Hi, Jim.
Is there anyway to steer these people in the right direction!? Assuming
most people have their clients set to sort the headers by most recent date
how about a post dated message. The subject line could read something like
this; Only Post MS Access Database Related Questions Here.
Unfortunately, your assumption is incorrect. Most people who use the
newsgroups are questioners, not answerers. If memory serves, only about 13%
of questions posted to the Access newsgroups are posted using traditional
desktop-based newsreaders, and about half of those aren't really questions,
but spammers' posts from computers that don't check whether or not they're
in the correct newsgroup before posting. So targeting these questioners
with a post-dated message only guides a little more than 5% of the
questioners, most of whom are computer savvy and already know how to use
newsgroups correctly.
As for newsreader usage, the handfuls of people who are answering questions
in this newsgroup generally use desktop-based newsreader clients and can see
a post-dated message at the top of their news article lists, while most of
the hundreds of people asking questions in this newsgroup each week are
using Web-based newsreaders, where only the most recently posted articles
show up in their browsers. At last check, nearly 3/4 of posts in this
newsgroup were submitted from these two Web pages for the Microsoft Online
Community:
http://www.microsoft.com/communitie...3c3-c10e-4523-9213-cdfd537838f1&lang=en&cr=US
http://www.microsoft.com/office/com...mspx?dg=microsoft.public.access&lang=en&cr=US
While the second one clearly shows the subject, "Discussions in Access
Database General Questions," when the user arrives on the Web page
displaying the first newsgroup in the Microsoft Office applications, the
first one clearly shows "Discussions in General Questions." The user must
look in the left pane to see that "Access" in the "Office and Desktop
Applications" menu has been selected. Since people who use the Microsoft
Online Community post an average of 1.75 posts (at last check) and there are
so many users with hundreds or even thousands of messages posted to the
newsgroups, you can see that the vast majority are first-time posters. The
Web page title, "Discussions in General Questions," tells them they're in
the right place, no matter whether they're asking a Windows question, an
Outlook Express question, or even a non-computer-related question.
This usability error has been pointed out a number of times, along with the
numerous bugs and misspellings on the Web site in the last year and a half,
and these problems are never fixed. There's a language gap and a
skill-level gap that Microsoft and other major corporations can't fix by
hiring the cheapest labor. Until people figure out that "cheaper" _doesn't_
automatically mean that it costs less and the all too common mindset
"cheaper is _much_ better than 'correct' and 'delivered on time'" is
changed, most computer and software problems aren't going to be fixed in a
reasonable amount of time, so get used to it.
HTH.
Gunny
See
http://www.QBuilt.com for all your database needs.
See
http://www.Access.QBuilt.com for Microsoft Access tips and tutorials.
http://www.Access.QBuilt.com/html/expert_contributors2.html for contact
info.
