Thanks!

I agree, we should make an effort to stay involved in other communities. Many MVPs are quite active in public forums. Gail Shaw at SSC comes to mind immediately.

My involvement at SSC or in other public forums is sporadic at best. This is the result of the medium and format for interactions in forums do not suit my style or needs.

My dislike for newsgroups and forums do not make them a bad thing, it just means I have found other ways to help people when possible. My participation in the MVP forums has shown me just how good forums can be, and given me incentive to go back and become more active. Why, just yesterday, I posted to a forum at SSC.

And it felt good.

thanks.

The main thing that I think applies here is that they are not all perfect. Some really bad but there are some, namely SSC, which really have some very strong SQL talent that strive to make a solid community that has helped tons of people in their careers as DBA’s and developers.

My encouragement to you and all MVP’s is to become active in other communities, outside of the MVP community so that you can help make a difference on a site and with those that haven’t reached the skill level that you and others have. You have that opportunity before you. I can honestly tell you that when Paul Randal posts something on SSC about a recovery question, I read it. I’m sure that the same could be said about you if you were on there or anywhere sharing the knowledge that you have attained.

Know what I mean? I have always thought that the best answer to a problem is a solution and I hope to be a part of that solution.

Thanks for the post.

not sure how it comes across that way, since i do not participate in newsgroups yet somehow became an MVP. and no, i did not mean to imply that only the smart people are at the MVP forum, i really meant to say that the private forums are much more pleasant to work with than the public ones. it is the difference between taking the bus to the airport and a private town car.

so, you do not need to be active in forums to become an MVP, i am living proof.

hope this helps, and sorry if i offended you, or anyone.

However, the other topics I sometimes research such as VBA, Crystal Reports, etc. I have yet to find quality help from any forums.

It’s just that the 5 inch floppy disk went extinct, it was because there were newer formats to obsolete the old and the newer computers no longer included hardware for it.

With newsgroups, sure, some things have come along that are better, but without forcing the newsgroups to be obsolete, they’ll just keep kicking around.

Think of the dollar coin. In Canada the dollar coin was introduced and dollar notes were no longer printed. The dollar coin was accepted very quickly. In America, the dollar coin has yet to be accepted in the same way.

Yes, I do agree that the forums at SSC are above average in terms of quality. In fact, they may be the only forums I participate in from time to time.