What exactly do we mean by "beta"?

In light of some of the responses I've been seeing on the forums, I wanted to clarify what exactly we mean by "beta."  Admittedly, it is a loaded term.

Depending on your perspective, "beta" might refer to something that is pretty polished but needs some testing to identify basic bugs and such (this bar also seems to be rising by my own personal observation).  Another way of looking at beta is something that is not done.  How we are using "beta" speaks more to the latter definition -- something not done. 

Perhaps though, it may be more appropriate to describe the "beta" forums and other community solutions as collaborative workspaces.  That is, we're bringing folks in early with the intention of collaborating with you on what all should be in the various solutions. 

Prior to this, we've taken exisiting feedback to help shape the baseline stuff you see today.  There are some more baseline scenarios and features to address, but beyond that, what do *you* think should be in here?

Now we have this new collaborative workspace, based in part on what we've heard so far, we ask that you to check it out...play with it, poke at it, kick the tires and all.  Most of all, we're interested in how would like to see this shaped in the future.  In short, this is only the begininning of what we intend on being a collaborative workspace for shaping the next version of community solutions.

For a slightly more granular look at our features, take a look at today/tomorrow