Pieces of me on community... : beta

Microsoft Answers beta

b2ix — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 22:44:00 GMT

I want to congratulate all of those who worked on getting a beta Microsoft Answers up and running. It's great to see the nice integration of social applications like Forums and Social Bookmarks in a very person centric view. What exactly is Microsoft Answers?

A rich, interactive community experience moderated by dedicated support engineers.
One place for people to easily find Microsoft Vista content from Microsoft and others in the community
A series of experiences meant to welcome, help, and engage people

Here are some other folks talking about this.

xClaims in beta blogs and forums

b2ix — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 00:18:00 GMT

You've heard Korby talk a lot about xClaims and how they help not only authors like myself determine the lenses through which people evaluate my content contributions, but also how xClaims help readers like you determine the credibility of folks like me.

Well, enough talk. Let's start putting all of this into action. With this latest refresh of Microsoft beta communities are tied in with blogs and forums. What do you do with them?

Make a claim
Vote on a claim
Evaluate someone's credibility
See your claims
See the claims of others

Making a claim

If you had a chance to create a new thread or a response, you may have noticed this little section below the post editor that says something about adding a new claim or an existing claim. It's really as simple as that. In the space provided, you can enter in a claim such as "this is technically accurate" and it will appear along with your message.

Voting on a claim
Why add a claim? Basically to have people vote on it. Beyond that, you are able to essentially get lots of people to agree (or disagree) with what you have to say. Why might you wish to open yourself up for that? Well, whether or not you apply this to every post you make is up to you but for certain topics, it may be beneficial for you to gain credibility in topics that matter to you. What do I mean by this? Well, let's say I'm an avid forums user, posting on any number of topics from XNA to SQL. While I may know my stuff in XNA (an example really -- lol) I only know basic queries in SQL. As such, I would want a tailored claim saying "I know my XNA" and people can then vote on it. For SQL, I would not apply a comparable claim, because I would not want to be known for my skills (or lack thereof) in that topic.

Evaluating someone's credibility
This is done through voting, seeing the votes of others, and seeing all of the claims of another person. We have some of this now, and more on the way. Specifically, after voting (and commenting if you want) you are able to see the vote tallies of other people. This becomes of value when you compare the content of multiple people that "seem" to be correct. Through a closer look at how others agreed (or not) with that claim, you can better determine how credible that person is with regards to that topic.

Credibility also comes into play when you look at all of the claims of other people. While right now this is limited to a person explicitly making it visible (such as my claims here), we will have the ability to easily discover the claims that others made visible to others.

See your claims
We touched upon this briefly. Basically, if you can see it, others can too. To see your claims, click on your display name (in the upper right corner of your screen) and you will be directed to the profile page. At the bottom of the page, there is a link that says, "View Claims." Clicking on this link will result in your claims being exposed. You can see how folks voted, in addition to any comments they may have left for you. If you share this link out with others, they can then see your claims and can then get a better sense of who you are, what you know, and the like….

See the claims of others
As discussed, this is still a work in progress. The only way to see the claims of others (in total) is if they exposed that link to you by clicking on their profile, viewing their claims, and sharing that link. We will work to make this easier in future versions of our beta communities.

So that in a nutshell is what you can do today with xClaims in blogs and forums. I hope you now understand how xClaims are incredible tools for you to gain recognition on your terms while also determining the credibility of online resources.

(xposted)

Mini-refresh for Microsoft Beta Communities

b2ix — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 00:14:00 GMT

Woohoo! We just finished up a mini refresh of the beta community offerings including blogs, forums, tagspace and now claimspace. Way to go everyone!

In terms of the specifics of what's new…

New features in the June 2007 refresh of Beta Blogs

xClaim integration
Preview a blog post before posting
Preview changes to how your blog looks
Updated user badges
Improved look and feel
Multiple page support

New features in the June 2007 refresh of Beta Forums

Locked thread
Sticky thread
xClaim integration
Updated user badges
Improved look and feel
Multiple page support

I pointed to a little teaser the other day, and now you get to play around with this some more. We'd love to get your feedback craves, raves, or other…what do you think?

Oh, and if you're wondering about all of the feedback given thus far regarding oh, the posting wizard in forums or the features desired in blogs, we hear you. We are still working off of the today/tomorrow list. I believe I've mentioned that we would be working from that while also working from the feedback from the community. It is indeed a fine balance with getting the new stuff out there while also addressing the concerns voiced by many so far. I appreciate your willingness to take the time to read this, while previewing our community offerings and posting your thoughts. Many thanks!

(xposted)

Looking ahead to a beta communities refresh

b2ix — Tue, 29 May 2007 19:16:00 GMT

A little over a month ago, we pulled the curtain away and invited you to take a look at the work beng done on the next version of Microsoft blogs and forums. Additionally, we showed off a revamped version of tagspace, our social bookmarking and tagging solution. We received a good deal of feedback over the last month, and we are beginning to make an measurable impact.

As we approach June, we are nearing an update to our beta community offerings. Not only that, but we will be unveiling a new piece to this community solution -- claimspace.

I'll let Korby and others talk more about the upcoming new pieces of tagspace and claimspace. As for me, I want to give a little preview of what to expect.

For both blogs and forums, there will be a new user interface that should make it easier to navigate, discover new features, etc. Additionally, we are adding xClaims into both blogs and forums. Getting to the specific solutions...

One of the new features to look for in the updated blogs is the ability to preview any CSS changes you wish to apply to the blog, before you actually save it. If you're anything like me and know little of CSS, this is a great thing to have.

From the forums side of things, one of the features in the June refresh is creation of "sticky threads." For those not familiar with the term, this refers to having one (or several) threads appear a the top of the thread list in the forums view such that it is easy to find later. As we get more and more messages posted in the beta forums, I expect this to be helpful for people visiting the site.

There are plenty of other features in the June refresh, but to learn what those are...you'll just have to wait for my announcement post ;-)

(xposted in beta)

gotta love betas...

b2ix — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 01:32:00 GMT

heh, wouldn't you know it. less than 24 hrs after we start pointing people to the betas, one of the boxes supporting the services behind the scenes doesn't work as planned. anyway, thanks for the quick feedback everyone. things seem to be working as planned now.

Introducing beta Microsoft blogs and forums

b2ix — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 01:20:00 GMT

Last night, we announced the beta of several Microsoft community solutions. Thanks to everyone who's helped make this possible!

For information on the new blogging solution:
here's a text overview
here's what's ahead
here's a little tutorial on commenting to a blog post (wvx, soapbox)

As for forums...
a text overview
a screencast overview (wvx, soapbox)
what's ahead
intro to posting a question (wvx, soapbox)
intro to posting a reply (wvx, soapbox)

btw, you can get the rss for my beta pieces of me as well :-)