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Mad positioning and doubling of SharePoint 2010 forums when in technet RRS feed

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    If you go to go to Forums Home when in the Technet set of forums, you find a clearly alphabetical list of the group names for a set of forums and naturally within each set the forums covered by that Group name.

    All nice and logical, that is until you get to the group of forums that follows after the group with the group name "Microsoft Application Virtualization".

    Then suddenly the logical alphabetical system for group names is broken and you find the SharePoint 2010 group containing the four SharePoint 2010 forums.

    That' madness number one - this group should be in the part of the list that begins with "S" surely.

    That however is a logical name and a logical set of forums.

    When we continue down the Forums Home page we find that for the next group we are back to the alphabetical order and the group name is "Microsoft Enterprise Search".

    But what a surprise to find that the first four forums listed in that group are EXACTLY the same four SharePoint 2010 forums that were listed in the previous SharePoint 2010 forum.

    That is madness two.

    When you finally reach the groups of forums with group names beginning with "S" , the SharePoint 2010 forums are naturally no longer to be seen. The pre-SharePoint 2010 forums are however there so many people (logically looking under "S" for SharePoint forums) see only that set and equally naturally then post SharePoint 2010 questions to them.

    They are not mad. But the way this page has been constructed is.

    If MSDN can get it right, why not TechNet?

     

    SP 2010 "FAQ" (mainly useful links): http://wssv4faq.mindsharp.com/default.aspx
    WSS3/MOSS FAQ (FAQ and Links) http://wssv3faq.mindsharp.com/default.aspx
    Both also have links to extensive book lists and to (free) on-line chapters
    Tuesday, November 30, 2010 2:20 PM
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    OK, I figured out why this is the way it is. The sharepoint 2010 forums are shared to Microsoft Enterprise search. The way sharing "works" is that the default category is the one higher in the list of categories and forums. So if we moved it down then users coming from search engines would think they are in the enterprise search category, not sharepoint. To fix this we could demote the enterprise search forums to be under the sharepoint. That would be 'less broken' because there is a LOT less traffic to that forum, so I suppose it makes sense to get the more traffic'd forums more correct with regard to alpha display. I'll have to check with others though first...

    Community Forums Program Manager

    Monday, April 30, 2012 9:23 PM
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    Ah, yes. This is fixed now. Thanks!

    Ed Price (a.k.a User Ed), SQL Server Experience Program Manager (Blog, Twitter, Wiki)

    Thursday, April 12, 2012 6:41 AM
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    > This is fixed now. Thanks!

    Sorry, Ed, but it hasn't been fixed.

    I just checked http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/categories which is the page I was referring to and there just as before there is a list of "SharePoint 2010" (with the four fourms in it) in this alphabetical list after "Microsoft Application Virtualization" and before "Microsoft Enterprise Search".

    What has been tidied up is my minor point (in 2010!) that the Microsoft Enterprise Search section no longer contains links to the SP 2010 forums. It does include a link to the Search forum of pre-SP 2010 which is fair enough, but it has this link twice (first and last in the list of forums under the Microsoft Enterprise Search heading) which is certainly not necessary.

    But again my main point has NOT been solved. The section beginning with "S" in the list still only has the links to the pre-SharePoint 2010 forums and does not have links to SP 2010 forums which continue to be only in the (otherwise alphabetical) list in the part of the list beginning with "M" and will thus continue not to be seen by people looking for where to post SP 2010 questions (who logically zoom down to the "S" section.

    [Aside: I've not been back to the pre-SP 2010 forums - apart from following-up alerts such as this one - since being dropped as Moderator there but I was told yesterday by someone who does follow them closely that the pre-SP 2010 forums are already in a mess. Not making it easy to find the SP 2010 forums isn't helping keep them on topic.]

     

    SP 2010 "FAQ" (mainly useful links): http://wssv4faq.mindsharp.com/default.aspx
    WSS3/MOSS FAQ (FAQ and Links) http://wssv3faq.mindsharp.com/default.aspx
    Both also have links to extensive book lists and to (free) on-line chapters

    Thursday, April 12, 2012 7:40 AM
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    Very good point. Sorry, I got lost in the text and saw the minor suggestion rather than the big one. So...

    • The "SharePoint 2010" section is in the "M" section and not the "S" section where it belongs.
    • This drives people to go ask SharePoint 2010 questions in the "Pre-SharePoint 2010" forums, since those are the only ones listed under "S".

    Fair summary?

    Thanks!

    Ed Price (a.k.a User Ed), SQL Server Experience Program Manager (Blog, Twitter, Wiki)


    Thursday, April 12, 2012 4:45 PM
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    Thanks for the feedback. Changing this might break some other things in our pages. There are some dependencies that come into play, so although it may be obvious, sometimes things are put into places for other reasons, it isn't strictly an alpha list.

    I'll look into it and see if moving it breaks anything. On a side note, I don't think scrolling a list of 350+ forums is really all that useful. Sure if it were alpha it would 'help' but that's an ugly list of choices for a typical user. Although people can do it, simply typing in sharepoint and filtering the list down is a lot more efficient.

    Community Forums Program Manager

    Thursday, April 12, 2012 9:49 PM
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    Answerer
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    > Fair summary?

    Fair summary. Don't forget the minor issue of having the link to pre-SP 2010 Search forum listed twice in the Microsoft Enterprise Search "group".

    Mike

    (It's baffling to me how the order of links in a list affects "dependencies", but that wasn't your comment so I'll just note that. I do go down these lists by scrolling down the web page btw, Brent. It would never occur to me to search - besides which a search on SharePoint on that page would give the opposite effect of having people see only the SP 2010 group and with no directly following pre- SP 2010 group would assume that's all the SharePoint forums there are [and thus post pre-SP 2010 questions to a SP 2010 forum]).

    SP 2010 "FAQ" (mainly useful links): http://wssv4faq.mindsharp.com/default.aspx
    WSS3/MOSS FAQ (FAQ and Links) http://wssv3faq.mindsharp.com/default.aspx
    Both also have links to extensive book lists and to (free) on-line chapters

    Friday, April 13, 2012 6:17 AM
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    Personally I always search on a page like Brent does. But honestly I have no data to show that's what users do by default (especially because the "search on page" option is hard to find in most browsers, and Chrome is the worst because you have to bring it up again on every page and tab... making it more frustrating and less "worth it"), so I have to assume that most people scroll and browse, even if it is inefficient in comparison.

    Thanks!

    Ed Price (a.k.a User Ed), SQL Server Experience Program Manager (Blog, Twitter, Wiki)



    Friday, April 13, 2012 4:24 PM
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    Brent, did you submit the request?

    Thanks!

    Ed Price (a.k.a User Ed), SQL Server Experience Program Manager (Blog, Twitter, Wiki)

    Sunday, April 29, 2012 4:01 AM
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    I'm following up internally. Thanks!

    Ed Price (a.k.a User Ed), SQL Server Experience Program Manager (Blog, Twitter, Wiki)

    Monday, April 30, 2012 7:27 PM
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    OK, I figured out why this is the way it is. The sharepoint 2010 forums are shared to Microsoft Enterprise search. The way sharing "works" is that the default category is the one higher in the list of categories and forums. So if we moved it down then users coming from search engines would think they are in the enterprise search category, not sharepoint. To fix this we could demote the enterprise search forums to be under the sharepoint. That would be 'less broken' because there is a LOT less traffic to that forum, so I suppose it makes sense to get the more traffic'd forums more correct with regard to alpha display. I'll have to check with others though first...

    Community Forums Program Manager

    Monday, April 30, 2012 9:23 PM
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    Nice bit of non-linear thinking there!

    This covers why the SharePoint 2010 forums were under the Microsoft Enterprise Search label, but as I recall they were also under the SharePoint 2010 label which was also within the page showing groups beginning with M.

    So your theory seems to go that once the SP 2010 forums were under Microsoft Enterprise Search, then it was also necessary for the group called SharePoint 2010 to be adjacent to the Microsoft Enterprise Search group.

    I've marked your post because it seems the best theory we have had, but I'm not really convinced if this is also the reason why the SP 2010 group is also in the "M"s.

    Mike

    SP 2010 "FAQ" (mainly useful links): http://wssv4faq.mindsharp.com/default.aspx
    WSS3/MOSS FAQ (FAQ and Links) http://wssv3faq.mindsharp.com/default.aspx
    Both also have links to extensive book lists and to (free) on-line chapters

    Friday, May 4, 2012 11:36 AM
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