventually become a moderator. To keep it interesting between point thresholds, you may also earn badges based on performing certain activities on the site. The badges make it fun in addition to educational.
Feedback
SharePoint Overflow allows you to comment on questions and answers. On the MSDN forums you may reply to others' replies, but it gets a little cumbersome to read as the thread must be read top-down. With SharePoint Overflow, multiple answers may receive their own reader comments -- so in effect you have multi-threaded responses.
Organization
With the advent of SharePoint 2010, the MSDN forums have been divided into four forum categories: General, Setup/Upgrade/Admin/Opps, Customization and Programming. That number is down from the fifteen forums available for pre-SharePoint 2010. I can appreciate what Microsoft is trying to do in trying to organize the posts and allow for moderators to specialize on specific categories. There are downsides, too. One thing is dislike is when a newbie posts a question in the wrong category and a moderator chides them and moves the answer to a different category (granted some moderators are more graceful than others). What's just as bad is when a poster posts the same question into multiple categories. What would be nice is if the poster could just worry about posting the question and someone else could decide where to put it. With SharePoint Overflow, you don't have to worry about that. There is one forum for all SharePoint products, and the organization is accomplished using tags and filters. I tend to favor SharePoint Overflow in this category -- I give it a thumbs up for ease of use.
Speaking of filters, both forum sites have great filter/sort/search capabilities. I give MSDN the nod, however, because the MSDN forums make it easier to identify which questions have absolutely no responses in addition to identifying which questions just haven't been flagged as answered. You may also filter on MSDN by the posts that contain code.
Reporting
Both forum sites have nice reports for reporting on your activity. The MSDN forums seem to be more useful in terms of linking those activities back to the original posts.
Bio Pages
Both sites allow the participants to have a bio page to tell about themselves -- a very cool feature. Here is my MSDN Forum Bio. Here is my SharePoint Overflow Bio.
Syndication and Notification
One of the things I like so much about SharePoint Overflow is that it notifies me of new posts in both twitter (@spoverflow) and via RSS (I use a RSS Reader on my mobile phone). When I first started participating in the MSDN forums, RSS feeds were not available. It appears that they now are. What a great way to keep up with the kinds of challenges others are experiencing! MSDN will also notifiy you via email if you so desire when there is activity on a thread you are watching. SharePoint Overflow provides you with an activity page to monitor when people comment on one of your posts.
Popularity
The MSDN forum site is the clear winner here. There are exponentially more users, posts and responses on the MSDN site. SharePoint Overflow, however, is a force to be reckoned with and it is where I find myself spending the majority of my "forum time" lately. SharePoint Overflow is really community run. Its founders designed it that way. The MSDN forums have the backing of Microsoft, its product teams and a larger number of MVPs. It is great to see how Microsoft recognizes the contributors and MVPs both on the forum pages and on the MSDN home page.
In closing, I would like to endorse both of these forum sites. Again, I think they both have their strengths and weaknesses, but I also think they cater to different people. I have noticed that many SharePoint pros participate on both sites, and I will likely continue to do the same. I hope that both sites continue to improve functionality. The fact that both of these resources are available (as well as countless others) just reinforces my opinion that the SharePoint and .NET technical communities are hands-down the best communities to be a part of. Go team!
Update: 30+ Days Later (8/20/10)
- At first I wasn't a fan of allowing moderators to mark responses as the answer, but I understand more now why it is necessary. There are times when someone gives a response that is the clear answer. Many times the asker was just a one-time visitor who got his/her answer and ran with it -- never taking the time to log in and mark it appropriately. In those cases, it leaves future readers wondering if the question was answered or not. It is best to let a moderator mark it as answered.
- On MSDN I saw a case where someone answered a question and the asker replied "Thanks, that worked" but inadvertently marked his own acknowledgment as the answer rather than the actual answer. On SPO, Person A answered a question and Person B replied that he agreed with Person A -- then Person B's answer of "I agree" was marked as the answer. : )
- MSDN allows multiple replies to be marked as answers. This is useful for a couple of reasons: 1) there is often more than one way to solve a problem, and 2) sometimes an answer spawns another question that needs to be answered. It is great to keep that all in the same thread for future reference.
