pow67 said:
As a new newsgroup user I find them very helpful. What is the
difference between:
comp.databases.ms-access
and
microsoft.public.access
I assume the microsoft.x newsgroups are monitored more closely by MS
personnel but are there other differences in terms of experience level
or ?
Thanks in advance.
CW
The microsoft.public.* newsgroups are hosted by Microsoft, so all users
with Internet access can get to them, either by NNTP using a newsreader,
or by HTTP using their web browser. Microsoft makes an effort to keep
these groups, if not spam-free, at least lower in spam than most
newsgroups. Microsoft support personnel do monitor these groups to some
extent, but the groups are still primarily for peer support, and in my
experience you are much more likely to get your questions answered by
someone who doesn't work for MS than otherwise, if only out of
statistical probability. Don't misunderstand, by the way, and think
that the Microsoft MVPs are MS employees. We aren't; we've just
received special recognition from MS for doing peer support.
The unmonitored, "unowned" group comp.databases.ms-access has been in
existence for a long time -- longer than the public MS groups, AFAIK --
and probably has at least as many knowledgeable people frequenting it as
the MS groups. Many of the Access MVPs also read & post there, for
example, and there are lots of other very knowledgeable people who
aren't MVPs. I don't go there often myself, because it's all I can do
to keep up with the few MS groups I follow. CDMA, as it's often
abbreviated, tends to be more rough-and-tumble than the MS-hosted
groups, with more truly obnoxious posters. It also has this major
drawback: it's a single, monolithic, undifferentiated forum. So the
volume of messages is *huge*, and the majority of messages are never
going to be on the topic you are currently interested in. I find it
much easier to work within the structured hierarchy of the MS groups, so
that most of the articles in the group I'm looking at are on topic.
The specific group <microsoft.public.access> is really not intended for
"all messages relating to Microsoft Access", as CDMA is, but rather as a
place for questions that don't really fall into any of the subcategories
such as .forms, .reports, .tablesdbdesign, .queries (not for general
questions but for questions about queries), .modulesdaovba, .security,
and so on. Where possible, questions should be directed to the specific
newsgroup that deals with the question's topic. In some cases, a
question may fall into multiple categories, in which case it's
acceptable to cross-post the questions to the minimum number of relevant
groups. This is done by listing multiple groups in the To: or
Newsgroups: line of the message header, *not* by asking the same
question in separate messages posted to each of the groups! That last,
bad practice is called "multiposting", and is frowned on.
