Live QnA

Introducing our Software Design Engineer and Software Design Engineer in Test interns for the summer….

Fri, 04 Jul 2008 06:57:22 GMT

A common misconception is that we only have Program Managers (PM) working on Live Search QnA. That’s definitely not the case – we have an outstanding team that also includes Software Design Engineers (SDE), and Software Design Engineers in Test (SDET). However, some of our team members are just a bit more blog shy than others.

Fortunately, we have two who aren’t so shy! Having introduced our PM interns last week, I’d like to introduce our other interns: Derrick (SDE) and Shreya (SDET)!

Again, in alphabetical order, here’s what Derrick has to say about himself:

Hi everyone. My name is Derrick Isaacson and I am excited to be a part of the Search Communities team. I grew up in the mountain valley of Salt Lake City, UT and attended college nearby at Brigham Young University where I studied computer engineering.

I moved to Seattle, WA when I graduated to work as a software development engineer for Amazon.com and loved being in the Pacific Northwest. At Amazon I worked on a team that owned a tier one service for the website that provided “offering” data (seller Jane is offering 10 copies of Harry Potter for $9.99) to the site. I left Amazon and started a master’s program in computer science at Stanford University last fall.
I enjoy the outdoors including skiing, hiking, camping, fishing and cycling. I think The Office is hilarious. I also play percussion when I can find a low key concert band or symphony to play in. I look forward to learning and working with the QnA Team!

And Shreya:

Hi everyone I am Shreya, studying for my Masters at San Jose State University. I completed my bachelors of engineering and have also worked as a software engineer trainee for a year. During that time I have worked mostly with Visual C+++. Along with my studies I also love to be involve in other technical activities. I am one of the active members of Society of Computer Engineering, SJSU.
My hobbies include Swimming, Playing Volleyball, Dancing and solving Puzzles. Along with Programming the thing I am most passionate about is Dancing. I have completed MA in Indian classical dance and I have given various performances also.
I am very excited to work with Microsoft Live Search QnA team as an SDET intern.

We’re super excited to have these folks on our team as they bring a fresh perspective and lots of energy. This is shaping up to be an excellent and exciting summer here at QnA HQ!

Have a happy Independence Day weekend!

-Dennis-QnA
Live Search QnA Program Manager and Intern Introducer

Introducing our Program Manager interns for the summer…

Sat, 28 Jun 2008 02:08:57 GMT

Summer is here, and so are our summer interns. Microsoft has a fantastic college internship program that lasts for 12 weeks where students get to experience what it’s like to work at a fantastic software and services company. There’s also a host of perks as well.

Chen and Peter joined the team recently and we have some pretty awesome projects for them to take ownership of. Our interns definitely don’t just pour coffee here! (Actually they can’t since our coffee machines are semi-robotic!) I am super excited to have them take a fresh look at QnA, and I have high hopes that their work will translate to cool features and experiences for the QnA Community. In alphabetical order, here’s what Chen has to say about himself:

Hey everyone. My name's Chen. I was born in China and moved to Nashville, Tennessee at age 7. In 7th grade, I transferred to a suburban public school near Philadelphia, where I finished my secondary education.
Presently, I am a rising Junior at Harvard College studying Econ/CS. Outside of school, I see myself as a social worker, an aspiring entrepreneur, but most importantly – an ardent tech enthusiast. My first experiences with technology date back to the night my dad brought home the first family computer in December 1996. That Compaq Presario altered the course of my life.
Thanks to this passion, I have followed several of today's most successful tech-based companies from the very beginning. These days, I live on TechCrunch, Mashable, SimpleSpark, and many other entrepreneurial sites in constant search for the next big thing. I enjoy analyzing successful web technologies, business and marketing strategies, figuring out why they work, and seeing whether these innovative techniques can be implemented elsewhere.
I see myself as a chill, kind of atypical Harvard student who take things seriously only when need be, but gets everything done - on time and in style. Some of my hobbies include, Halo 3, Super Smash Bros, swimming, Wendy's Junior Beacon Cheeseburgers, Bennigan's hot wings, programming, tennis, writing business proposals, running along The Charles, and spending quality time with friends.
I’m very excited about joining the Live Search QnA team and I look forward to becoming an active participant in the QnA community!

And here’s what Peter has to say:

Hi everyone! My name is Peter. I am a Finnish citizen, but haven’t actually lived there for more than a few months at a time. I spent most of my childhood in Saudi Arabia as an expatriate. Growing up in Saudi was a little strange, but was actually very good for me. As there wasn’t much to do, I spent most of my time studying. By the age of 16 I had developed a good work ethic, and I’m happy to say that so far it’s paid off!
After Saudi I moved to a boarding school in London. Two years later I graduated with an IB diploma and started studying electrical engineering at The University of California Santa Barbara (woohoo GO GAUCHOS!). I am currently a senior at UCSB.
As we all know though, all fun and no play make for some dull people. I actually enjoy skim boarding, and just throwing around a Frisbee. Some of you may be glad to hear that I am also a gaming dork. I love to play video games like the new Super Smash Bros., and epic titles such as MGS4, and Gears of War.
For the right here and now though, I am interning with Microsoft’s Live Search QnA team. It doesn’t take long to realize that the team working here is ambitious, and driven to help make QnA better every day. I look forward to working with them, and to hopefully bring you some new and exciting features!

These two have had so much excitement and energy for QnA, that they’ve already been posting Questions and Answers on the site. We’re glad to have them onboard. Keep an eye out for them!

-Dennis-QnA
Live Search QnA Program Manager

Question: What is the role of the QnA MVP and who is the new addition to the QnA MVP family?

Sat, 21 Jun 2008 17:11:53 GMT

In March 2007, we introduced our first MVP (Most Valuable Professional) focused on QnA, Ron. Today we are proud to introduce our second MVP for QnA, Mindy who will be joining to assist Ron as another Windows Live MVP focused on Live Search QnA beta.

Some folks in our community will recognize Mindy as “Mission Jesus Mom” (her former QnA nickname). Mindy has been a fixture on the QnA site and the Boards. She has done a lot of work outside of QnA as well, advising users independently and pointing them to helpful technical online resources. She is an MVP due to her continued support and direction that she provides to other members in the community in assisting them on using the QnA site, constantly escalating bugs and issues with the QnA beta site, and by providing guidance and direction on the QnA message boards.

Mindy has been with QnA since the September 2006 and consistently shows a lot of enthusiasm in helping to investigate problems and has been a positive influence on the QnA community. Here’s a bit more about Mindy in her own words:

“I am ‘pretty much’ an open book but for those who don’t know me, here are a few details about what I do when I am not on QnA. I am married with children whose ages range from 8 – 24. I enjoy motivational speaking and presentations in various public forums. I mentor/counsel people of all ages and backgrounds in various locations and organizations. I do a great deal of public speaking mostly on the topics of motivation, encouragement, joy, striving for excellence and ways to improve your life. I also hold a real estate license in the State of New York and volunteer in many organizations and for many charities.
I am pleased to be honored with the MVP designation and I am excited about serving this AWESOME QnA community in a more visible and tangible way.”

Welcome aboard Mindy!

In addition, over the past few months, we have noticed a lot of confusion around the role of the Microsoft MVP within the QnA community and we wanted to take a moment to provide some clarity around the Microsoft MVP program and also answer some of the FAQ’s we get on QnA around the role of the MVP:

Question: What is the role of the Microsoft MVP?

Answer: Microsoft MVPs are an amazing group of individuals. By sharing their knowledge and experiences and providing objective feedback, MVPs help people solve problems and discover new capabilities. Microsoft recognizes and awards MVPs as our way of saying thank you for their demonstrated commitment to helping others in technical communities worldwide.

Click here for frequently asked questions about Microsoft MVP’s.

Question: Why are MVP’s important to QnA?

As we continue to make QnA a better place for you to ask and provide great questions and answers, we find that we need more and more assistance welcoming new users, answering questions about the site, and posting responses in discussions in our message boards. MVP’s spend their own free time to help build the QnA community and support others. They provide the QnA product team with valuable constructive feedback around where we need to improve the site moving forward.

MVP’s are similar to other members of the QnA community but in addition to participating on the site and on our message boards, it’s their role to help evangelize QnA, the technology, welcome newcomers, and overall act as “model citizens” in the virtual QnA community. You will also find them providing tips and best practices on how to engage with others in the community.

Question: Are MVP’s moderators?

Answer: No. MVP’s are not moderators any more or less so than any other member on QnA, they have the ability to report abuse on the QnA web site like any other member of QnA. In addition, they often share technical suggestions, problems, bugs, or other feedback to help the product team understand the community perspective.

While it’s completely fine for those in our community to criticize the QnA site, to tell us what’s wrong, what needs to be improved, to be critical, to push the QnA Product team to provide a better experience on the Live QnA beta site, it’s not OK to harass or call out individual members of the QnA community, our MVP’s, or the QnA product team, nor make personal harassing remarks about each other – on QnA or in our Message Boards. The Code of Conduct applies equally to all members of the community.

Question: How do I reach an MVP if I need assistance?

Answer: If you have additional questions that you’d like to address to either Ron or Mindy, please use their Spaces accounts or the message boards (though because there are many more members in our community than MVP’s), we cannot promise that they will have time to respond to all inquiries. Another great way of reaching folks when you need assistance is tagging your question “qna” or “qna team,” on the Live Search QnA beta web site itself.

Question: How can I become an MVP for a different Microsoft product?

The MVP FAQ page provides you with more information about how to become a Microsoft MVP – here’s a quick snippet:

“Individuals are nominated for the MVP Award by their peers or by Microsoft, based on their contributions during the previous year to offline or online technical communities. Each nominee's contributions are then compared to the other candidates' contributions for the same year to determine who will receive the award.
Nominees are chosen from traditional and emerging community venues, including public news groups, forums, third-party Web sites, user groups, book authors, event speakers, Web boards, blogs, and wikis. Current MVPs reside in over 90 countries, write in 30 languages, and share their expertise in over 90 Microsoft technologies.”

Firefox browser version 3 and QnA

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 15:23:36 GMT

Yesterday, as many of you know, the Firefox version 3 browser was released to the public. We wanted to proactively notify our community that the Live Search QnA beta site does not yet offer support for Firefox 3 so you will not be able to post a question or answer to QnA in the Firefox 3 web browser.

This was not intentional, but as with all new product and software releases, we need to test and evaluate this new web browser to understand the changes we need to make to QnA to support it. In the meantime, we wanted to ask members of our community to either stay with Firefox 2 or use an alternative to Firefox such as Internet Explorer version 7 which are both supported browsers for the Live Search QnA beta site.

We apologize in advance for any inconvenience this may cause and will update you once we have an update on our Firefox 3 support plans.

Thanks,

QnA Team

Great questions, great answers, and introducing Katarina-QnA

Fri, 13 Jun 2008 01:29:40 GMT

It’s almost summer again – only about a week left to go. Last summer, David posted about writing great questions and great answers. In the past year, many new members have joined the QnA community, so we’d like to summarize the main points again here:

Great questions

· Are worded as questions (with a question mark at the end)

· Contain details in the details section to explain more about the context of the question (though asking a good question and then providing your own answer in the question details doesn’t qualify )

· Can be answered by anyone else in the community (including new members), and will find helpful (check out our featured questions for examples)

· Summarize the essence of the question in the question title

· Are formatted well and spelled correctly with standard capitalization (ALL CAPS LOOKS LIKE YOU’RE SHOUTING AND CAN SOLICIT ANNOYED RESPONSES FROM OTHERS IN THE COMMUNITY)

· Abide by the QnA Code of Conduct

Great answers

· Answer the question and are honest, thorough, and straightforward

· Present a great summary of your thoughts and opinions with any supporting data, facts, or knowledge

· Often include links to the page from which you used to help research your answer (this builds credibility for your answer and also provides a way for the question asker to learn more on his/her own)

· Are formatted nicely

· Are spelled correctly

· Use standard capitalization (remember… ALL CAPS LOOKS LIKE YOU’RE SHOUTING )

· Abide by the QnA Code of Conduct

Katarina-QnA

As you may have noticed, we are continually growing our QnA community through marketing promotions and links from other MSN and Windows Live web sites, we have many new users coming in to ask questions to our loyal QnA community. As our QnA community is expanding, so is our product team. We’d like to introduce our newest member of the QnA program management team, Katarina.

Katarina-QnA, meet the QnA community and Community, meet Katarina-QnA! Here’s a bit more about Katarina in her own words:

Hi everyone!

I’m really happy and enthusiastic about joining the QnA team, especially since I’ve been on QnA since 2006 and now I finally have the chance to get even more involved with the site!

Prior to QnA, I worked on Windows Live Gallery and the Windows Live Toolbar web site. Community is important to me, so I also serve as the Programs Director on the Silicon Valley Women@Microsoft board (one of the diversity groups we have on campus), and am involved with recruiting , intern, and alumni events. Another perk with these community groups is all the free food that seems to be available. (This includes the QnA team, which generously provides Tuesday morning bagels, complete with a few different kinds of cream cheese spreads.)

Finally, I have a bunch of hobbies like eating and dancing but most noticeably, I’m a language dork and enjoy studying languages for fun and in hopes of future world travel.

Welcome aboard, Katarina, and welcome to all our new community members! And as usual, if you have feedback on this blog posting, please see our latest message board thread.

- Heather, Lead Program Manager, QnA

About QnA points...

Fri, 30 May 2008 02:45:47 GMT

As noted in our blog entry last week, when we launched the new-and-improved Live Search QnA site, we also changed the way points were awarded.

I know that points in general can get pretty controversial, and I've definitely heard the suggestion that we eliminate points altogether from QnA. I hope you understand that this blog post is not to revisit that specific topic, but rather to clarify what the recent changes were.

With that said, here's a summary of the current system - which you can also find referenced the help topic QnA point values and levels:

Activity	QnA Points Awarded
Asking a question	0
Answering a question	5
Signing into QnA (once per day)	1
Voting for an answer (including "No best answer" )	0
Voting for an answer that is chosen as best (including "No best answer")	4
Providing the answer that is chosen as best	20
Leaving a comment	0
Rating a QnA pair	1
Submitting an abuse report that's accepted	1
Submitting an abuse report that's not accepted	-1
Having content removed from the site for violating the Code of Conduct	-50

The items in bold maroon are the ones we changed in this last release.

Although we've spent countless hours debating and discussing the topic of points, by no means do we claim this current scheme to be perfect. It is what it is right now, and reflects our current thinking of how community members should be rewarded for their activities. It's about finding a balance. Personally, I happen to like the idea of rewarding extra points for voting for the answer that wins best answer, and none for voting in general. But I know that not everyone shares this sentiment. It's something we'll continue to study.

I was trying to think of an analogy in sports where the way points are awarded can be changed - so far I've seen some interesting answers. Without a doubt, points on QnA will continue to be controversial and with that in mind, the points system is subject to change in future releases. My hope is that every change we make moves us closer to having the perfect QnA.

Do you have any novel thoughts on how we should tweak points? Share your thoughts on this thread in the boards.

-Dennis, QnA Program Manager

Thanks for your feedback on our latest release

Fri, 23 May 2008 20:11:06 GMT

It’s been a little over three weeks since we launched the new-and-improved QnA site. The QnA team set up a message board thread and asked the community to provide feedback and suggestions there.

And boy, has the community responded!

Thank you for all of your valuable feedback. The QnA team has been listening and reading through your responses carefully, and we want to share a quick summary of what we’ve heard in addition to some responses.

Overall design: We know that the new design took a number of folks in our community by surprise. It was our intention to streamline basic QnA actions such as the sign-up process for creating a new Windows Live ID and QnA account as well as the process for asking a question. We also wanted to freshen up the look of the site and make it better match the rest of Live Search. Now that the re-design has been out there for a while, we realize that we have more improvements to make, and we will be making these improvements in our upcoming releases. There are a few key things we’ve heard here:

Make it easier to find the “questions” page
General design of the “view question” page – you’ve had many specific pieces of feedback here about what we can do to improve and tweak this updated design that we’ll be taking into consideration. Thanks for providing all the great input here.
“Your QnA” – Surface more information about the questions you asked and the answers you provided. We already fixed half of this issue – we once again indicate when you won Best answer. But many of you have asked us to make it easier to see when the questions you asked are in the voting phase. Because of your feedback, but we are looking into bringing this feature back in future release.
Font size – it has been interesting to read the feedback because some community members really like the larger font size while others do not.
Navigation in general – Make it easier to find questions that need answers or votes
Vertical scrolling – We’ve heard general feedback that the web pages require more vertical scrolling than they did before. And we agree. We’re looking at a few ways of improving this in a future release.

Points: There are a number of issues at play here…

First, for those of you who have been participating actively in our message board discussions, you know that there are many folks who suggest that we eliminate points altogether from QnA. This has been one of the most hotly debated topics in our Features & Support boards – long before our new release.
Second, is how we choose to award points for different activities on the site and what impact the recent changes we made to the points system will have on community behaviors and participation.
- We used to award 1 point simply for voting for best answer. And if the answer you picked ended up winning best answer, you received 4 more points. Under the new system, you no longer receive a point simply for voting. But you still get 4 points if you voted for the answer that ends up winning best answer.
- We were honestly surprised to see the negative feedback here because we felt this would solve a significant concern raised by many in the community: namely, “point chasers” not taking the time to read all the answers and really think about which one deserves to be awarded best answer.
Unfortunately we’re not sure that these issues are well understood in the community right now so we will be spending a blog post talking specifically about these changes soon just to make sure and clarify.

Top contributors: The goal of the Top Contributors feature was to begin highlighting members on the site who tend to contribute a good percentage of best answers in given tags to represent their areas of expertise. We wanted to start highlighting good answerers in the community who often go unrecognized and also push all of us who participate on QnA to start thinking about how we tag our questions and how we choose to answer questions, and to start thinking about areas and topics that we could each become “Top Contributors” in. Based on your feedback, we realize now that the name “Top Contributor” may be interpreted in different ways, and many of you have mentioned other good examples of contributions that could be recognized. We will consider improving this feature in the future.

Unique nicknames: This has been a point of debate since the inception of QnA. This issue is not a straightforward one because there are many users who do not do “harm” but share a similar name (such as all the various “lisa’s” or “david’s” that we have in our community who are great contributors). The idea of unique nicknames really assumes that there is more harm done than good around how a member selects his or her nickname in the community. With the improvements we’ve made in our moderation process, the impersonation problem really seems to have declined, so we’re continuing to monitor this situation to see how we want to address this issue moving forward.

Superstars page: There was some great feedback shared here in the message boards as well and while we’ve already addressed and adjusted our algorithms that compute our Superstars featured by “Reputation.” We still have some more refining and work to do here so we appreciate the input and suggestions.

So we thank you for your continued feedback, and for continuing to use QnA! Please know that the team actively reads this thread and makes note of suggestions offered.

Until next time…

-QnA Team

Life of a Program Manager, Part 1

Fri, 16 May 2008 20:58:19 GMT

Hello, world! Nate here, writing my first blog post for the QnA team!

Mother’s Day was a week or so back, but thanks to the community, I didn’t miss this very important holiday and even got a few interesting ideas on how to make the day special.

We’ve all been very busy here with the new release and working on making the future of QnA even better. As we’ve been going through this, some of you have asked what exactly it is that we do. The four of us you’ve met so far—David, Heather, Dennis, and I—are program managers at Microsoft, on the Live Search team. Today, we’d like to share with you a little bit about our role and how we work to make QnA a better place!

Program managers, often abbreviated as PMs, are one of the three disciplines at Microsoft that focus on the software development lifecycle—developers, test engineers, and program managers. Together, these folks unite, get behind a project, make good stuff like our latest QnA release happen, and keep QnA up and operational 24/7.

At other technology organizations, Microsoft program management spans a little bit each of what is called product management, project management, and product marketing. It’s a multi-disciplinary role that touches every step of the product cycle. Over the course of a release, PMs act as the glue that keeps things together. Working with lots of other folks, they do the following on the QnA team:

· Customer and competitive research on how to make our site look better, work better, and keep folks happier

· Plan and flesh out those features

· Participate in the community of Live Search QnA

· Manage schedules and deadlines to release improvements in a timely fashion

· Moderate the site only when absolutely necessary (it’s not our day job, but we do serve as the last line of defense in making our community a safe and productive place to be)

A Day in the Life: the Planning Phase

Right now, we’re focused on ideas. Ideas come from all over the place and at any time of day. In gathering ideas and figuring out our future feature directions, we draw insights from other team members, our partners, our marketing team, and not least of all you, our dear users!

Before we dive in to designing new features, we first dig deep in to the QnA website and message boards. We draw insights in to the problems our product currently solves and currently fails to solve. This means focusing hard on how we use our own product, what users say about our product, how markets react to our product, and how folks use the site as our metrics measure it. At the end of the day, features should solve some fundamental problem for our business and our customers, and it is our goal to understand that problem.

Understanding the heart of the problem involves a lot of research, thought, and some intuition. For me, this has meant a lot of reading, a hearty amount of thought and consideration on your feedback, and quite a lot of discussions with folks on lots of teams. We organize all this information together, and we think through high-level issues customers face. Once these scenarios become apparent, we begin brainstorming appropriate solutions.

This may sound simple, but it can be a lot of work. Figuring out where our product should go isn’t easy. There are tons of different directions QnA could go; our dreams are infinite, but our time and resources, unfortunately, are not. We have to balance demands from our customers and partners, demands from our core business and company division, and limitations of our processes and technology. Balancing these separate needs requires us to understand and reconcile all these different perspectives.

Eventually, we develop our plans and our understanding of the product and market into detailed feature specifications …but that’s a story for another time!

Ideas? Thoughts? Now is the time to let us know so we can work together to make Live Search QnA even better with our next release! Please post your feedback in the message boards.

What is a Top Contributor?

Tue, 06 May 2008 02:40:39 GMT

One of the new features we've introduced in this latest release of QnA is the designation of Top Contributor. And many QnA members have been asking what it's all about. For example, Karin Bartsch asked:

What would make me a "Top Contributor?" Are there any fixed criteria to reach?
I would construct questions to be a crowd pleaser, but is that right? When we have Windows Search engine in mind, we should stick to concrete questions, right?

It's certainly interesting and enlightening to see how QnA members, such as Karin Bartsch, are interpreting the new features. Misunderstandings are certainly the fault of the QnA team -- and we do realize that we need to do a better job with communicating the meaning behind all of the features. I'll explain the Top Contributor feature in this blog post.

First of all, you should know that Top Contributor is really a short way of saying Top Contributor in a Tag. So when you see a member's avatar with the Top Contributor banner across the top, please remember that that's short-hand for Top Contributor in a Tag. Also, Top Contributor is all about answering questions on QnA and has nothing to do with the questions you ask.

Before I continue, let me point out that you can learn about the Top Contributor feature in this help topic: View your key statistics and improve your ranking. Here's an excerpt of what you'll see there:

Top Contributor: Top Contributors are people who've provided a high proportion of Best Answers for questions associated with one of the most popular tags. Top contributors have the Top Contributor banner over their avatar (A display picture that you can personalize and change to express your personality.). To become a Top Contributor, search for questions with a particular tag, and then provide the most detailed and useful answers that you can. For more information, see Find questions. Before you can become a Top Contributor, your Reputation must be above a certain level.

By the way, you can learn about all (or at least most) of the new features in the QnA help topics. The Help link is at the bottom of every QnA page.

There are also lots of contextual help links throughout the site. For example, when you see the module "Meet a Top Contributor in This Tag" you can click on the link that says What is a Top Contributor?

And when you see the "Key statistics" module on "Your QnA" or another member's public profile page, you can click on the link that says Learn more.

So, back to my own personal explanation of Top Contributor...

Top Contributors are not selected by anybody on the QnA team; they are selected automatically by an algorithm (formula) that makes a calculation behind the scenes. The calculation takes place at certain time intervals, so you may notice that a certain member is a Top Contributor in a given tag on one day but not on another day. This is because that person no longer met the criteria.

I can't reveal the actual formula -- however, the key to becoming a Top Contributor in a Tag is to provide lots of quality answers to questions associated with that tag. It also has to do with the quality of the answers you provide in general across QnA.

Remember, Top Contributor in a Tag does not have anything to do with the questions you ask, the comments you leave, or the votes you make. It's all about your answers -- both to questions associated with a particular tag and to all questions across the site.

Any particular QnA member is eligible to be designated a Top Contributor in up to five tags. For example, we have a member with the nickname Message who was selected by the algorithm as a Top Contributor in three tags: msn, messenger, and windows live messenger. This means, for example, that this member provided answers to a certain number of questions tagged windows live messenger. A certain percentage of those answers may have been selected as best answers. It also means that this member provided a certain quantity and quality of answers in general across all of QnA (not necessarily associated with the tag windows live messenger). Because the Top Contributor calculation is made repeatedly over time, it's possible that one day Message will see that she or he is no longer a Top Contributor in windows live messenger.

Top Contributors are designated for the most popular tags on the QnA site (approximately 200 of them at the time of this writing). Most popular means that members used these tags the most when asking their questions. For each of these tags, there can be one, two, or three Top Contributors. When you visit the tag page, you'll see just one "Meet a Top Contributor in This Tag" module on the page. This does not mean that this is the only Top Contributor in this tag. When you visit the same tag page at another time, you may see another member highlighted as a Top Contributor in that tag. There is a random and periodic rotation of this module on any given tag page.

We do not have a page at this time where you can view all of the Top Contributors in one place. And we do know that that would be a good idea for us to create such a page!

I'm sure you understand why I can't be more specific about the formula -- that would make it super easy for people to cheat and game the system. And, of course, we don't want that. We want the Top Contributor designation to mean something real -- to be an accurate representation of a member's answer contributions in a certain tag.

In the end, it's all about providing a clue as to the trustworthiness and accuracy of an answer. For example, if I ask a question about cars, and I get an answer from Literally Speaking, and I see that this member is a Top Contributor in the tag cars -- well, I'm more likely to trust his answer. It's just another way to make QnA more helpful to those asking questions. And, on the flip side, it's a way to reward members for providing quality answers in their area of expertise.

I would like to point out that -- as of this writing -- Literally Speaking is indeed a Top Contributor in the tag cars. I'm going to share a little trick, which you might find useful. Here are the search results for all of the questions tagged cars that were answered by Literally Speaking:

http://qna.live.com/Search.aspx?q=Meta%3Asearch.aauthor%286F6E9BD36AB340929D8DCA8C20B064E6%29+AND+tag%3Acars&go=&form=QB

The way I got those results was by typing in the following meta search in the QnA search box:

Meta:search.aauthor(6F6E9BD36AB340929D8DCA8C20B064E6) AND tag:beauty

The long number inside the parentheses is the User ID of Literally Speaking, which you can see in the URL of Literally Speaking's public profile page:

http://qna.live.com/ShowUser.aspx?uid=6F6E9BD36AB340929D8DCA8C20B064E6

Now that you know this advanced search technique, you can make your own queries by substituting any user's ID and include any tag. By the way, you can search for questions associated with a given tag by doing the following searches:

Type tag:gardening in the search box -- this will give you all questions tagged gardening
Type tag:"internet explorer" in the search box -- this will give you all questions tagged internet explorer
If you type tag:internet explorer in the search box (meaning you forgot to include the quotation marks) -- this will give you all questions tagged internet that also have the word explorer somewhere on the question page

I should probably point out here that the Top Contributor designation is not directly tied to being a Superstar. You're likely to see Superstars who are Top Contributors in certain tags. And you're also likely to see Superstars who are not Top Contributors in any tags.

Well, hopefully this answers your questions about Top Contributor and what it's all about.

As you know, QnA is a beta site, which means that it's still a work in progress. A feature like Top Contributor is one of those features that will need to be adjusted and fine-tuned over time. So please be patient if you notice that a Top Contributor designation doesn't seem to make sense. By all means, tell us about it. But please do understand that this isn't going to be perfect out of the gate.

Please funnel any other questions or feedback about the QnA site to the following message board thread:

Your feedback and questions about the new-and-improved QnA

Thanks for your continued interest in QnA. Now go out there and explore questions by tag or do those tag searches to find questions in your areas of expertise, and become Top Contributors in Tags!

-DavidB, QnA Program Manager

Question: Why was the QnA site down for maintenance? Answer: Read on…

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 23:09:53 GMT

I am very excited and proud to announce that the new & improved Live Search QnA Beta site refresh is finally available for your viewing pleasure!

When I first joined the team late in the fall of 2007, we spent a lot of time debating the goals and priorities for this first “re-birth” release of the QnA site. We reviewed the mounds of feedback from you, our valued beta community, and combined this feedback with our business goals, priorities, and timeframe for the release.

I’d like to introduce you to our “Renaissance” release of Live QnA Beta – it’s our re-birth and signifies the beginning of a new set of features that we will continue to release to the QnA site on a more frequent basis moving forward. We know we’ve been a little “dark” with new feature improvements over the past year, and know we have a lot more to do, but we are excited to be breathing life back into the site… there’s more to come!

To give you some background, once we agreed upon the release theme of rebuilding QnA, we developed three goals:

Goal #1 -- Focus on the QnA experience for new users. These are the features new members will experience when they come to QnA for the first time. You’ll recognize some of these features as many of them were requests from you. Here are a few examples of some key improvements made:

Signing up for QnA – We have partnered with Windows Live ID to launch an updated version of the Live ID sign-up page where you can create your own Windows Live ID. This is now a straightforward 1-page process (instead of the previous 3- or 5-page process).
Registering for a QnA account – One of the most common issues is that new users are often not familiar with the “rules” of QnA. So we’ve re-designed the QnA registration page so that new members must view and agree to the Code of Conduct.
Getting to the QnA site – Some of you have already noticed that we’ve been getting a lot of new users on the QnA site since it’s now featured on the MSN Election channel and also on the bottom of many Live Search results web pages. As we move forward, we’ll be promoting QnA more frequently in more places and bringing in more new users.

Goal #2 -- Encourage users to discover content and functionality in new ways

Completely new look & feel – We revisited some of the navigational and user interface feedback we’ve received on the “Features & Support” message boards and tried to address some key navigational issues in the overall site design.
Making it easier to discover questions and tag content on the QnA site – This is a general improvement we made to the way the site navigation works. You’ll notice a few different metaphors to help you surf and browse the site including “tag clouds,” which show clusters of the most popular tags.

Goal #3 -- Highlight and award higher quality content by featuring members who are Top Contributors in given areas of expertise – Another piece of feedback we’ve heard is the frustration that many community members experience when they see “point chasers,” so we’ve addressed this feedback in a number of ways:

We introduced a new Superstars page where members are featured based on their reputation (the number of stars they have, which is an indication of their Best Answers to Total Answers ratio).
We’re now featuring members who are Top Contributors in the most popular tags. So if you click on most of the ~200 most popular tags on the site (you’ll see those in our new tag clouds), you’ll now see a “Top Contributor” featured on that page, and you’ll also see a new banner for “Top Contributor” that appears above their avatar.

These are just a few of the changes you’ll notice on the new site.

Want to know more? We’ll go into more details on these changes on this blog in the upcoming weeks. In the meantime, we want to answer a few questions:

Why are you still in beta? It’s been two years – what’s the deal? Well to be honest, there is still more improvements we’d like to make in a number of areas especially our infrastructure and moderation. So until we have a chance to complete this work, we’re keeping QnA in beta.
Why do you still have points on the QnA site? While we understand and have read the feedback from the community both for and against points, we are not yet at a point (ha ha – get it, points? Making my point?) where we’re ready to give up on the points model altogether. Based on our research, points help motivate members to participate and contribute quality content. Given some of the complaints we’ve heard about “point chasers,” we made changes to the Superstars page, to the way points are awarded on the site, and to the Superstars featured on the home page. We will continue to monitor community feedback around these changes in helping us continue to improve this system moving forward.
Why does the new logo say “Live Search QnA Beta” when it used to say “Live QnA Beta?” Well our URL is the same (http://qna.live.com) but we’re now called “Live Search QnA Beta” – this is because the QnA team is part of Live Search. QnA is strategic to Live Search’s vision of enabling people to find what they’re looking for (after all, that’s what search is all about). Sometimes you can find what you’re looking for by entering search terms on Live Search and getting algorithmic (computer generated) results. But sometimes it may be better or easier to get your answers or tips from a live human being – and that’s where the QnA community comes in!
What else will you release in the future? You know we can’t say, but please trust us when we say we’re listening to you and taking on exciting new ideas for the site moving forward.

This is just a short summary of some of the changes you’ll notice… there are more, much more, from Alerts, to QnA points, to “Your QnA,” to the backend servers that sustain QnA, the home page, and everything in between. So I invite you to join us on the QnA Message Boards with any feedback or suggestions on the release. And please remember to go easy on us. Rome wasn’t built in a day.

-Heather, Lead Program Manager, QnA

P.S. This work is the result of many long hours, late nights and weekends. Special thanks to everyone on our team who committed themselves and pulled out all the stops. I know that I am very lucky to be working with such a talented bunch of folks – thank you QnA product team!

Live QnA remodeling on Monday (4/28/2008)

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 19:08:14 GMT

On Monday, April 28, 2008, at about 8am PDT, Live QnA Beta will be temporarily closed for some remodeling.

Fortunately this remodel should be less complicated than David’s new skylight which took two days to install – but nonetheless we regret to inform you that the Live QnA web site will be unavailable for about a day or so.

As many of you know, we’ve been re-investing in QnA. We’ve spent the last few months planning, learning, and preparing for a set of updates to the Live QnA Beta community site. Along the way, we’ve grown our QnA product team and on this blog, we’ve introduced 3 of the many new people who have joined our team in the last few months, and we plan to introduce a few more soon.

In response to your feedback re: some of the uninvited guests on our site, we tuned the way we handle content that is reported for abuse and improved the response time to review issues reported by the community. In parallel, we’ve also been hard at work these past few months, improving QnA, and I hope you will enjoy what you see when the remodel is complete. There’s still plenty left to do, but we think this is a good start.

So again, Live QnA will be temporarily closed on Monday April 28, 2008. Please feel free to check back later on Monday or early Tuesday to see when we re-open. We’ll definitely update this blog when your Live QnA community is open once again.

Thanks a lot for your understanding. See you soon!

-Live QnA Team

A Difficult Topic: Suicide Threats on QnA

Wed, 09 Apr 2008 23:28:47 GMT

It’s an unfortunate fact of life on the Web today – especially these days with the proliferation of sites that allow people to post content online. Every now and then somebody will submit a post in which he or she is considering suicide. This does happen on QnA. We want to take this opportunity to talk a bit about this difficult topic and the policies surrounding it.

What is the policy regarding suicide threats on QnA?

When the QnA team is alerted to a suicide threat on QnA, the policy is for the team to escalate the issue to another team at Microsoft who will attempt to notify local law enforcement. The QnA team will then remove the post. This policy is designed to protect Microsoft, protect our users, and keep the intended use of QnA intact.

Why is the policy to remove the post?

At times of crisis, QnA members attempting to be helpful can inadvertently uncover and reveal personal information about the person who posted the original threat, and this can lead to identification of that person. We’ve dealt with this in the past – multiple user names/aliases were discussed and this lead to personally identifiable information being posted such as the person’s real name, physical location, and telephone number. Soliciting this type of personal information is an invasion of privacy and is against the QnA Code of Conduct.

Attempts of suicide are serious matters (illegal in some areas) best handled by professionals who are trained to deal with such situations.

How does removing a suicide threat maintain the integrity of the QnA service?

QnA is a place for people to ask and answer questions. Suicide threats are neither questions (even if they’re phrased as questions) nor answers. Plus they can be considered illegal behavior. QnA is not a suicide hotline; it is not a law enforcement agency; and QnA cannot be dispensing or condoning advice on such matters. It’s not uncommon for questions of this type to become disruptive, confusing, and potentially harmful despite the best intentions of some members who just want to help. While the majority of QnA members respond appropriately to suicide posts, there are almost always the few who jump in with inappropriate answers and comments. And since all such inappropriate responses cannot effectively be removed, it's best for the question itself to be removed.

The QnA Code of Conduct, which all members agree to follow when signing up for QnA, doesn’t allow this type of content/behavior and it’s important that any violations are properly dealt with. If the QnA team asks users to not engage in such activity but never takes down the content then it’s counterproductive to the QnA site. We strive to have consistent internal practices for dealing with inappropriate content and removal in this fashion is one such consistency.

How do suicide threats violate the QnA Code of Conduct?

Suicide threats can be considered a violation of the QnA Code of Conduct for a number of reasons:

1. They usually are not questions

2. A suicide threat is a specific call to violent acts (incite violence)

3. It can be considered illegal behavior (in violation of local/national laws)

Please note that we are talking about specific threats of suicide and not questions in which a member is asking a question about feelings of depression.

It’s also Microsoft’s policy to remove not only specific threats of suicide but also other violent calls to action such as acts of terrorism, physical abuse, threats to someone’s life, and bomb threats. Before the post is removed, local law enforcement is notified. This policy exists to help protect the privacy of the person making the threat and also to maintain the integrity of the service.

What kind of suicide questions are allowed on QnA?

As mentioned above, suicide threats are not allowed on QnA. But it is okay to ask philiosphical questions about suicide. Here are a few examples of what’s allowed:

What should you do when you see a suicide threat on QnA?

When you see a question on QnA that contains a suicide threat, the best thing you can do is report that question as a violation of the QnA Code of Conduct. Just click “Report abuse” and fill out the form telling us that the question is a suicide threat. The QnA team will then follow the procedure outlined above (escalate the issue to the authorities and then remove the question).

-QnA Team

Hello April. Hello Nate.

Thu, 03 Apr 2008 18:45:33 GMT

Howdy QnA Community. Dennis here.

I hope April has started well for you – better than for me at least! With the help of the community, I’ve determined that I started April off with a cold.

On the other hand, Heather, David, and Live QnA have fared better:

Heather, because she has finally figured out how to turn off her outside lights via the electronic timer in her house that she has been trying to turn off for 1.5 years! (She didn’t know the brand of the timer but the links the community pointed her to actually enabled her to find the online instruction manual for her specific model – she won’t stop talking about how excited she is.)
David, because he gained valuable insights from the QnA community regarding the value of extended auto warranties.
QnA, because I’m genuinely happy to see the great questions and great answers being posted. I also hope that some of you found David’s recent entry on how and when to use Windows Live Spaces to be helpful. I know there’s still some concern around the occasional not-so-great content, and the inconsistencies around how reports of abuse are handled, but I promise you that we are continuously working to find solutions and improve our processes to make things better.

Let’s switch gears for a moment and dive into the true purpose of this post: I’d like to introduce our newest member of the QnA Team, Nate Janewit. We’re super excited to welcome Nate to our team. As a recent grad from Stanford, Nate brings a fresh perspective to the team and has already shown lots of excitement for improving QnA. In fact, Nate was so eager to come in on his first day that we instead had to send him to the emergency room to get stitches for the gash in his foot that he suffered due to a mishap with a shower door the night before!

Enough of me embarrassing Nate, here’s what he has to say for himself:

Hello, everyone! I’m Nate, and I joined the QnA team about a week ago. I come from a background of search, advertising, and startups. I’m really stoked to be with Live QnA!
I’m buckling down and ramping up as we move toward delivering features I know many of you have been asking for. I care a lot about technology and consumer products, and I look forward to making our site more powerful, more fun, and more rewarding. Our Silicon Valley team here is crazy talented, and my hope is we’ll deliver you the best, richest, and most useful experience for questions and answers.
Good to meet you all, and I’ll be behind the scenes making things happen for you!

Thanks Nate and welcome to the team! Expect to see Nate-QnA hanging out in the near future.

-Dennis