There is no hierarchy. There are no moderators in the MS newsgroups, and
very few messages are removed for cause (profanity, legal issues, etc.) by
the MS administrators.

Microsoft MVP (MS-MVP). The MVP part stands for Most Valuable Professional.
Put simply, people who hang in these groups and consistently answer
questions in a professional manner, MAY get awarded the MVP status by MS. We
DO NOT work for MS (employees and contractors can't be MVPs) , many of us
don't even like MS, and in fact, we tend to slam them when they need
slamming. For more info, see here: http://mvp.support.microsoft.com

I was awarded at the end of 1999, and I've spent all my efforts in this and
the other Win98 groups, almost exclusively. Naturally, nobody is getting the
MVP Award for work in the Win9x groups anymore. You don't always know if
someone is an MVP -- it's an Award for past behavior and requires no further
commitments. All they offer are some small gifts (and one large one -- MSDN
and/or TechNet). Besides that, we have a convention every 18 months or so
and have pretty direct access to MS techs. We also tend to participate
heavily in product development via very early beta testing.

Personally, I am repeatedly amazed that they bother to give me the Award
anymore. I used to post a few hundred messages daily. These days, I'm lucky
if it's a hundred a month.

I'm glad you got your issues figured out.

--
Gary S. Terhune
MS-MVP Shell/User
www.grystmill.com


"tech reader" <tecread@gmail.com> wrote in message
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