Some times ago Microsoft started http://forums.microsoft.com/ which serve
more or less the same purpose as the microsoft.public news groups.

The major difference between these forums and newsgroups from user's
perspective is that forums are much more closely moderated.

Microsoft puts a lot of pressure on developers to support customers through
forums and newsgroups, and http://forums.microsoft.com/ makes this job much
easier.

In http://forums.microsoft.com/ users (and moderators) can mark/unmark
questions as "answer" that simplifies browsing experience and gives us more
chances to concentrate on threads that need attention instead of reading all
traffic. As a result your question would have more chances to be answered if
it is posted in the forum. This is especially true because MS routinely
monitors participation rate of developers in the
http://forums.microsoft.com/. So now in our group we have shortage of
questions and sort of competition who first will have a chance to answer J

Questions related to XML, XSL, XSD and other technologies in System.Xml.dll
and MSXML should be posed to " XML and the .NET Framework" forum (
http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowForum.aspx?ForumID=38&SiteID=1).

Another nice feature that forums offer is ability for the moderator to move
questions between the forums. From my experience, 5 to 10% of questions are
misplaced.

Welcome to http://forums.microsoft.com/ !

WebData team.

Regardless of interface functionality and message board protocol, I
find Sergey's notice very helpful. I've posted what is probably a very
simple question on why an article's xml/xsl example works in IE but not
in Firefox to comp.text.xml and after zero activity a day later, I
posted it here. No responses yet, granted it's been only a few hours,
but I've always recieved, and at time been able to contribute, help or
at least a request for clarification very quickly on other newsgroups
such as microsoft.public.sql and microsoft.public.secturity.

I wonder if my question is so simple it's too boring. Mabye I didn't
provide enough info? I did search for the article, author and url in
case it had been answered before. Nope. In any case, the fact that
there's a forum where people are eager to answer any question they can
sounds sweet, sign me up.

~mahalie
(xml noob)
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