Feedback on new format
Peter
A job very well done....As always, a step ahead...
--
Have a great day everyone!
JE McGimpsey
In article <78309134-BAC1-4096...@microsoft.com>,
Debra Dalgleish
http://www.microsoft.com/office/community/en-us/FlyoutOverview.mspx#2
--
Debra Dalgleish
Excel FAQ, Tips & Book List
http://www.contextures.com/tiptech.html
JE McGimpsey
Utterly irrelevant to me, then. It'll be interesting to see what happens
with the ratings, since only those who aren't likely to be regular users
will be able to vote.
In article <1F1592DE-E48D-417A...@microsoft.com>,
Steve Anderson [msft]
> It'll be interesting to see what happens
> with the ratings, since only those who aren't likely to be regular users
> will be able to vote.
>
Unfortunately likely true at least for a while. We're hoping that regular users
such as yourself will use the interface every once in a while to rate and enter
suggestions for Office products (these find their way back to the application
teams if they are the top vote-getters).
--
-Steve Anderson
Program Manager
Office
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
JE McGimpsey
Will there be any real benefit to me for doing so? Between the terrible
latency, the utter ugliness of the interface, the complete absence of
filters, the poor editing capabilities, and being limited to only part
of the microsoft.public* hierarchy, I don't see myself deciding to give
up my nntp newsreader for this web based "reader".
As an MVP, I certainly don't *need* to enter suggestions via the web
reader in order to have a suggestion "find (its) way back to the
application teams". And as a regular user, I much prefer direct feedback
such as the "Send feedback on <app>" menu item in the Help menu of any
MacOffice application, rather than adding another filter.
I'm a bit concerned about the implications of ratings, however. The web
reader's help says "only the Web-based Newsreader offers the additional
features of rating posts, building a reputation..." The "build a
reputation" seems hokey at best - it appears that only those using
P*ssport will even have a reputation. That's a bit pejorative for the
majority of experts, including MVPs that don't use the CDOI, don't you
think? As well as being potentially misleading? OTOH, it would seem to
be trivial for me, were I so inclined, to create yet another P*ssport
for the specific purpose of rating my own posts, so I don't see the
point to proscribing self-ratings.
OTOH, for the occasional user, I see a big advantage in the notification
feature.
In article <E1D4AF32-D242-42C6...@microsoft.com>,
Steve Anderson [msft]
Sorry, I think you misunderstand me. I don't think heavy users of NNTP will
use this interface much (unless they're behind a firewall that blocks port 119)
for normal posting. We've built this so people can get answers to their
questions without having to know what an NNTP server is. A web interface
could never hope to replace a rich client (no offline, doesn't track which
posts you've read, plus the other things you mention) but it works pretty
well for people who don't need a rich client.
As for suggestions, you as an MVP don't need to use this interface
to get things to application teams, but everyone else pretty much does.
As for the reputations being tied to Passport, it's really the only way we
can assure people are who they say they are.
We hope to have a story for expert users when the next version of OE
ships (although I know you personally don't use OE, so no luck there...)
--
-Steve Anderson
Program Manager
Office
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
JE McGimpsey
Steve Anderson [msft] <Stev...@i.hate.spam.microsoft.com> wrote:
> Yeah, but what do you really think of it? <g>
I really don't know - I only spent a couple of minutes looking at it! <g>
> Sorry, I think you misunderstand me. I don't think heavy users of
> NNTP will use this interface much (unless they're behind a firewall
> that blocks port 119) for normal posting. We've built this so people
> can get answers to their questions without having to know what an
> NNTP server is. A web interface could never hope to replace a rich
> client (no offline, doesn't track which posts you've read, plus the
> other things you mention) but it works pretty well for people who
> don't need a rich client.
I recognize that. The problem I see is that the very people you
presumably want to be rated are unlikely to fall into that category.
> As for suggestions, you as an MVP don't need to use this interface
> to get things to application teams, but everyone else pretty much does.
Well, every MacOffice app has an item on its help menu that takes the
user to MacBU's feedback page. A remarkable number of these messages get
replies.
> As for the reputations being tied to Passport, it's really the only way we
> can assure people are who they say they are.
Sure. Makes sense. Except that there's no such assurance. I have at
least 30 p*ssports with different names, addresses and varying amounts
of fake personal info associated with them. I create a new one every
time I come upon a site that requests one.
I've also, after a request from one of my security clients, got access
to 6 additional p*ssports. Took me approximately 30 minutes to crack
them (all using social engineering, not cryptography). To be fair, I
couldn't access the other 4 that I tried after 4 hours. Under the
current schema, I expect social engineering will be even more effective
in the future - much as SSN's are now.
Again, I suspect it will screen out the people you'd like most to track.
> We hope to have a story for expert users when the next version of OE
> ships (although I know you personally don't use OE, so no luck there...)
And that ship date is...?
Appreciate the feedback, Steve.
Debra Dalgleish
the newsgroups, or the Google archives. For example, in Excel-General,
the following posts don't appear in excel.misc:
Multiple Hyperlinks in One Cell
Importing real time data from database
Switchboard in Excel 2003
Links between workbooks
Steve Anderson [msft] wrote:
> Yeah, but what do you really think of it? <g>
>
> Sorry, I think you misunderstand me. I don't think heavy users of NNTP will
> use this interface much (unless they're behind a firewall that blocks port 119)
> for normal posting. We've built this so people can get answers to their
> questions without having to know what an NNTP server is. A web interface
> could never hope to replace a rich client (no offline, doesn't track which
> posts you've read, plus the other things you mention) but it works pretty
> well for people who don't need a rich client.
>
> As for suggestions, you as an MVP don't need to use this interface
> to get things to application teams, but everyone else pretty much does.
>
> As for the reputations being tied to Passport, it's really the only way we
> can assure people are who they say they are.
>
> We hope to have a story for expert users when the next version of OE
> ships (although I know you personally don't use OE, so no luck there...)
>
--
Steve Anderson [msft]
>
> Sure. Makes sense. Except that there's no such assurance. I have at
> least 30 p*ssports with different names, addresses and varying amounts
> of fake personal info associated with them. I create a new one every
> time I come upon a site that requests one.
>
Right: you can't develop a reputation in this view unless you use the
same Passport account. However, for those who do, we can virtually
assure that a post is from the person they say it is, and their "questions
answered" count is true.
JE McGimpsey
Steve Anderson [msft] <Stev...@i.hate.spam.microsoft.com> wrote:
> Right: you can't develop a reputation in this view unless you use the
> same Passport account. However, for those who do, we can virtually
> assure that a post is from the person they say it is, and their "questions
> answered" count is true.
Unless I were to create three additional passport accounts and use them
to mark all my original account's answers as responsive. If I do it for
500 posts (admittedly a mind-numbing task), I can sit back for 4 weeks
and get a gold star.
So yes, the "questions answered" count is "true", in the sense that the
count is accurate, but there's no assurance that it's "true" in the
sense that actual peer review was done.
Guess I don't see how it's that much better than rating posts that
aren't from people signed into the "web reader".
However, this isn't really a matter for debate. I'll be interested in
seeing how this plays out, and would be tickled to be proved wrong. MS's
goal should be great customer service, and if this helps to provide
that, more power to the web reader!
Steve Anderson [msft]
-Steve Anderson
Program Manager
Office
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
Steve Anderson [msft]
front-end to NNTP. It has been restarted and all should be well.
Please don't hesitate to contact us either through the Contact Us link below, or
directly via email when you see service-level things like this. I'm really glad I
saw this post: thanks for letting us know.
--
-Steve Anderson
Program Manager
Office
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
Debra Dalgleish
However, I don't see a 'Contact Us' link. Where is it located?
--
Debra Dalgleish
Excel FAQ, Tips & Book List
http://www.contextures.com/tiptech.html
Harlan Grove
>"JE McGimpsey" wrote:
>>It'll be interesting to see what happens
>>with the ratings, since only those who aren't likely to be regular users
>>will be able to vote.
>>
>
>Unfortunately likely true at least for a while. We're hoping that regular
>users such as yourself will use the interface every once in a while to rate
>and enter suggestions for Office products (these find their way back to the
>application teams if they are the top vote-getters).
Then you're going to have a very skewed sample because anyone with NNTP access
to these newsgroups on any ISP that carries them along with a real newsreader
would be extremely unlikely to use the CDO interface.
That said, I use some web-based interfaces to newsgroups, but I have a very
strong bias in favor of the way Google does it, specifically, sorting threads by
the date of the most recent response in the thread, not the CDO approach of
sorting by the original posting date.
Further, the old CDO at least showed message previews below the message list.
The new CDO shows them on the right. Who thought of that idiotic layout?
If you want a less biased/skewed sampling of features users want, why not put a
survey on your web site and post periodic announcements about its availability
in each of the newsgroups. Then anyone with a browser and internet connection
who wants to avoid CDO at all cost could provide you with feedback. However,
your claims seem a bit ludicrous. Doesn't Microsoft employ anyone with skills in
text pattern analysis? Couldn't you gleen information on new features from plain
text newsgroup messages sent by anyone with any kind of newsgroup connection?
Anyway, here's a freebie: for Excel, consider adding an option (as in Tools >
Options) to let users specify whether or not to use the File Import wizard when
opening CSV files rather than having to rename *.csv files as *.txt files in
order to have Excel automatically run the wizard when opening the file. Seems to
me that'd be a lot easier than fixing the brain-dead CSV functionality that
converts numeric text within double-quoted fields in CSV files to numbers rather
than text.
--
To top-post is human, to bottom-post and snip is sublime.