I blogged about MSDN Community Content last year. A month ago, they celebrated their first anniversary. Recently, I logged in and was ready to add content only to find some quirks:
- On an initial glance, it would appear that previous posts had disappeared.
- Discrepancies in the URLs between the user's page and the rss feed. (i.e. http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.collections.specialized.listdictionary(VS.85).aspx vs. http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.collections.specialized.listdictionary.aspx). This meant that community content in the former URL didn't show up in the latter and vice versa.
- http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/*(VS.71).aspx doesn't accept community content.
From #1 and 2, it seemed like MSDN community wiki was experiencing some issues with content migration. A quick search through Microsoft Forums confirmed this to be the case. Based on the thread, it appears the community team is working on ironing out their migration story though they didn't describe how.
One particular strategy to take would be to allow users to select which offerings (VS.85, VS.80, etc) to percolate to. However, the ideal flow would be to have the MSDN Community Content display all content regardless of the URL version. The UX would be a lot smoother and save users from having to sift through each version/URL to find community content. Additionally, if the community content only applies to a particular version of .NET, the content contributor should call that out. And if that is missing, readers can either check the date on the comment or another contributor can come in and add, "this is a 2.0 issue and has been fixed in 3.0" OR "this class is obsolete, please use X to conform to best practices". Ah, that is the beauty and very purpose of wikis! It handles content history/versioning and empowers the users to drive up content quality and conciseness.
So if you're interested in adding community content, be weary of which entry point you take (i.e. http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.globalization.cultureinfo(VS.85).aspx vs. http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.globalization.cultureinfo.aspx (currently VS.90)). Unfortunately, if they're issues pertaining .NET 1.1 or a BCL issue inherited over the different iterations, note that you won't be able to add content in the VS.71 pages.
Video of the Day:
The Lone Server from Windows Server Division Weblog