As someone who has benefited from being a regular contributor to Mercury Interactive's user forum, this may sound a little uncool, but I can't help but mention it.
The forums on the Mercury website drive me nuts.
Oh, I got my very snazzy Mercury logo backpack and I am working towards the airline carry-on/laptop bag, no worries. I am not complaining about the rewards one can earn. I think it's a great incentive to get people who are otherwise too busy to interact and build a community. It does tend to breed some bad habits in generating reward points, which does cause some problems.
Here are some general issues I have with the forums:
1) Repeated questions: I have, no kidding, answered the same question 3 times in one day. No, they weren't *entirely* the same, but they were similar enough that anyone who had actually searched the forum would've found them easily
2) Forum questions on KB items: Every day, tons of questions are sent in that are really questions that should be directed to the KB. I used to try and answer them like "Well, here's how and next time refer to KB number....", which soon became "Check KB ###", and now I don't answer them. If it's in the KB, I feel like someone should show due dilligence to check.
3) Me, too!: Almost everytime I post an answer to a question, I get someone coming behind me saying, basically, "yeah, what he said! Good job, Theo!". Generate your own points; either contribute or don't answer
I am trying to remind myself that the people on the QTP forum aren't developers in most cases. Many were probably assigned to automation because no one else wanted it. I try to be supportive of people who ask meaningful questions, I really do. With my strong development background, I am definitely in strange environment. Suffice it to say that I was explaining to someone that destroying a parent object doesn't destroy the child, and that it's bad form to explicitly instantiate an object without explicitly destroying it. The person in question thought that you should be able to simply kill the Excel.Application and it would take care of it's children "automatically". Oy.
I know, I know....I could simply unsubscribe. However, I like to help those who really need the help, and I like to be a part of the community. Ah, well...I suppose no user forum anywhere is ultimately any better, wot?
Please excuse my little tantrum. :-)
posted @ Wednesday, March 08, 2006 12:48 PM