[kennysoona]

There used to be some sort of forum they had, I don't remember what it was, MSDN forums or Technet or something, but it used to dominate search results, and all the answers were from like, senior hobbyists who couldn't suggest much more than restarting or suggesting checking for updates. Maybe that was before every search result was Reddit or SO though.

[Galanwe]

That's MSDN, and these "senior hobbyists" were given a badge by MS to look credible: "MVP" (most valuable professional).

Cherry on top: you used to pay to have an MSDN membership and access this wonderful community.

To be fair though, the early MSDN was really good, and in a distant past MVP was a real achievement (say early 2000s). Now it's a weird mix real issues and "my printer blinks red, how to fix?"

I don't think anyone reads MSDN at Microsoft anymore, it's a deadland, but I guess they generate some metrics of user engagement and product feedback from there.

[kennysoona]

I wasn't even talking about people who paid for a cert, just people signing up to try and help. They are generally more annoying then helpful to people who can do anything more than install and uninstall programs. Without a doubt every search result I found on that forum from someone having a similar issue never resulted in a useful lead.

[Terretta]

> Without a doubt every search result I found on that forum from someone having a similar issue never resulted in a useful lead.

This was subsumed into answers.microsoft.com and it's turned into a few of those original "good with computers" retirees spending all day answering from within their own knowledge, now overwhelmed by countless individuals with names or flavors of English suggesting emerging economic zones "answering" everything with copy paste non-responsive responses.

If the asker persists through enough (5 - 8?) turns until the copy paster grasps that they don't understand the problem, then it turns into (paraphrasing) "no clue, I'm not real but was just trying to help, try Microsoft support".

This is so consistent, I wonder what is driving it. They seem to try to look official, but eventually say they are not actually Microsoft, and punt. What is this accomplishing? Why are they spending all this time? Is it some kind of training exercise or on-ramp to support jobs? Inquiring minds want to know!

[ndiddy]

> This is so consistent, I wonder what is driving it.

Microsoft has a cert called "Most Valuable Professional" that gives out a ton of free stuff (free MSDN subscription, free admission to a conference that gives away hardware, etc). It also probably looks good on your resume to hiring managers who don't know any better. Renewing the cert involves doing "community work", and the easiest way to do community work is to post a lot on Microsoft's forums. Microsoft doesn't care about the quality of the posts, or whether they solve the problem, solely about the number. This is why whenever you look up a Windows issue and go to Microsoft's forums, you always see people posting the same copy-pasted "Hi, I'm a Microsoft community expert who has been providing independent Windows advice for the past 10 years. blah blah blah Have you tried running sfc /scannow?" response to every single problem.

[kennysoona]

So that's the answer to the question I always had but never bothered to ask. Thanks!

[kennysoona]

> This was subsumed into answers.microsoft.com and it's turned into a few of those original "good with computers" retirees spending all day answering from within their own knowledge,

Ah yeah, this is exactly what I was referring to!

> If the asker persists through enough (5 - 8?) turns until the copy paster grasps that they don't understand the problem, then it turns into (paraphrasing) "no clue, I'm not real but was just trying to help, try Microsoft support".

Yes! And if you are doing anything even slightly out of their grasp that requires doing something 'different', they assume you are doing something wrong or messing with stuff you shouldn't be, e.g. "You shouldn't be touching the registry" - ugh.

> This is so consistent, I wonder what is driving it. They seem to try to look official, but eventually say they are not actually Microsoft, and punt. What is this accomplishing? Why are they spending all this time? Is it some kind of training exercise or on-ramp to support jobs? Inquiring minds want to know!

I think it really is just older people who 'like' computers but never learned that much about them. They found a zone where they can mostly be helpful to people who know a little less then them, which is fine, but they don't understand maybe they should not try and solve every problem.

[wil421]

Amazon has an ask a question feature and it will email a lot of people who previously bought the product, not sure how it works. Anyway, I saw tons of responses from elderly people with nonsense answers like “I don’t know the answers please don’t email me”. People felt compelled to respond, now I see why Nigerian prince scams are so successful.

[kennysoona]

There was a story recently that Reese Witherspoon was in a jury, and the other members of the Jury genuinely thought she was a lawyer because of Legally Blonde.

That kind of ridiculousness is way more common than you think. These people shouldn't be allowed to vote let alone try to assist in solving even remotely complex IT problems.

[abanana]

Also see Yahoo Answers, who got the gamification completely wrong (Stack Overflow later got it right). Users would answer "I don't know" to every question they saw, just to get a point for answering.

[kennysoona]

> Users would answer "I don't know" to every question they saw, just to get a point for answering.

lol, I remember that but I forgot all about that until I saw your comment. Man that late 90s early 2000s internet was something else.