Alex Barnett blog

Ah, sometimes I just loooove being a microcog in the corporate wheel. Thanks for the props, Alex. In watching these videos, I resolved that my next "baby", or immortality project as I like to call them, will be a placeless Web service that enables people to gain recognition for the things they wish (and deserve) to be recognized for. Stake your claim!

MSDNWiki trivia... When I was shopping this idea around in 2003, long before it was an official and funded project, I dubbed it DocWiki.

Credit where credit is due...Molly Bostic was one of my first and most passionate, visionary, and dedicated collaborators on the DocWiki, er MSDNWiki, project. Other early and notable contributors included Laura John and Tommy Williams, both of whom have, like me, moved on to pursue other adventures.

Whereas MSDNWiki is a far cry from the open and ambitious, customer-collaborative documentation system I envisaged, I have been pleasantly surprised by its contribution to the MSDN user experience, nonetheless. I view MSDNWiki as a proof of concept, as design validation. I am sanguine that it might someday blossom into the real WikiWiki our customers want and deserve. Perhaps SharePoint 14's wiki will pave the way? :-)

WRT "Risks", here's a little gotcha that I identified in one of my earliest specs: The German Law. I don't know if this risk is a real one or if it has been evaluated/mitigated. Back in 2001, I contributed to Visual SourceSafe 6.0x. The singular purpose of this point release was to fix a broken index in the DE (German) version of the product. Why would Microsoft expend thousands of human hours to resolve such a [seemingly] trivial issue? From what I understand, by German law, anyone who purchases a product whose documentation is incomplete or incorrect is entitled to recompensation in the amount of (?) several times the price they paid for the product. So what happens when a German citizen purchases Visual Studio (for 3000+ euros) calls up a help topic inside Visual Studio, gets an MSDN help topic which has been supplemented by a customer using MSDNWiki, and the content provided leads them astray? Is Microsoft liable? If a German court deems Microsoft to be liable, Microsoft is liable and Microsoft and its valued shareholders will be forced to pay millions and millions of Euros, as redress.

I'll go out on a limb and state that the existence of this kind of business risk, one of many that MSDNWiki faces (or faced?), can be generalized to explain the slow adoption and reluctance of many commercial software vendors and indeed, other types of companies, to truly embrace and promote social software applications, on the Web.

Korby, thanks for dropping by. I didn't know about the German Law - interesting heads up. Scary though. My read? Better get the lawyers involved before heading down roads like this...what a shame. I suppose lawyers really are the new priests...

thanks.