First, I'd like to thank everyone here at Microsoft for the absolutely awesome experience I've had for the past two years.  Seeing "the empire" from the inside was a great experience...one I'd recommend to any college graduate.  In particular, I'd like to thank my team--it's been a pleasure working with all of you, and work just wouldn't have been that much fun had we not been the loudest hallway at Microsoft.  :)

I'd also like to thank the community--particularly the MSDN Forums moderators.  You were great to deal with, understanding, very patient, and also kept us moving in the right direction.  I know that at times, it's painful to not know that things are moving in the right direction, but I can say with confidence that your continual push has been a great influence.

Where to next, you may ask?  I'm heading off to Telligent Systems, the creator, among other things, of the great community web platform "Community Server" (which runs this blog site, among many others.)  So...I'm still going to be in the online community space.

Interested in keeping up with my blog?  I'm running a Community Server-based blog on my own hosting at:  http://whostheboss.net.  I'm looking forward to seeing all of you over there!

See you all soon!

-Joe

A few of my takeaways from the conference, now that I've had a week to reflect on things:

"Community" is a completely overloaded term

You could really break down community around two camps at the conference:  those using community to augment their businesses, and those using community *as* their business.  Microsoft is in the former category--trying to be a better company for their customers by really building online communities that help people get better help using our products.  For some other people, the business was community.

What this really affected was how different people determined the health and success of their communities.  With the MSDN Forums, we really try to focus on answer rates--are people getting their questions answered?  On more socially-based communities, the metrics would be much different--page views, return visits, post volume, etc.

"Keeping the Peace" was something that came up repeatedly

I heard lots of war stories about dealing with moderator disputes, flame wars, and other day-to-day squabbles that come up repeatedly in online communities.  The most interesting comment I heard about this was "this is actually a good thing."  Basically, the idea is that if people care enough to squabble and fight, they are engaged in your community and actively trying to shape the culture of the community.  (This still doesn't make it less annoying, but still...)

Microsoft's Doing What?!

People are still surprised when they hear that the people who work on the actual products in Developer Division answer questions in the forums.  They are surprised to hear that our blogs are 100% uncensored and unfiltered (I just type my entries in Live Writer and click "Publish".)  They are still surprised to hear that customer filed bugs go straight into the same database that we use for internal tester-found bugs.  And it's still fun to tell people.  :)

Josh's Red Sox aren't as good as their lead in the AL East suggests

We watched the A's do a number on the Red Sox.  Their large lead in the AL East is likely due to the weak competition.  C'mon, the Blue Jays, Orioles, (old) Yankees, and Devil Rays?  Yes, the 'Sox are good this year, but I'd dispute anybody who says that they are the best in the league.

I use multiple PCs to listen to music.  Here at work, I primarily listen to music on my desktop.  At home, I have a Vista Media Center machine that is the machine that my Zune is actually synced to.  That means that sometimes I'm downloading music here at work, and sometimes I'm downloading it at home.  If only there was a way to get all of the music on the same machine...

Well...it is.  There's a feature in the Zune software that allows you to see a history of all of your downloaded tunes and "restore" your library.  This will allow you to redownload everything you've ever downloaded in the past.  Here's how:

1. Open up the Zune software and Sign In to your account.
2. Click on the orange "Person" icon at the top of the screen and select "Account Management".
3. The resulting page is a bit button crazy, but the second button from the bottom is "Restore Library".  Select it.
4. By clicking "Begin Scan" on the resulting page, you'll get a list of everything you've ever downloaded.
5. You can use the checkboxes to only grab the songs you want, and then go ahead and select "Restore".
6. Tada!  Your tracks will begin downloading in the background.  Selecting the "Active Downloads" from under the "Marketplace" node on the sidebar will get you a list of your status.

Pretty cool, huh?  (Yes, yes, an online library a la Rhapsody or Yahoo Music would be cooler...)

• How do I measure my ROI (return on investment) in my online community so I can justify my existence to my management?
• How do I design a reputation system in my online community that makes my community more "sticky" but not necessarily ultra-competitive?

I was very interested in reputation a year ago, and it remains something that I think is of paramount important.  As a corollary to that, I'm also very interested how to give the community the power to solve their own disputes and quarrels.  I've recently been in the middle of a few online mud-slinging sessions.  They are ugly and take away from the focus of the community.  The way they are currently "resolved" is through emails directly to me.  Ugh--that breaks down pretty quickly...I can't respond to all of the mails, it's not really my business, and frankly, I'm not going to be the point contact for the MSDN Forums forever.

From this conference, I'm going to try to get some "best practices" from other community managers on how they deal with this all-too-common occurrence.  If anybody else reading is attending and wants to chat, get a beer, dinner, or whatever, let me know!

And, now, off to SeaTac!

The idea is simple.  If you've ever used Microsoft's Connect site (http://connect.microsoft.com) or the MSDN Product Feedback Center, you get the concept.  If you find a bug in Visual Studio or the .NET framework, you can file a bug that actually gets opened in our internal bug database.  We have goals around fixing these customer reported bugs, and you are notified if your bug is accepted and when it is fixed.  Simple enough, right?

Well, yes, it really is, but the problem so far is that the product feedback site has been completely separate from our online question and answer site, meaning you needed two separate accounts--one to ask questions and the other to file bugs.  We also couldn't move bugs from the forums into the bug database or questions out of the bug site and into the forums.  It was a sub-optimal experience for everybody involved.

With the next service pack of the forums, this will all be history.  We will be adding two new "thread types" to the forums:  bug and suggestion.  When you select either of these, helper text will automatically be added to the text editor, asking for your operating system, product version, and repro steps for your bug.  When you post your bug, other users will be able to comment on it, "vote" for it, and suggest workarounds for the bug.

At the same time, the bug will be sent to a product support analyst who will route the bug into the correct team's database and attempt to reproduce the bug you reported.  If everything checks out and it was a valid bug, it will be forwarded to the correct product team.  You can keep updated on the current status of your bug right on the thread page.

The concept isn't new--we've been using a system like this for a couple of years now in Developer Division, but this is the first time that the forums will act as a "one-stop shop" for both Q&A and bug reporting.

Oh, if you don't have an invite yet, I'm sorry to say that I've already given mine out as graduation gifts (one to my Comp Sci roommate from CWRU, Evan Perry, who just graduated with his J.D., and two to former intern and soon to be full-time Microsoftie Matt Manela, who just graduated with his B.S. in Computer Science and B.A. in Math...congratulations to you both!)

If you haven't read anything yet about Popfly, I'd suggest starting with John Montgomery's blog and working your way out from there.  Here's a great post where he recaps all of the recent press coverage.

Finally, congratulations to the Popfly team--it's a great site, it's *fun* to use, and I only see it getting better from here.  I still want to know what happened to the other block I wrote... :)

Below is a version of the spec that I'm working on implementing, minus the boiled down requirements list.  Any feedback?  Comment away...

Microsoft Forums 2.3: User Point System

The current Microsoft Forums use an answer count-based system that only rewards high volume answer contributors, but doesn’t reward users that contribute high quality, helpful answers, or other important actions. This specification describes a basic point-based reputation system that achieves the above goals in a more comprehensive manner than is currently implemented. The basic reputation system described here uses an event-driven model to award or deduct points in particular situations.

These point values will be displayed in a user’s profile, along with a basic visual representation (star rating) that makes the user’s current rank apparent to novice users. These points will also be used in place of answer count in the current “Top Answerer” lists on the forum site homepages, individual forum pages, and the “Hall of Fame” page.

The basic reputation enhancements require the events below to be tracked and awarded with a configurable number of points. The values below are suggested default values. The events will be tracked in a table in the forums database, with each record containing the following information:

·EventType

·DateTime

·UserID

·SiteID

·ForumID

·Points Awarded

Events (Points it's worth by default)

• User replies to a question/bug thread that they did not start (1)
• A user reply to a question thread that they did not start is marked as an answer (5)
• User receives a helpful vote for a reply that they posted (5 x (# of votes))
• User marks a reply as an answer (1)
• User has a reply that they marked as an answer unmarked as an answer (-5)

The point values should be:

1.  Calculated per user,

2.  Scoped to forum site and,

3.  Scoped to only events that have occurred in the past year.

For example, a user that answered a question on the MSDN forum site would not get points for their TechNet reputation. Furthermore, a user that answered a question 18 months ago on the MSDN site would no longer get points for that answer. For the edge case where a forum is displayed on multiple sites, the user should get points on both sites. This should be handled by creating multiple separate records for each event that occurs on a forum that is displayed on multiple forum sites.

The point values should be cached whenever possible and only need to be refreshed every 4/8 hours to reduce the load on the live forum site.

Display of Point Values on the Forums

The point values will be displayed and utilized in multiple forums on the forums, but will only be used in areas where post counts or answer counts are currently used.

Hall of Fame Page

The Hall of Fame page should be updated from number of answers to number of points.

Top Answerers Boxes

On ShowForum.aspx and on each forum sites’ homepage, there is a “Top Answerers” box that lists the Top 10 answerers over the past 30 days. These lists should be refreshed every 24 hours, and should contain the top point getters on that forum site/forum over the past 30 days.

User Avatar Areas

The current “user avatar areas” contain the user’s name, whether or not they are a moderator and/or an MVP, and the raw number of posts that they have made in the Microsoft Forums. The only changes will be that the raw number of posts made in the forums should be replaced with the number of points they have based on the current forum site that is being viewed, and the addition of a simple star rating icon that will contain zero to five stars, directly based upon star rating.

Figure 1 - Current user avatar area features only number of Posts

Figure 2 - Enhanced user avatar area includes star rating and the number of points.

The star rating thresholds should be configurable per site, but the suggested point values are:

Star Rating (number of points)

• 0:  (0 – 9)
• 1:  (10 - 99)
• 2:  (100 – 499)
• 3:  (500 - 999)
• 4:  (1,000 – 4,999)
• 5:  (5,000+)

Some of the top moderators will pass well past these thresholds on certain high-volume sites (such as MSDN) and will need to be adjusted upwards. This should be done immediately upon rollout of the reputation system. Changing the thresholds after the reputation system has been rolled out will cause problems in the forums community.

Why are there tons of Microsoft employees in certain technology forums and none in others?  Why are the product support technicians only in particular areas, while other forums suffer with even lower answer rates?

I'm going to go out on a limb here and try to answer this in the most transparent way I can.  Here's the answer:

Role of Product Support Technicians

Yes, we have started a team in our product support group that is tasked to just help out on the forums.  Unfortunately, we only have the headcount and expertise on that team to cover the "major" technology areas--things like the programming languages (C#, VB) and UI technologies (ASP.NET, WinForms).  They are hiring for some of the other forums, but we can't hire for every possible forum we are creating (we're still nearly at one new forum a week!)

Developer Division Forums v. Others

Developer Division has a formal commitment around the health and quality of the forums.  I personally send out biweekly status mails and do whatever I can to try and bring teams that aren't answering questions in the forums back into the fold.  Forums that aren't owned by Developer Division teams don't get that "stick" approach, and my team doesn't always have enough cross-divisional muscle to make sure they are participating.  Sometimes they are great, sometimes they are not so great.  And, once again, the product support technicians are currently only concentrating on the Developer Division forums with the highest volume of questions right now.

Product Cycles

This is the hardest one.  Different teams go "heads-down" at different times as they push to make a release.  Sometimes things are sane, and teams have the bandwidth to spend a few minutes in the forums every day answering questions.  If things get a little bit nuts, well, they might not think about the forums for a few weeks.  It's lousy, but it's a reality that we've all dealt with from time to time--sometimes you're so swamped that it's everything you can do to just keep your head above water.

Top Helpful Rated List:

User Name	Total Votes	Who is it?
nobugz	404	MVP
Ilya Tumanov	202	Microsoft
DMan1	192	MVP
Shawn Hargreaves - MSFT	184	Microsoft
Figo Fei - MSFT	168	Microsoft Support
Cindy Meister	164	MVP
Zhi-Xin Ye - MSFT	147	Microsoft Support
einaros	139	Community
Jay_Vora_b4843e	135	Community
Jens K. Suessmeyer	132	MVP
Bruno Yu - MSFT	129	Microsoft Support
Jim Perry	125	MVP
Arnie Rowland	124	Community
Phil Brammer	122	MVP
TilakGopi	122	Community
Mike Danes	114	MVP
Dave299	113	Community
ahmedilyas	111	Community
Bite Qiu - MSFT	106	Microsoft Support
Andreas Johansson	106	MVP
Dick Donny	101	Community
Peter Ritchie	90	MVP
ReneeC	90	Community
Richard Berg MSFT	88	Microsoft
nogChoco	85	Community

Top Answerers List: 

User Name	Total Answers	Who is It?
nobugz	886	MVP
Bruno Yu - MSFT	682	Microsoft Support
Figo Fei - MSFT	672	Microsoft Support
Zhi-Xin Ye - MSFT	501	Microsoft Support
DMan1	444	MVP
Ilya Tumanov	432	Microsoft
Cindy Meister	405	MVP
Arnie Rowland	382	Community
Bite Qiu - MSFT	361	Microsoft Support
Andreas Johansson	339	MVP
ahmedilyas	307	Community
James Manning - MSFT	281	Microsoft
LesterLobo - MSFT	272	Microsoft
Tom Lake - MSFT	268	Microsoft
ReneeC	264	Community
Jens K. Suessmeyer	261	MVP
Richard Berg MSFT	259	Microsoft
Damien Watkins - MSFT	254	Microsoft
einaros	246	Community
TilakGopi	238	Community
Dick Donny	234	Community
Gavin Jin - MSFT	232	Microsoft Support
Simple Samples	212	Community
Shawn Hargreaves - MSFT	198	Microsoft
Bob zhu - MSFT	187	Microsoft Support

There has been much discussion on what to do with off-topic posts, especially in the moderators forum.  I've gotten a request to make an executive decision and stick with it, for here on forth, here is the official Microsoft guidance on how to deal with off-topic posts in the forums:

1. If the question is simply in the wrong forum, move the post to the correct forum.
2. If the question could be answered in the newsgroups, reply to the thread with a link to the newsgroup where the question will be answered.
3. Move the thread to the new "Off-Topic Posts" forum:  http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowForum.aspx?ForumID=1494&SiteID=1
4. If you don't know the appropriate newsgroup or forum but you're sure it needs to be moved, move the post to the "Where's the Forum For?" forum:  http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowForum.aspx?ForumID=881&SiteID=1 

This method will ensure that:

• Search results do not become polluted with "answered" questions that aren't actually answered.
• Reputation and answer rankings are not skewed by housekeeping/answering off-topic posts.
• People who asked off-topic questions will still be able to view the reply to their questions.  (When a post is deleted, it's no longer visible.)

It is no longer necessary to mark off-topic replies as answers.  Please do not do it anymore.