Re: Grouping objects
- From: John McGhie <john@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 23 Oct 2009 22:32:02 +1100
Hi Jeff:
I wasn't criticising. I knew you were using the Web Server (AKA "The
Electronic Headless Chicken") :-)
Currently, the whole "social media" side of Microsoft is in a state of flux,
with various business units all pulling in different directions. And all
using software produced by different third-party vendors :-) As a result,
we get a severe case of Balkanisation: everything is divided into little
walled gardens, each a fiefdom jealously guarded by the sponsoring business
unit.
I assume that Steve Ballmer tacitly encourages this mayhem because Microsoft
is so big that if the individual parts do not compete with each other, there
is nothing to keep them strong.
Essentially, the system "seems" to work like this:
There is a giant "corpus" of text, containing anything ever posted to any
Microsoft forum/newsgroup. This is a fairly substantial distributed SQL
Server Farm containing a terrabyte or so of "text".
This text store drives an NNTP News Host, which itself is a collection of
Windows Server boxes (about 24 of them) connected via a Load Balancer to a
Master Index. The Master Index is responsible for drawing the current state
of the text base from the SQL server and providing the Group Index to the
NNTP machines. The NNTP machines talk to any clients connecting via
news.public.microsoft.com: small ones like you and I, and large ones such as
AOL and COMCAST.
Sitting as satellites around the outside of this are at least five "Forum
Systems". MSDN, TechNet, Social PC, Connect, and Mactopia. There are
probably others I don't know about.
Each of them is some kind of "Web" interface. At least one of them is done
with SharePoint. Some of them implement RSS feeds. Each of them seems to
have been made by a different vendor.
For each of them, you can input via either NNTP or via the web. If you
input via NNTP, you inject directly into the master Text Base. The NNTP
Host queries the Text Base and replicates to the NNTP servers within about
two minutes. The various web flavours query the SQL machine for the stuff
they are interested in, convert it into whatever display format they like,
and display it, usually within four hours. Any given post will appear in
more than one System, and potentially in more than one Forum within a
system, and potentially in different forums on different systems.
If you post via a web forum, the machine stores your post, and is then
supposed to inject it into the SQL machine, tagged with its various Thread
Sequence IDs.
This is where Mactopia loses the plot. Somehow, it loses the Thread
reference IDs. This means when it gets posts, it doesn't know how to thread
them. And when it sends posts, it gets the IDs wrong and the main server
rejects them.
The result is that most of the time, there is something wrong with the posts
the wider world sees. Either a customer post doesn't appear at all, or the
answer appears but not the question, or nothing appears until the third
post.
Most of the people offering help in here use NNTP. That way, at least we
can see the master text base, regardless of whether Mactopia is working or
not. In some groups, Mactopia is quite reliable: it apparently works quite
well in the Excel group. In Word, it doesn't work more often than it does
work, so we tend to ignore it.
Of course, Microsoft would like us all to use the web forums, because the
machinery there enables them to data-mine the knowledge base for all manner
of customer analytics. So they can sell address lists to spammers and
target advertising at your browser and various other things that Marketing
People get up to that people would be most unhappy about if they thought it
was being done to them. They can also build a solid fence around it so they
can control who can get in, and what they can do, which makes it a lot
harder for the Internet low-lifes to steal the content and re-purpose it as
their own.
Personally, I would rather not think the marketing droids were slicing and
dicing my work and putting me into "market segments" and using my effort to
sell products I may never have heard of.
So I stick to NNTP.
NNTP also has some advantages for me that the forums do not have. I can use
it off-line, which means I can (and often do...) do my newsgroups on the
train on the way to work in the morning. It is MUCH faster than the web
interface. And I can see and manage cross-posting a lot better.
But mainly, I don't go to the Mactopia forum because I can't trust it to
have a complete picture of the action, or to correctly replicate my
responses to the people who want them. I really hate working an hour on a
post then discover three days later that it went nowhere, which is a pretty
common occurrence with the Electronic Headless Chicken. Some of the other
systems work a lot better.
And I top-post, usually without snippage. That's of course not ideal, but
it does give people looking at Mactopia a fighting chance of keeping up with
the thread if it is in one of its "moods" and is throwing posts on the
floor.
Cheers
On 23/10/09 4:18 AM, in article 59b7f1a1.3@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx,
"Jeff_Chapman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx" <Jeff_Chapman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hi Jeff:
Would you mind quoting back the original text when you answer, please?
There's a server glitch: we "should" see the original plus your answer as a
threaded discussion. Sadly, most times we don't, so we can't see what your
helpful advice applies to
Previously (this was some time ago), I was told NOT to quote the original
text, as it is redundant. In fact, I was told by another MVP that it is proper
etiquette to turn off the quoting feature on my newsreader, back when I was
using a newsreader.
I used to use Entourage to post to the forums here, but have been using the
web version here at Mactopia lately. I personally find it hard to read when
everyone is always quoting and requoting long portions of other people's
messages. On the web version here, it seems quite easy to figure out what's
going on in the thread, at least for me...
I don't know what kind of issues are occurring on everyone else's end; but if
it's important for everyone to quote text when replying, then this should be
labeled clearly somewhere on the web form. There is nothing on the "Rules of
Conduct" about this provided on the Mactopia forum.
Regarding what Clive said, I've noted that actually, the NNTP server seems to
be even slower at showing the posts than the web version of the Mactopia
forum. I don't really understand what's going on here, what the difference is
between these two formats and why there is a time delay between the time you
post something on Mactopia and the time it shows up on the NNTP news servers.
Of course, I'll be happy to change my "errant behavior" if someone is missing
something or if my conduct is not up to snuff; but there is nothing I've seen
on the Mactopia forum here that suggests that my posts are formatted
inappropriately. Of course, if you have any further "insider" comments to set
me straight, I'd like to hear them now...
Jeff
--
This email is my business email -- Please do not email me about forum
matters unless you intend to pay!
John McGhie, Microsoft MVP (Word, Mac Word), Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. | Ph: +61 (0)4 1209 1410
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:john@xxxxxxxxxxx
.
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