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JoeUser2004's avatar
JoeUser2004
Bronze Contributor
Feb 24, 2022

This is the worst forum I have ever used (in 40 years!)

I have been contributing to "internet" forums since the BBS days (i.e. before the internet per se).   The organization of this forum is the worst I have ever seen.   I struggled to find this subf...
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SatelliteSue's avatar
SatelliteSue
Copper Contributor
Feb 28, 2022
@JoeUser is correct.....this community is horribly confusing. There is no FAQ page anywhere on the Home page, and because that important piece of information is missing it's a real problem figuring out how to go about the basics, like making a post. As a new comer I'd like to know how to ask a question, and in the most appropriate thread for my topic. No where is that to be found. It's hard for me to fathom why the FAQ page wasn't made an integral part of the Home page on this website from DAY ONE. I simply shake my head in wonder.
I've been online for 23 years and have used community forums for technical questions an untold number of times during all these years and, believe me, this forum is definitely at the bottom of any I've ever been on. Someone has to take a good, hard look at what a new person sees when they come here, and, then, make some changes that will clarify, solely for new people, how to navigate this website. Folks who have been coming here for long periods know where everything is so they don't need instructions on how this community works, but new people, like myself, do.
Allen's avatar
Allen
Icon for Community Manager rankCommunity Manager
Mar 01, 2022

SatelliteSue 

 

Thank you for taking time to join the discussion, I appreciate everyone's perspectives and always love to learn about problems anyone has encountered with the community. I would like to comment on some of the things you have mentioned.

 

  • The Microsoft Tech Community focuses on the IT Pros, Devs and system administrators. As such we are working to deliver a community that works for people who work in these areas. As you rightly say outside businesspeople don't rely on emails that much but given the target audience for the Microsoft Tech Community it seems reasonable that we should add the getting started to our welcome emails. I appreciate you tend to user texts and voicemail, I have to say in my experience I have never found a community forum that uses these mediums for delivering welcome messages, in any market area, happy to be wrong.

  • Could we put something on the homepage? Yes of course we could but it probably wouldn't make sense to keep it there forever so it would probably make sense to make it something that disappears after you achieve a certain rank.

  • The primary navigation of the site takes you through the most common things you can engage with in the community, that is: Communities, Blogs, Events, Microsoft Learn, the community lounge and is already very busy across the screen sizes we support. Events are a very popular aspect of engagement on the Microsoft Tech Community.

In summary, we hear you on the onboard experience and we are working on a new experience which we will roll out during 2022, along with some other significant updates to the community.

 

I will however take away the feedback we have received here and see what we can do to make it easier between now and the new UI / UX being ready to ship.

 

You have provided some very serious and honest feedback, however I would also encourage you to avoid making comments about any community member being "stuck in their ways", as its not constructive or respectful.

I will of course update this thread as we make any changes that come about as a result of this feedback.

 

 

Allen Smith

Technical Lead

Microsoft Tech Community

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