Just Trying To Help

Tim_Roberts

I'm starting to think Microsoft doesn't really want any outside help answering technical questions, preferring to let their bot-assisted Asian contractors handle everything. Just when I had finally found myself able to tolerate the dreadful experience on social.msdn.microsoft.com, I see they have now moved all of the interesting forums over to something called "Microsoft Q&A", which is just as bad but with an entirely new set of inexplicable navigation tools. New profiles, no history, no carryover of reputation. Tags instead of groups.

I shouldn't have to go out of my way to volunteer my help.

Peter_Viscarola_(OSR)

It’s become very clear that they don’t care about driver devs, that’s for damn sure.

Ah, yes... but NTDEV endures!

And you KNOW we love you here, Mr.Roberts.

Peter

Ehsan_Taheri

If it is not for OSR and a few of you experts I can't imagine where I can get the help I need!
You guys here are SUPER expert, SUPER kind, SUPER patient and SUPER cool. OSR is irreplaceable.
I can imagine how many hours a day you spend helping others like me whom sometimes seem to even refuse to understand(talking to myself)! despite how much busy you are. And I can't ever imagine myself doing so.

Thanks for your kindness.

Mark_Roddy

I gave up on social.msdn quite a while ago. I was a moderator for the
drivers 'whatever/forum' and it was a hopeless mess of nonsense. There are
only two useful forum resources: ntdev and stackoverflow, and stack is just
barely useful for drivers.

Mark Roddy

Peter_Viscarola_(OSR)

You guys here are SUPER expert, SUPER kind, SUPER patient and SUPER cool. OSR is irreplaceable.

Don't forget to pick up your check at Dan's office on your way out today ;-)

Wait... did I PM that or did I just post that publicly?

Peter

Seriously: Thanks for the kind note. It's our pleasure to help out.

anton_bassov

I'm starting to think Microsoft doesn't really want any outside help answering technical questions,
preferring to let their bot-assisted Asian contractors handle everything.

Well, I would say this is a pretty simplistic view of the situation. In fact, there are 2 totally unrelated issues here.

1. If you want your technical NG to be of any value, you need pay a very close attention to it. It has to be closely watched (and moderated)
   by some "Hanging Judge" with a whip in one hand and a noose in another, as well as with an expertize in the target field. This is particularly true for something as advanced as kernel-level development.

Otherwise, you are just bound to end up with a dump, infested with quadrillions of posters with VERY little (if any) knowledge in the target field, zero interest in learning anything new but a great willingness to bluntly attack and insult anyone who tries to argue with them and point out their mistakes to them, without even trying to provide at least some technical backup to their claims and statements. In other words, it would be the kind of NG that Truly Yours would not want to troll

Certainly, thea possibility of someone being in a position to arbitrarily apply moderation to the other people's posts (in fact, as any other form of unlimited authority) may have its own drawbacks. For example, as recently as yesterday I posted the excerpt from PDP-11 1969 manual, effectively making a certain NTDEV regular look "not-so-intelligent" (and"not-so-honest" either) yet another time. As you may have guessed, my post had, by some miracle, disappeared from NTDEV by the morning. Surprize, surprize......

Never mind - despite its obvious shortcomings and drawbacks, it is still better than unmoderated NG. Apparently, MSFT just does not want to hire a moderator with an expertize in the target field for every possible NG in existence.

2. As any other corporate entity, MSFT does not really need to provide an education,support technical discussions,etc. What it actually needs is just providing support and guidance with their products, and a trained call center employee can, apparently, do this part better than a programmer. Just read this NG, and you will see that 90+% of questions, in actuality, are getting answered with mantras like "Use KMDF instead of WDM", "Use inverted call instead of shared memory",etc,etc,etc.. It does not seem to require a particularly high intelligence, does it. Therefore, a call center assistant may be easily trained to to this job just fine

Anton Bassov

Tim_Roberts

Otherwise, you are just bound to end up with a dump, infested with quadrillions of posters with VERY little (if any) knowledge in the target field,

Yeah, that pretty much summarizes what the MSDN forums became. I've grown quite discouraged by the quality of the questions, and what that means for our industry. A solid 10% of the posts are from people posting their homework questions. School ethics rules must be different in other parts of the world.

NtDev_Geek

you guys here at OSR make my dream come true as a windows kernel mode driver programmer. Thank you guys by all means.

Pavel_A

Just a short non-technical answer, Mr. Roberts.... Because this world is changing fast and not to the better. It never will be like before.
Microsoft is only a small particle in this soup. -- pa