GENERAL vs HELP AND SUPPORT groups

V

Vance Roos

There seem to be two XP groups which have very similar sorts of
postings:

microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
microsoft.public.windowsxp.help_and_support

Of course I can tell that "General" means general and
"help_and_support" means help and support.

But is there any real difference nowadays in practice?
 
T

Tom Porterfield

Vance said:
There seem to be two XP groups which have very similar sorts of
postings:

microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
microsoft.public.windowsxp.help_and_support

Of course I can tell that "General" means general and
"help_and_support" means help and support.

But is there any real difference nowadays in practice?

In practice unfortunately no. The Help and Support group was set up with
thought of being used for questions about the "Help and Support" system
within XP that is available on the start menu. Unfortunately the name is
too generic sounding and people end up posting general help and support
questions in there that have nothing to do with XP's "Help and Support"
system.
--
Tom Porterfield
MS-MVP Windows XP & Smart Display
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/tp.porterfield/support

Please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup only.
 
V

Vance Roos

Tom Porterfield said:
In practice unfortunately no. The Help and Support group was
set up with thought of being used for questions about the "Help
and Support" system within XP that is available on the start
menu. Unfortunately the name is too generic sounding and people
end up posting general help and support questions in there that
have nothing to do with XP's "Help and Support" system.


There seem to be approximately twice as many posts to GENERAL as
there are to HELP AND SUPPORT (looking at the number of messages on
the newsserver).

So I guess that means it is better topost to GENERAL.

If someone crossposts to both GENERAL and to HELP AND SUPPORT then do
many people here tend to remove one of the two groups? If they do
then there is no knowing which of the two groups to keep in touch
with most.
 
L

Lorne Smith

Not to mention that a lot of people are probably unwilling to admit they
can't even figure out the help system in Windows ;-)

Lorne
 
R

Ronnie Vernon MVP

Vance said:
There seem to be approximately twice as many posts to GENERAL as
there are to HELP AND SUPPORT (looking at the number of messages on
the newsserver).

So I guess that means it is better topost to GENERAL.

If someone crossposts to both GENERAL and to HELP AND SUPPORT then do
many people here tend to remove one of the two groups? If they do
then there is no knowing which of the two groups to keep in touch
with most.

Crossposting is not generally a good idea. Most of the regular contributors
to these newsgroups will be monitoring both groups and crossposting simply
adds to the overhead and confuses some users. The General group is the place
to post if anyone is in doubt about where a particular query belongs.

--
Ronnie Vernon
Microsoft MVP
Windows Shell/User

Please reply to the newsgroup so all may benefit.
Unsolicited e-mail is not answered.
 

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