April Reagan: The Future of MSDN Help

Excellent interview. Very honest and I liked the direct request for feedback from us. Very good! Adopt this style and format for all interviews. This is what we need Interviews that are honest with failures and mistakes in MS organization, give at least an idea on future directions or some thoughts, ask for feedback and encourage discussions.
Furstly, I would like to ask about the help format in Windows Vista. How is that different and why can't that be used as a platform for the future? Why doesn't the group that owns help for future versions of Windows, merge or at least be in harmony with this new MSDN help group? If you want to deliver something down the road to ISVs then what a better vehicle than putting it in Windows vNext?
Secondly I would like to give my own experience with MSDN.
I very much like the breadth and depth of the content. You have an extremely valuable resource, especially compared to other companies. Time after time I have relied on MSDN even for purely educational purposes. Its covering of certain topics is complete andthorough. It is not only a spec, like other companies' documentation, but also like a book in a sense, very detailed .
I enjoy the table of contents and please do not do the same stupid thing as in Office 2003 that they made Help table of contents navigation very painful and have promoted only search. Search is important, but I like order in MSDN, an order in hierarchy that Windows and Office used to have but seem to lose release after release. Windows used to have a table of contents. Now in Vista it is this mesh of topics that you are first and formost meant to find using search. Similarly in Office the table of contents has been turned into an HTML page. Don't make the same, in my opinion, mistakes to make everything HTML based. The tree toc navigation is excellent, the Index controls are good. Desktop applications need to take advantage of the richness of desktop controls. Don't make everything a web application, where search dominates and where true advanced controls are not used. In fact, introduce more innovative user experience controls, such as multiple previews in the table of contents tree, etc. Not everybody is always randomly searching. Sometimes, you know what you want and where to find it hierarchically, only if the interface would tell you navigate in this way. Also, I might want to read up on a specific topic. The index and contents are useful in this regard.
Problems:
Yes, search is slow and not always relevant. But this is not the main problem. The main issue is that many users, for example university students, do not bother to install the large MSDN and rely only on the online version. However, the online version is complicated to navigate, as it does not offer the same rich desktop controls as the local one. It is very easy to get lost in the MSDN online pages, without a shortcut to navigate e.g. to the next and previous topics (alt+up and alt+down) and with every click having to refresh the page. Searching the MSDN site is not also as intuitive as using Google. So, users search using Google, read a page and then leave the site. Improve, therefore, the site navigation by adding AJAX or even optional Silverligh controls. Make the desktop version more rich in user interface controls, allowing you to zoom on the technology you wish to read about and do not improve only search and/or the speed parts. Make it easily and freely downloadable. What is this MSDN Library Subscription for example. Why should I pay an amount per year to get MSDN. In fact, I can download it even today, then why the subscription still? I understand MSDN subscription for products but for the docs. Why?
Next comes content quality. Although you can find good content on MSDN for managed development, most of the WIN32 topics have clear errors and are so old that one wonders if a complete rewrite should be underway. Reporting bugs is not easy (you have to sign-in to the Connect website, etc) and community content only adds but does not change a topic. Sending e-mail takes ages for the WIN32 team to fix a topic and even ignore you and never fix something for years and still waiting.
Students and beginners are also never cared for. Google is useful because it can easily find you sample code. But MSDN? No, they write and write and many time write these very marketing introductions, whilst I need a tutorial, some sample code and I would start my work.
Please think about your users. There are those who want to learn a technology thoroughly, like technology decision-maikers. Those people can use the table of contents and who cares if they read some "marketing" nonsence like "this technology increases your productivity, etc, etc" and "the Advantages for using that technology are ..., etc, etc" and "Legal terms" and "technical specifications". But there are also these users who want to get started quickly and they need some sample code with tutorials. I regret to say that especially for WIN32 and MFC unmanaged, no samples or useful tutorials are provided or are very hard to find. The samples in WIN32 are very old and contain errors. And don't get me started on COM development. If I am not an expert in the technology, MSDN is of no use. In addition, there are these users who are simply searching for a solution to one of their problems. These are the type of users you, I guess, are trying to help by improving the speed/search of your system. But MSDN should then aggregate content from the forums, the open MS bug databases and allow those users to submit bugs and discuss in forums, right from the MSDN interface if they would be satisfied. This is because such users are not covered only by the documentation in MSDN but require community features.
Finally, why don't you make your content directly editable like on Wikipedia. Users can submit changes and other users can vote on them and you will aprove them. Not Community Content but direct edits to the documentation. I would certainly improve some of the old WIN32 staff at least. Further, don't you think that it is time for all MSDN documentation to adopt the same tone, style and navigation structure everywhere. Now the Exchange docs for example are differently structured from the VS docs.
One thing is certain. In universities everybody uses Google. Nobody uses MSDN online directly. Think about and try to analyze the reasons behind it. It is not only because of search and the website experience, the content is also to blame. Give a beginner the IE's HTML reference from MSDN and then ask him/her to create a website. "No," he will say, "I will use Google to find sample code". But MSDN already contains some HTML sample code, you would say. But hidden in "marketing" docs and high-level long, very long, documents. Give any developer the MSAA reference and then ask them to right a screen reader. With no unmanaged tutorials on how to use COM and no sample code to get him/her started using MSAA then forget it. I think you should make a new rule: All sections should start (like many open source documentation) with a short tutorial and some code and then give the full decision-makers' oriented technical and marketing load later. Sometimes your docs are too wordy and seem to never get down to specifics. They sound like ISO standards that cover everything and don't actually help someone to quickly implement something.