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    It is great recognition to get points and become a top answerer. However, the new system really doesn't encourage people like the old forum. Here are the issues that are discouraging me from using the new forum.

    1. Points aren't shown next to name of people in top answerers. One person could answer 100 posts in the last 30 days and the person under them could answer 8. However, the people looking at the forum have no clue about this, they just see the people in order. This is discouraging.

    2. The top answerers flip through top moderators, top mvps, top microsoft answerers. This discourages new people from answering. This is less of a chance for people to get their name seen, thus it is discouraging for people to try to get involved in answering questions now. This also lets a microsoft employee with 1 answer to show up on the screens, but someone with 50 answers might not show up just because they don't hapeen to be in one of these categories. Very discouraging.

    3. This was brought up in another thread I think - but certain formuns (SharePoint ones in particular) don't seem to be showing top answerers from the last 30 days. They seem to be showing top answerers overall. I can not verify this, but when I do a view source of the screen the numbers seem to validate this theory (maybe it is just a coincidence).

    4. The ability to find the overall top answerers (regardless of forumn) seems to not be available anymore. Before we could see the top 200 overall answerers.



    Anyways, I use to be really involved in the SharePoint forumns because:
    1. I liked giving back
    2. I liked getting recognition (because in the consulting field that is important).

    Now, I feel like my only reason for getting involved is giving back. I would really appreciate if these recognition issues were taken care of.

    Thanks,
    Greg 
    Sunday, August 17, 2008 4:31 PM

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    2. The reason we added the rotating functionality was that orginally we had 2 or 3 seperate lists and we felt it was taking too much screen real estate. It was an effort to compress the information into a smaller space. Also, the reason for the seperate "Microsoft" list was that MSFT emplyees were showing up in the Top Answerer list, and we didn't feel that was encouraging or fair. So, we excluded employees from the main list and put them on their own.

    3. The list actually is the top answerers for the last 30 days. The bug, though, is that once we get that list of people, it's ordered by over all answers (not 30 day answers). oops.

    4. The top 10 overall top answerers are listed on the home page. From there, there's a "more" link that takes you to the Browse Users page ordered my # of answers.
    Matt Fraser, STO Forums Software Developer
    Monday, August 18, 2008 2:37 AM
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    Thanks for the reply Matt.

    Here are my thoughts, for your replys, based on a user of the system.

    1. This is just lost functionality I really wish was back. It is a great motivating factor to see.

    2. You might have gained real estate, but your solution is still discouraging for the average user. So, while you gained real estate and might have given functionality for the minority of your users, you are discouraging the majority of your users. As a web designer we often "don't" user rotating functionality because people don't want to wait for information. Rotating functionality is usually only good for advertisements and a rare, few, specfic business requriements. Anyways, not sure what the answer is (link to find this information for the minority of your users, use more real estate, get rid of the tag cloud for more space - which doesn't give you much functionality, etc..). My only response is I am discouraged as a regular person who is trying to help the community. We have lost functionality in this area since the last version of the forumns.

    3. Thanks for the information on the bug. I was curious about this.

    4. Once again, I think this is a downgrade in functionality from the last version of the forumn. I understand the functionality is there now, but it is really hard to find. I "never" go to the home page of the forumns. I always go to the forumns I am interested in. Anyways, the functionality seems hidden now in my opinion.

    These are just my opinions as a user of the system. I feel like while there are some upgrades to the forumns, the downgrades are keeping me from posting as much. If you were to fix these issues I feel like I would post more. In the end, recognition is a great motivating factor for people to continue answering questions. If recognition is lost, you are going to lose people from answering quesitons. Admittedly, my participation has gone "way" down since the forumns have been moved because I don't feel it is worth all the effort it takes anymore. I still feel really good helping people, but I don't feel I get the recognition I got before.

    Monday, August 18, 2008 3:24 PM