Comment by Dylan on "More on MSDN"

Dylan — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 10:58:40 GMT

(I should probably preface this post by saying I do a lot of SharePoint development right now, so my experience may be different.)

I actually like MSDN's documentation on most things. Granted, I usually get there by typing in a class or method name through Google, but it's usually pretty complete. Its big weakness is that it doesn't always show useful examples for the more obscure SharePoint features, but it at least provides a basis that I can refer to when I look up the actual usage on the web on in books. I've only had to dig out .NET Reflector and figure out just what a particular method is doing once or twice.

I'm not sure it would be as good if it was a wiki; the .NET classes might be well-documented, but somehow I doubt the less-used (like some SharePoint stuff and the class in the example) would get the same treatment. Now, if MSDN documentation included the official MS documentation plus a wiki page (rather than just a comments thread), that might be more useful.

Comment by Jonathan Allen on "More on MSDN"

Jonathan Allen — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 11:15:59 GMT

I gave up on the wiki when I realized that with every version all my comments are lost. (Well not lost, but very well hidden from anyone looking at pages for the newer version.)

Comment by mike on "More on MSDN"

mike — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 12:13:23 GMT

@Jonathan -- I'll forward your comment to the wiki team. Seems like a legitimate, um, disincentive to using the wiki, I agree.

Comment by Jonathan Allen on "More on MSDN"

Jonathan Allen — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 13:09:05 GMT

Thanks, that really means a lot to me.

I actually complained about it months ago, but going through the "proper channels" often means the people who care never hear the message.

Comment by Larry W Jordan Jr on "More on MSDN"

Larry W Jordan Jr — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 09:31:54 GMT

Thanks for the comments and debate on MSDN. I want to address a number of things in the post and clear some things up.

The Community Content that we enable for each article is more than offering just comments on the topic. It is designed to support embellishing the content with examples, pointers and other additions to improve the topic. We also enabled tagging through the same mechanism for discovery.

We have had a lot of prolific additions to the content from folks who add PowerShell and other scripts…
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.decimal.aspx#CommunityContent

And helpers
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa337083(SQL.90).aspx#CommunityContent

Just as an example of the diversity of the contributions. We allow edits and modifications, etc.

Specific to the versioning issue is a little more complicated matrix and it is on our radar to enable it <g/> Versioning across releases for Community Content adds an additional dimension of features to the UX itself and also needs to provide for a way to bring forward Community Content and Annotations based on the user selecting that it applies to a specific version or all past/future versions. I am working with this currently with my team.

Finally, the issue of being able to contribute articles to the library versus annotations only to existing topics is being developed right now. We are targeting the broader announcement of the features of this capability for the PDC and look forward to sharing more information on my blog as we get closer to the pilots.

http://blogs.msdn.com/innovation/

Larry W Jordan Jr - Product Unit Manager for the MSDN and TechNet Infrastructure and Services Team

Comment by Chris Slemp on "More on MSDN"

Chris Slemp — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 21:06:17 GMT

I'd like to chime in on the discoverability comments... I've just completed an informal evaluation with a dozen customers, who we asked to use MSDN Search for 12 days. We had only minor complaints and several converts as a result. In my experience talking to literally hundreds of customers about our search, those that are griping about it haven't tried it lately, or haven't noticed the new features we've added in recent months. Have a read of my post describing our recent study here. http://blogs.msdn.com/cslemp/archive/2008/08/12/12-technical-pros-evaluate-msdn-technet-search-for-12-days.aspx

More on MSDN - Comments

Comment by Dylan on "More on MSDN"

Comment by Jonathan Allen on "More on MSDN"

Comment by mike on "More on MSDN"

Comment by Jonathan Allen on "More on MSDN"

Comment by Larry W Jordan Jr on "More on MSDN"

Comment by Chris Slemp on "More on MSDN"