Feedback center feedback
When is a bunch of people actually a community? I started thinking about this a couple of days ago mostly out of disappointment with the product feedback center. Last wednesday I commented about how a suggestion of mine was closed with the resolution By Design, after which it was promptly re-opened only to get closed again with the same resolution, only rephrased as Won't Fix. Now, this didn't disappoint me because I want Microsoft to do whatever I suggest, I've done too much development using other people's frameworks and middleware to know that you'll never get what you want, but because all I really wanted was an explanation about why it's not going to be implemented. What was done now is basically update the issue to thank me for my input twice. I don't suggest things to be thanked. In fact I'd rather be called a complete idiot for even bringing it up, if at least someone would tell why it's so stupid of me to suggest it in the first place. In a way it's those interactions that create a community: they educate members on how to interact and play by the (unwritten) rules.
Another example is related to a bug I filed, which was closed again with the usual thanks from Microsoft and the information that this issue is already fixed as part of fixing 273102. What is 273102 anyway? Searching for it in the product feedback center only gets me my own bug, clearly because the number is mentioned there. Searching for 273102 on Google gets me all kinds of interesting stuff, but nothing related to any TabControls, Windows Forms or the .NET Framework. So perhaps this is some internal issue numbering system? Which is exactly what I don't like about it: instead of becoming part of the community around its' products, Microsoft is basically just allowing people outside a quick look at what's being done inside, without any actual interaction. Which is another fundamental thing to community-building: the members must actually be involved in what's going on.
I'm not bringing up these things because I enjoy whining about Microsoft, in fact, after doing work on a couple of opensource projects and even dabbling in the Java world a couple of years ago, I'd say that the community around Microsoft is one of the more welcoming and friendly places around. I spoke to a lot of people at TechEd about a month ago, both from Microsoft and independent and had a great time. I visit dutch usergroup meetings and am generally quite happy with the effort everyone's putting into the community. But still I feel that from Microsoft's side, a lot more can be done.
The reason opensource projects are getting so much attention, specifically from developers, is because they make them feel like a part of something: instead of buying a piece of software and then having to deal with uncooperative support people, they can e-mail the author directly, create some changes they personally want and even get called names when they submit patches that contain new bugs. It might sound strange but the reason that kind of hostility doesn't really hamper those projects is because the people involved see those projects also as their own, so they get motivated to do better, because they know that in the end, what they do does actually move things forward. If Microsoft wants to create that kind of warm and fuzzy feeling among the developers using their tools, they somehow need to make people feel the same way.