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Forums aren't really good support

Question
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In my opinion, Microsoft should abandon these forums. They just clutter up search results with garbage and are full of misinformation. It would be much better to just leave the Microsoft authored documentation in place. I myself have learned to enter NOT social.technet.microsoft.com in my searches and that has improved my results.
- Moved by Ed Price - MSFTMicrosoft employee Monday, August 6, 2012 5:31 AM (From:TechNet Wiki Discussion)
Wednesday, August 1, 2012 3:51 PM
Answers
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It is like saying only experts can edit Wikipedia because it tops every search result... not going to happen. You will always find people trying to help, expert or not. You need to use search results with your own judgement. Use a professional (read:Paid) support when you need guaranteed quality.
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Visual C++ MVP- Proposed as answer by Naomi N Tuesday, September 4, 2012 6:05 PM
- Edited by Sheng Jiang 蒋晟 Tuesday, September 4, 2012 6:15 PM
Tuesday, September 4, 2012 5:53 PM -
Perhaps it depends which forums you visit. The Office for Developers family of forums has an extremely experienced set of regular posters. Most of the threads end with the person who asked the question affirming that they have been helped by posts. And for myself, I frequently find useful information on these forums via Google.
- Proposed as answer by Ed Price - MSFTMicrosoft employee Saturday, August 11, 2012 2:32 AM
- Marked as answer by Naomi N Sunday, October 21, 2012 2:43 PM
Monday, August 6, 2012 11:01 AM
All replies
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- Proposed as answer by Ed Price - MSFTMicrosoft employee Saturday, August 11, 2012 2:32 AM
Monday, August 6, 2012 5:31 AM -
Perhaps it depends which forums you visit. The Office for Developers family of forums has an extremely experienced set of regular posters. Most of the threads end with the person who asked the question affirming that they have been helped by posts. And for myself, I frequently find useful information on these forums via Google.
- Proposed as answer by Ed Price - MSFTMicrosoft employee Saturday, August 11, 2012 2:32 AM
- Marked as answer by Naomi N Sunday, October 21, 2012 2:43 PM
Monday, August 6, 2012 11:01 AM -
Forum answers quality will inevitably decrease as they attract people who are looking for fame, and just copy and paste links they found by entering keyword, and without verifying the answers.
There no silver bullet for this kind of problem, the only cure is to have Moderaters who are experts of the subject monitoring those forums.
I think someone has proposed having flags to mark that some answers as misleading so the forum will hide them and expand them on individual forum user's choice, and in the end it's not been implemented. (But cannot find it now)
I feel that in general, proposal that may lead to discouragement of replies are seldomly considered here. But at some point, I think it's appropiate to think of measures to proactively prevent "Bad money drives out good" type of thing from happening (so far there's little hint for this to happen on major forums, but it's well possible in the future if nothing has been done.)
Just my 2 cents.
Saturday, August 11, 2012 3:02 AM -
It is like saying only experts can edit Wikipedia because it tops every search result... not going to happen. You will always find people trying to help, expert or not. You need to use search results with your own judgement. Use a professional (read:Paid) support when you need guaranteed quality.
The following is signature, not part of post
Please mark the post answered your question as the answer, and mark other helpful posts as helpful, so they will appear differently to other users who are visiting your thread for the same problem.
Visual C++ MVP- Proposed as answer by Naomi N Tuesday, September 4, 2012 6:05 PM
- Edited by Sheng Jiang 蒋晟 Tuesday, September 4, 2012 6:15 PM
Tuesday, September 4, 2012 5:53 PM -
Emmm... I think "weeding out misinformation for the forums" differs from "getting reliable support" for the purpose of this thread.
Afterall, if people would find it's waste of time to seek help here, maybe we should stop wasting our time to answer their question too. In the end the forum will dry up, and it's not like we're willing to see it happen.
- Proposed as answer by Mauro Luque Thursday, September 6, 2012 11:31 AM
- Unproposed as answer by Mauro Luque Thursday, September 6, 2012 11:31 AM
Wednesday, September 5, 2012 3:09 AM -
Propably you just needed help on stuff which was also new for very good "supporters" here or it depends on which forum you're on. Me myself on the PowerShell forum get quite a good support. They also can't help me on every problem I have but I can also know the reason for some of them, like for one I don't only use PowerShell, I also use XML. Sometimes you just got to wait a few days and you'll get the answer because the one who's the biggest knowledge for that then is not online at that time or didn't see the post yet.
EDIT1: Forum not = Chat
EDIT2: Anyways, check this out. It took me a week until my problem had been solved. As I said already, take your time until your issue/problem or whatever has been solved. Sometimes you can also find a solution on your own like I did, with a little help of the others. This problem took me exactly one week (I opened this thread on the 10th actually, had to open a 2nd one because of a bad structure).
Lua Programmer & Powershell Newcomer | Location: Switzerland
- Proposed as answer by Ed Price - MSFTMicrosoft employee Friday, September 14, 2012 3:48 AM
- Edited by Livio von Büren Monday, September 17, 2012 11:06 AM
Friday, September 7, 2012 7:35 AM -