Forum Discussion
Updates to community platform
So I noticed, and reported. I spent less than a day here and I regret signing up. It was honestly hopeful that it would work better than Microsoft's many previous attempts to create a sort of forum or "community" platform. It looked like a fresh take on what used to be MSDN forums, more geared toward IT people, unlike the Answers site (which they are now terminating by the way). I see you have been on this site for a long time. Can I ask you, do all the posts and comments need to be manually approved before they appear on the site? Like this comment for example. I just posted another comment, on another post, in this "Tech Community Discussion" space, and it appeared under the post. But now, five minutes later, it's gone. I'm not retyping that! But I don't think the comment was lost. Because my post count went up to 7 on my profile. So it probably needs to be approved. I think it's like that. It appears, then they withdraw it for approval, and if they do, then it will reappear. I'm not sticking around to find out. How do you even contact a moderator around here? All Microsoft employees are probably on vacation anyway.
I've never had my comment removed to my knowledge and i don't think there is an approval process as i often see spam comments. I don't think it was ever on a level of MSDN forums. I am only reading blogs for news. Haven't participated in other discussions (other than here about community) in years. Mainly because it is so awfully slow. I don't have time for this :) I don't know if you can contact a moderator. Other than posting in this space, but it seems abandoned for some time.
Yeah, you're right, right, and right again.
Community manager Allen was last seen in middle of June.
Inbox / Private messages broken on my profile | Microsoft Community Hub
It's vacation time. They also kept the support megathread open on the Microsoft subreddit. Looks like they have now locked it down and removed it from the "community highlight". After I contacted the mods there and asked when their usual support mods will be back to answer the almost 200 new and unanswered comments in the megathread. They just left. No notice, nothing. Just abandoned the place, and poor users kept pouring in with their questions, unaware that they will never be answered. I see a similar theme going on here.
Looks like you are not alone to complain about the site being slow. In addition to being buggy and dysfunctional.
Inbox / Private messages broken on my profile | Microsoft Community Hub
Another user also complained about post approvals.
Post approval | Microsoft Community Hub
I noticed other issues too.
The post counter appears to be off by one.
Your post counter is off by one | Microsoft Community Hub
Linking back to Microsoft support articles is now allowed.
Microsoft is not allowed in the community? | Microsoft Community Hub
Validation errors are common, even for already published posts, and the editor is buggy.
Content Not Published | Microsoft Community Hub
I wrote this about Outlook in one of my posts, but the same can be said about the Tech Community site as well.
Is this what Outlook users have to deal with every day? This would drive me crazy. It's the little things like this that add up to a dysfunctional experience. Crumbling, unresponsive, frustrating... take a pick. The devil is always in the details!
Microsoft MSDN, TechNet, Answers, Learn Q&A (Answers will be merge in here), and Tech Community. They keep playing and naming new sites for community support, but they can't make one that's really awesome and makes me want to get back to it. It's a meme.
MS is just too big to care right now.
