Forum Discussion
Why do you allow simple user questions in TechCommunity that should be in Q&A?
Thanks for raising this — it’s a fair question and one we do look at regularly.
Microsoft Tech Community and Microsoft Q&A serve different but overlapping purposes, and that overlap is where some of this confusion comes from.
Why user questions appear in Tech Community
Tech Community is primarily intended for discussion, announcements, best practices, and peer‑to‑peer conversation around Microsoft products. However, it is also an open community platform, and many users arrive via search engines or product links without understanding the distinction between Tech Community and Microsoft Q&A.
As a result:
- Some users post support‑style questions in Tech Community because that’s where they landed first.
- Some topics (like Outlook behaviour, UI changes, or configuration quirks) sit in a grey area between discussion and support.
- We deliberately avoid over‑restricting posting, as that tends to block genuine community engagement and first‑time contributors.
Where appropriate, posts may be guided, moved, or redirected to a more suitable forum, but this is done selectively rather than automatically.
On Q&A Assist and subject‑matter moderation
You’re correct that Microsoft Q&A has:
- Dedicated subject‑matter moderators
- Q&A Assist and tooling that is optimised for troubleshooting and definitive answers
For clearly support‑focused questions, Q&A is often the better place to get a fast, authoritative response.
That said:
- Tech Community relies on community expertise and visibility, and many questions do get answered quickly by knowledgeable members.
- Not all product‑related questions are purely “support” issues — some benefit from broader discussion or shared experiences rather than a single accepted answer.
- We actively encourage users (and moderators) to redirect posts to Q&A when that will lead to a better outcome.
What we aim to balance
Our goal is to balance:
- Keeping Tech Community focused on discussion and knowledge sharing
- Ensuring users are not blocked or discouraged from asking questions
- Helping questions land in the best place to get answered, rather than simply closing or deleting them
We appreciate feedback like this, and it helps inform how we continue to improve guidance, routing, and education for users across both platforms.
If you spot posts that would clearly be better suited for Microsoft Q&A, flagging them or suggesting the alternative forum in a reply is genuinely helpful — both to the user and to the community overall.
You are doing the users a disservice because their question will not be answered by the Q&A Assist AI or reviewed by the Q&A Subject Matter Mods, who are specialist in answering these kinds of questions. Instead the question will languish in TechCommunity until someone stumbles over it.
Community ManagerThanks for raising this — it’s a fair question and one we do look at regularly.
Microsoft Tech Community and Microsoft Q&A serve different but overlapping purposes, and that overlap is where some of this confusion comes from.
Why user questions appear in Tech Community
Tech Community is primarily intended for discussion, announcements, best practices, and peer‑to‑peer conversation around Microsoft products. However, it is also an open community platform, and many users arrive via search engines or product links without understanding the distinction between Tech Community and Microsoft Q&A.
As a result:
- Some users post support‑style questions in Tech Community because that’s where they landed first.
- Some topics (like Outlook behaviour, UI changes, or configuration quirks) sit in a grey area between discussion and support.
- We deliberately avoid over‑restricting posting, as that tends to block genuine community engagement and first‑time contributors.
Where appropriate, posts may be guided, moved, or redirected to a more suitable forum, but this is done selectively rather than automatically.
On Q&A Assist and subject‑matter moderation
You’re correct that Microsoft Q&A has:
- Dedicated subject‑matter moderators
- Q&A Assist and tooling that is optimised for troubleshooting and definitive answers
For clearly support‑focused questions, Q&A is often the better place to get a fast, authoritative response.
That said:
- Tech Community relies on community expertise and visibility, and many questions do get answered quickly by knowledgeable members.
- Not all product‑related questions are purely “support” issues — some benefit from broader discussion or shared experiences rather than a single accepted answer.
- We actively encourage users (and moderators) to redirect posts to Q&A when that will lead to a better outcome.
What we aim to balance
Our goal is to balance:
- Keeping Tech Community focused on discussion and knowledge sharing
- Ensuring users are not blocked or discouraged from asking questions
- Helping questions land in the best place to get answered, rather than simply closing or deleting them
We appreciate feedback like this, and it helps inform how we continue to improve guidance, routing, and education for users across both platforms.
If you spot posts that would clearly be better suited for Microsoft Q&A, flagging them or suggesting the alternative forum in a reply is genuinely helpful — both to the user and to the community overall.
Thank you for the very complete and well thought out response. Knowing that The Powers That Be are aware of this is really all I wanted to accomplish.
If you spot posts that would clearly be better suited for Microsoft Q&A, flagging them or suggesting the alternative forum in a reply
I'm just another user, I don't feel qualified to make that kind of call. And, as you pointed out:
Not all product‑related questions are purely “support” issues — some benefit from broader discussion or shared experiences rather than a single accepted answer.
I'll answer the ones that I can, but I'll leave any classification of what does, or does not belong here, to the mods.