MSDN forums b0rked? | The Coffeehouse

AndyC

Is anyone else having issues posting to the MSDN forums, or is it just me?

Yggdrasil
Pour me a cab, 'cause I can't drink no more.

AndyC wrote:
Is anyone else having issues posting to the MSDN forums, or is it just me?

Posting? 90% of the time I can't even get them to load. Sad

bgmacaw
http://vbnotebookfor.net/

I can't get to them at all due to timeouts.

BlackTiger
If you stumbled and fell down, it doesn't mean yet, that you're going in the wrong direction.

Biggest problem of MSDN forums isn't to post a message, but to get an usefull answer! Smiley

I've posted several questions, but never got an answer. Cool

AndyC

BlackTiger wrote:
Biggest problem of MSDN forums isn't to post a message, but to get an usefull answer! I've posted several questions, but never got an answer.

It's not overly suprising given that the forums are so frustrating to use 90% of the time (I have no idea how it selects where to stick a response but it seems rather arbitrary).

Generally though I do try to answer questions where I can. Not that many posters seem to know how to ask a good question....

odujosh
Need Microsoft SUX now!

Mature Big Forum == Useless

You have all the old timers who waggle their fingers towards the faq. Moderators who think they are an expert on where to ask a question.

The big problem with MSDN is it is so big it has the above problems plus the fact it is hard to center on a small set of forums. You end up ebbing and flowing accross them. Never really becoming a reguluar anywhere.

JKelley
Is it sad that my badge picture is one of the best ones I have of myself?

odujosh wrote:
Mature Big Forum == Useless

You have all the old timers who waggle their fingers towards the faq. Moderators who think they are an expert on where to ask a question.

The big problem with MSDN is it is so big it has the above problems plus the fact it is hard to center on a small set of forums. You end up ebbing and flowing accross them. Never really becoming a reguluar anywhere.

This is one of the biggest challenges we face with the MSDN forums as a community. How or even should the MSDN forums be a place that you WANT to go to everyday, even if you don't have a question to ask?

My first experiences with a community and Microsoft was here at Channel 9. Now that I get to have some influence on how we develop the MSDN forums community, I'm trying to figure out how to bring the best parts of this community to the wider Microsoft audience. That's all assuming the technical issues get fixed of course. Wink

BTW, we did have some problems with the forums yesterday, they appear to be cleared up, but if anyone continues to have trouble either logging in or posting messages, please let me know.

ZippyV
Fired Up

I can't get to the forums.

JKelley
Is it sad that my badge picture is one of the best ones I have of myself?

Spinny blue loading icon (or FireFox / IE6 equivalent) won't go away and the page never loads?

ZippyV
Fired Up

On Vista it's "Spinning circle of eternal unresponsiveness"

JKelley
Is it sad that my badge picture is one of the best ones I have of myself?

I was having trouble this morning too, but it seems to have cleared up. I'm hoping the system is a lot more stable in the coming weeks.

ZippyV
Fired Up

I still can't get on them.

CannotResolveSymbol
{insert caption here}

JKelley wrote:
Spinny blue loading icon (or FireFox / IE6 equivalent) won't go away and the page never loads?

Same here... no timeout, just spinny blue loading icon into eternity Wink

Strangely, I can get to the MSDN forums on another user account on this computer.... maybe it's time to restart or something.

(inspection with Ethereal indicates that the server is actually sending a TCP FIN signal in the middle of the transmission on the user account where I can't access MSDN Forums... odd.)

dahat

Grrr... I haven't been able to get to any forum on forums.msdn.com for well over a week now from my main PC (even after reboots).. like Zippy when I go to a specific forum I get the spinning circle of eternal unresponsiveness"... while if I go to the root of the server I get a runtime error... wraag.

Yggdrasil
Pour me a cab, 'cause I can't drink no more.

When I tried loading it in Firefox, it came up with an error message pretty quickly saying that the site's response will cause it to never successfully load. I don't know how it came to that conclusion, but it was much nicer than having IE keep trying blindly.

CannotResolveSymbol
{insert caption here}

Yggdrasil wrote:
When I tried loading it in Firefox, it came up with an error message pretty quickly saying that the site's response will cause it to never successfully load. I don't know how it came to that conclusion, but it was much nicer than having IE keep trying blindly.

Hey, that's nice... better than IE's approach.

I just figured out how to get it to load, though-- remove all your cookies from *.microsoft.com (or clear all your cookies if you happen to be on IE).

(p.s. to the IE team: there's two IE8 feature requests for you Tongue Out

)

bgmacaw
http://vbnotebookfor.net/

CannotResolveSymbol wrote:

I just figured out how to get it to load, though-- remove all your cookies from *.microsoft.com (or clear all your cookies if you happen to be on IE).

Clearing out the MS cookies seems to fix the situation, at least it does now. I had tried this a few weeks ago right after I had originally posted in this thread but it didn't work then for some reason.

JKelley
Is it sad that my badge picture is one of the best ones I have of myself?

The issues we were having with the cookies and Passport on the forums should now be fixed. There's a chance that depending on when you logged in last you might need a final cookie clear to get it working again. I know this is painful, especially in IE.

If you continue to have problems logging in let me know. If you can log in but have other problems make sure you post in the bug reporting forum. That gets triaged pretty much daily to make sure we're on top of any issues that crop up.

Thanks!

jdandison

Last time I was on the MSDN forums, I ended up finding a bunch of posts by some girl who thought 'hey guys, I've got a problem...' was sexist. Kinda irritating when it takes days for them to load.

odujosh
Need Microsoft SUX now!

I appologize for not getting to you sooner.

Here is an idea I have on how to organize things in the forum. Why not take keywords like "SQL Server, LINQ, Visual Studio" and keep a database index that organizes posts based off that using SQL Full Text search contains/does not contain.

If I want to read about SQL Server 2008 then why not offer me a way to organize the Giangatic DataSet to find posts that talk about that. Maybe have a heiracrchal listing that show all the product names. Run it as a batch process incrementally in a few months things would be easier to locate.

You guys are miticulious about adding new forums when betas come out. Why not through some hardware deployment and development to make your effort more powerful.

I have similair leanings when I think of conference procedings. Why not centralize that content as a rule. So if I want to see the lastest keynote I have one spot to look and I don't have to necessarily know microsofts conference schedule. I can look at it as a chronological stream. Any new content this week without a massive effort on my part.

This is where the microsoft efforts to build community should go. Make it as easy as possible for the user to find what is available.

JKelley wrote:

odujosh wrote: Mature Big Forum == Useless

You have all the old timers who waggle their fingers towards the faq. Moderators who think they are an expert on where to ask a question.

The big problem with MSDN is it is so big it has the above problems plus the fact it is hard to center on a small set of forums. You end up ebbing and flowing accross them. Never really becoming a reguluar anywhere.

This is one of the biggest challenges we face with the MSDN forums as a community. How or even should the MSDN forums be a place that you WANT to go to everyday, even if you don't have a question to ask?

My first experiences with a community and Microsoft was here at Channel 9. Now that I get to have some influence on how we develop the MSDN forums community, I'm trying to figure out how to bring the best parts of this community to the wider Microsoft audience. That's all assuming the technical issues get fixed of course.

BTW, we did have some problems with the forums yesterday, they appear to be cleared up, but if anyone continues to have trouble either logging in or posting messages, please let me know.

gsbell

The solution to access the MSDN Forums is to delete your Cookies and when you Log In to Passport/Live.com make sure you NEVER select the 'Save My Email Address and Password' or 'Save My Password' checkboxes. If you do, subsequent visits to the MSDN Forum will result in the indefinite redirect loop with Live.com.

ZaDDaZ

In reply to gsbell

#Sep 5th, 2007 @ 7:27 PM

Sorry, no amount of deleting cookies or not saving password options work. The forums are completely useless at this point. They may as well be static HTML pages.