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What happened to Michael Kaplan's blog?

Question
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What happened to Michael Kaplan's blog, Sorting It All Out? All links to his blog posts seem to be dead, ending up with a Resource Not Found error page at blogs.msdn.com. (http://blogs.msdn.com/msgs/?messageid=6) This is true even when using links from Bing searches inside or outside MSDN. (One assumes that internal MSDN searches are being handled by Bing, but maybe not.) The content seems to exist as search results with text snippets I am looking for comes up. Clicking on any of these links, however, winds up at the same dead end.
This problem also exists from numerous other ways to get to this blog from Microsoft sites.
What happened to this blog? The information Michael wrote about is still useful.
- Moved by Dave PatrickMVP Wednesday, March 5, 2014 2:02 AM
Monday, February 3, 2014 6:12 AM
Answers
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What happened is described in detail on his new blog: http://sortingitoutv2.wordpress.com
Sad that someone thought this action was warranted, as the blog contained a lot of rather rare info on i18n...
- Proposed as answer by Mike Laughlin Wednesday, May 14, 2014 8:23 PM
- Marked as answer by RadicalDad Wednesday, May 14, 2014 9:12 PM
Wednesday, May 14, 2014 7:47 PM -
Looks like it's gone, but it looks like archive.org has grabbed quite a few snaps of it:
https://web.archive.org/web/20131022001215/http://blogs.msdn.com/b/michkap/
Don't retire TechNet! - (Don't give up yet - 12,575+ strong and growing)
- Proposed as answer by Ed Price - MSFTMicrosoft employee Friday, February 7, 2014 6:41 AM
- Marked as answer by Just Karl Thursday, March 13, 2014 2:21 PM
Monday, February 3, 2014 3:26 PM -
Odd. Looks like his profile got banned: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Profile/michael%20s.%20kaplan
Ed Price, Power BI & SQL Server Customer Program Manager (Blog, Small Basic, Wiki Ninjas, Wiki)
Answer an interesting question? Create a wiki article about it!Friday, February 7, 2014 6:41 AM -
- Proposed as answer by Mike Laughlin Wednesday, February 26, 2014 3:26 AM
- Marked as answer by Just Karl Thursday, March 13, 2014 2:21 PM
Wednesday, February 26, 2014 2:28 AM
All replies
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Looks like it's gone, but it looks like archive.org has grabbed quite a few snaps of it:
https://web.archive.org/web/20131022001215/http://blogs.msdn.com/b/michkap/
Don't retire TechNet! - (Don't give up yet - 12,575+ strong and growing)
- Proposed as answer by Ed Price - MSFTMicrosoft employee Friday, February 7, 2014 6:41 AM
- Marked as answer by Just Karl Thursday, March 13, 2014 2:21 PM
Monday, February 3, 2014 3:26 PM -
Odd. Looks like his profile got banned: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Profile/michael%20s.%20kaplan
Ed Price, Power BI & SQL Server Customer Program Manager (Blog, Small Basic, Wiki Ninjas, Wiki)
Answer an interesting question? Create a wiki article about it!Friday, February 7, 2014 6:41 AM -
Ed, how can you tell from that link that the blog was banned? Any clue as to why?Friday, February 7, 2014 6:47 AM
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how can you tell from that link that the blog was banned?
There's no avatar for the profile and the Activity tab is empty. That's a usual indicator of the profile being banned.
Don't retire TechNet! - (Don't give up yet - 12,575+ strong and growing)
Friday, February 7, 2014 7:54 PM -
I think this problem needs to be reported to fissues. Wondering why would such prominent blogger be banned.
For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert. - Becker's Law
My blog
My TechNet articlesFriday, February 7, 2014 8:12 PM -
I wonder the same thing myself. I saw Michael as being pretty much pro-MS even when criticizing them. What could he possibly have said that would make Microsoft look worse than what they have done to themselves by banning his excellent and vey informative blog?Sunday, February 9, 2014 6:01 AM
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- Proposed as answer by Mike Laughlin Wednesday, February 26, 2014 3:26 AM
- Marked as answer by Just Karl Thursday, March 13, 2014 2:21 PM
Wednesday, February 26, 2014 2:28 AM -
There is additional informaton on the blog death here though the question of why is not addressed. Sheng’s link will eventually lead you there, so thanks!
Microsoft is being terribly short-sighted. I always thought Michael was being very pro-MS even when he was critical. No person or company is perfect, and Michael’s blog did much to humanize Microsoft IMO, both his positive and negative posts. And relatively few of his voluminous posts could be construed as negative. If MS is now going all Apple on us, that is just going to make people unhappy – with Microsoft.
Meantime, much of the old blog has been captured by the Internet Archive, as noted by Mike Laughlin above. But it is difficult to find a given blog post that way as full text search on the archive is not currently possible. So the data still exists, it is still relevant, but Microsoft has made it difficult to access by removing it from their servers. Does Microsoft think people will love them for this? Whatever Michael did to get himself banned, the damage Microsoft is doing to themselves with this boneheaded move is far worse.
Depending on the offense (what could be that bad?), I can see where Microsoft might tell Michael to stop blogging. Remove the offending post if you must, but to remove the entire blog is just shooting themselves in the foot.
Finally, there is more than one helpful answer in this thread. Is there a way to honor that by marking more than one reply as an answer?
Wednesday, February 26, 2014 5:21 AM -
Hi,
Finally, there is more than one helpful answer in this thread. Is there a way to honor that by marking more than one reply as an answer
Sure, you can mark as many posts as answers as you'd like. There's not a restriction on only having a single answer per thread or anything like that.
Sorry the outcome wasn't better, but at least now you know what happened.
Don't retire TechNet! - (Don't give up yet - 12,700+ strong and growing)
Wednesday, February 26, 2014 3:42 PM -
Well, that blog you referenced only acknowledged the fact, not explained why did it happen. Did you get any information from fissues ? If yes, can you share it, please?
For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert. - Becker's Law
My blog
My TechNet articlesWednesday, February 26, 2014 4:02 PM -
What happened is described in detail on his new blog: http://sortingitoutv2.wordpress.com
Sad that someone thought this action was warranted, as the blog contained a lot of rather rare info on i18n...
- Proposed as answer by Mike Laughlin Wednesday, May 14, 2014 8:23 PM
- Marked as answer by RadicalDad Wednesday, May 14, 2014 9:12 PM
Wednesday, May 14, 2014 7:47 PM -
Removing the entire blog is ridiculous and makes access to important information, not available elsewhere, difficult or impossible. Somewhere at Microsoft there is a manager's ego that needs managing. Abuse of power comes in all guises, and hurts everyone.
- Edited by RadicalDad Wednesday, May 14, 2014 9:57 PM
Wednesday, May 14, 2014 9:56 PM -
Hi RadicalDad,
The reply is a little late, but Michael died on October 21st 2015.
The best source for his work is http://archives.miloush.net/michkap/archive/index.html
Hopefully this will be helpful to others who used his work extensively in the past and are baffled why Microsoft expunged it.
Best regards
Gareth
Tuesday, May 17, 2016 5:33 PM