WE KNOW ITS BETA! now how about doing it right?

[bigswifty]

ok MS people, this "beta" test needs to be put on the
right track.
someone needs to set up a place for people to make their
reports, currently this newsgroup is devolving into a,
"it's broken"
"it's beta stupid"
shoutfest.
perhaps you folks at MS are unaware of how to run an
effective open beta
(you know the type, where we the users give you reports
and feedback, that you actually read and respond to rather
then you folks just sitting there watching the app ruin
dozens of machines at a time, I for one perfer to be an
active participant when I test rather then a guinea pig
getting a big squirt of shampoo in the eyes)

we need a reporting email address to send testing issues
or a suitable forum for posting, gathering, & reporting
the bugs and errors. Someplace with a list of known
issues, previously reported bugs (searchable) and specific
warnings for the n00bs who don't actually know what a beta
is about, and what COULD happen based on previous reports
from other testers.

so far this is a complete train wreck of a testing
environment, its clueless, aimless, scattered, and frankly
in more need of a tweek then the app we're testing.

Microsoft talks a good talk about professionalisim, now
it's time to walk the walk, if you do not take this
seriously how the hell can you expect us and the world to
take you seriously?

 

[Jon G]

This is the best forum for this test. We are dealing with a public beta and
unfortunately we will be dealing with some less experienced users that may
be caught off guard. The best is being done to assist everyone. The "folks"
at MS are well aware of how to run an open beta. These posts are getting
read by the people at MS, I assure you

This is not a train wreck by any means. It's just the first couple of days
of testing and this is expected. Give it a few more days and there will be
plenty of relevant answers available.

 

[Bill Sanderson]

This is a public beta. It is open to anyone in the world running their
computer on Windows 2000 or later, set to English.

The support in these groups is peer support--there won't be vast numbers of
Microsoft staff posting here, although there are dozens of such posts in the
groups.

This is not a focused technical beta with close interaction, of the kind you
describe, I'm afraid.

 

[codemastr]

This is the best forum for this test. We are dealing with a public beta

and unfortunately we will be dealing with some less experienced users that
may be caught off guard. The best is being done to assist everyone. The
"folks" at MS are well aware of how to run an open beta. These posts are
getting read by the people at MS, I assure you

They may be read, but newsgroups do not provide the same kind of dialog you
can get elsewhere. Why? Keeping track of threads becomes difficult. If I
posted a bug a month ago, then today MS responds, do you think I'm likely to
notice their response (perhaps asking for additional info)? I doubt it.
However, if it were through email, then I'd immediately see the MS question
in my inbox. This newsgroup thing is just annoying. I see 100+ posts that I
don't care about, and 5 that I do, yet I have to weed through those 100+
each time rather than simply receiving the ones that concern me.

 

[Jon G]

Beta testers are accustomed to this kind of stuff People have to be
aware, prior to downloading and installing this app, that there is no
support for it other than the help they may or may not find in newsgroups.
This is the reality of beta i'm afraid.

 

[Dennis]

A thanks to Bill for being straightforward and clear
regarding the actual nature and parameters of this beta test.

Apologies in advance for the length of this post.

After having read through all this forum's posts, it is
distressing to see the extent of difficulties users are
experiencing. Many are clearly due to their not being
sufficiently skilled to participate, or due to the
infections already on their systems rather than the beta
software itself.

That having been said, this software is obviously only
ready for beta testing in a properly controlled
environment. There is obviously a significant range of
different technical issues with this product which cannot
be brushed off as "user error" or "typical." Arguably,
this sw is closer to an alpha that a beta. This puts even
more pressure on the beta process; a peer review approach
is simply inadequate given the quality level of the sw at
this time.

What I find objectionable is the religiously fervent
response of Microsoft apologists laying the bulk of
responsibility for user problems on the users themselves.
The fact is, Microsoft is actively marketing this software.
The MS and Beta home page broadly encourages the download.
The Release Notes and FAQ's say virtually nothing about
its many issues. There is no development train, bug
reports, bug fixes, internals documentation, etc. Beta
testing is of course not understood by average users, and
to judge from quite a few of the posts, many power users as
well. This is both a software and process engineering
issue, and at this point in the lifecycle, should be owned
by visible, accountable engineers. Waiting for a flood of
users problems that inundate a few peer-reviewers, is not
in the best interests of users nor Microsoft.

Bottom line, average users are being actively invited to
participate in a "world-wide public beta" for software that
is not ready for such, using an informal process that by
definition lacks sufficient rigor and efficiency, and that
therefore those users are unequipped to handle.

Someone in MS engineering was asleep at the switch, or this
was a marketing driven decision.

I urge MS to revisit their approach.

Thanks for the opportunity to provide feedback.

-DG

PS. BTW, I own a PC white-box and consulting services
business, and write a PC newspaper column. I also spent
20+ years in software R&D.

 

[Bill Sanderson]

Most if not all NNTP readers can be set to alert you to responses to threads
you set as "watched."

This works for me, even after lengthy times.

In XPSP2, Outlook Express has a "secret" keystroke to show only threads with
responses to your messages which helps find them after lengthy elapsed
time--Control-H (its a toggle.)

 

[Bill Sanderson]

The feedback is welcome, I'm sure--really!

You might check out reviews of the Giant software product which this beta is
based on. It has been on the market for some time (sorry--I don't have the
details)--and is reasonably mature and gets high marks in the reviews. I
believe I've seen suggestions that a high false positive rate was a problem
with the Giant version, but I have no experience with it before this beta
version.

My sense is that the feeling was that the product was already mature enough
for wide distribution, and that the problem was significant enough that a
strong stroke was needed to really have an impact on the problem. And I
tend to think that what I see in these groups bears that out in some ways.

I can't disagree that there are a number of users having a bad
experience--and I'm not clear about whether the issue is the spyware itself
or the product's cleaning actions, or the communication between the novice
users and the product. The level of these bad experiences, in terms of
statistics, is hard to judge. I don't have access to download stats. My
guess is that there is very high interest in this download and that the
volume we see in the groups reflects this.

I'm not knocking your analysis, but there are other ways to view the
evidence, and I tend towards a more positive view of what is happening.
You're more experienced in some ways than I am, and readers shouldn't assume
I have inside information--I don't.

 

[jesusbagel.]

agreed.

More importantly than that.. **** INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY.

 

[codemastr]

Most if not all NNTP readers can be set to alert you to responses to

threads you set as "watched."

This works for me, even after lengthy times.

In XPSP2, Outlook Express has a "secret" keystroke to show only threads
with responses to your messages which helps find them after lengthy
elapsed time--Control-H (its a toggle.)

Indeed, but that's still more work than simply reading my email.

 

[Bill Sanderson]

So--use the web interface and set email responses. What I can't recall is
if the web interface used in this project does that--lets see:

Hmm - no--it looks like they are using the older interface that doesn't have
the bells and whistles. Too bad!

 

[Guest]

QUOTE "This is a public beta. It is open to anyone in the
world running their
computer on Windows 2000 or later, set to English.

The support in these groups is peer support--there won't
be vast numbers of
Microsoft staff posting here, although there are dozens of
such posts in the
groups.

This is not a focused technical beta with close
interaction, of the kind you
describe, I'm afraid." QUOTE

Then it is a "damage test" and we are the test subjects,
so as usual MS is less concerned about our input
(since we of course could never know more about anything
then the folks at MS -like when frontpage or word
reformats a document because it knows better then me what
I want or need to do- and more concerned with not getting
the whole world ticked at them because the app crippled
their new box.

Sorry folks, I don't beta like that.

public & closed Betas under the belt so far:

eudora (original)
netscape (the original)
Newsbin pro
ws_ftp (original)
Winzip
Mysql
Everquest
WWIIonline
Starwars Galaxies
Eve online
Horizons
Beyond unreal XMP

Sorry guys, but you have a whole lot to learn about open
tests, I mean no test is without problems, but you guys
just seem to be concerned with how far the blood splashes.

Im outta here.