These forums hardly work. They lose posts and are function poorly. Above
that, there is hardly ANY help provided here. Is there any Macromedia people
on Macromedia's forums? why bother posting here if this is just a joke?

I have to agree with you.
It's just bad business.

Macromedia did state that these forums are User-to-user, by no mean an offical
support. Macromedia cannot force experienced user to log in and spend thier own
time answering questions, not me. Furthermore, number of question posted is far
far more than just a few experienced users can handle. So... in my own opinion,
it is not a surprising result. I asked a few questions and the worst one has no
reply at all. Almost (if not all) none of the other questions I posted have a
solution suggested. Yet I keeps on spending time I cannot afford to help as
much as possible. I do not expect others to do the same but just hoping one day
what I gave will come back as what I get. What if Macromedia give out small
gift for users who answered enough number of questions, like earning points.
*grin* Just some free copies of their software should not cost them too much,
right? ;-) Oh well, anyway, do experience some problem when using these
forums, like today, get server/connection error often enough. Thats true.
Wish you all well and enjoy flashing GaryC

maybe if the questions asked were more complete and not just someone asking
basic "in the manual" questions

I think there should be a forum for those who are certified only as well as a
beginer forum

even the beginer forum should have some form of prerequist like knowing what
stop() does at least or maybe completing the tutorials that come with the
software grants you access to the forums

Unfortunately I think that l a lot of posts are from people that are using
hacked copies of the software

As an open discusion forum, its hard to say who can post here, same for a
newsgroup.

Sadly but true, many questions posted are asking very basic simple (repeated)
questions. Very often one can find solution(s) from Flash help files, samples,
Macromedia TechNote and good search on google etc.

I can see there are advanced users answering posts but its not their duty to
answer each and every post.