This is admittedly confusing. There is a microsoft.public.word.general
newsgroup. It was deprecated by Microsoft many years ago but still thrives
on many news servers. The reason MS deleted it was that it was *too*
general, and lazy users would post there instead of trying to ascertain
which of the many specialized NGs would be most appropriate for their
questions.
When Microsoft created the Web-based "discussion groups" (which mirror the
Usenet newsgroups carried at msnews.microsoft.com), a design decision was
made that each product area should have a NG for "general questions." The
Word MVPs were polled about which one this should be. The most obvious
choice would have been microsoft.public.word.newusers, but it was already
such a high-traffic NG that we didn't want to add to that. So the decision
was made (perhaps unwisely) to use docmanagement, partly because it was
relatively low-traffic and partly because nobody was entirely sure what it
was supposed to be for, anyway (which is one reason it had little traffic).
It was undoubtedly intended (and was mostly used) for fairly sophisticated
and complex questions of "document management," but now, for better or
worse, such questions mingle with the "general questions" coming from users
of the Communities forums.
The "friendly names" of the discussion groups in many cases do not match the
NG names; for example, microsoft.public.word.vba.general is called
"Programming," which is more likely to be meaningful to new posters.
--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.
Veronica Brown said:
Microsoft:
Did you know that your links to the "General Questions" board for Word
actually point to microsoft.public.word.docmanagement...? I tried replacing
"docmanagement" with "general" in the Address bar but I got the error
"Discussion Group not found," though I can see this group in my news
reader.
