Bravo Jeff I agree completely. And like I posted un another thread, I feel this is a very unfortuanate thing to loose the MVP program. But true to form, let me step up and be the sickening optimist here and point a few things out.

(puts on flame retardant suit)

I got the impression fro one of Nancy's message that the number of MVPs across all disciplines is pretty extensive. They each get a free MSDN Universal subscription, so that's like a $2k times x number MVPs worldwide investment on M$ part as incentive for the experts to help others. The incentive has pbviously worked if the newsgroups & forums are getting so much traffic now that M$ wants their own people involved with supportng the public. So let's see, the MVPs have helped build this significant amount of traffic, and M$ is going to support it... sounds like more job openings for expert type folks at M$. You take off the top layer, and what happens? The middle layer floats to the top... therefore more opportunity for everyone I would think.

Also, how many times in the past as this developer community been all fired up about flaws in the product or features we need (ie all the Wish List rukus)? Quite often. Why do we get so fired up? Because we know the product so well and we invest our own efforts into supporting the community. Well if M$ picks up the slack in regards to supporting public forums, I would think these issues we feel so strongly about will be more readily apparent to M$ then they have been in the past. Plus too, if M$ actively tries to man the helm with public support their going to have more informed perspective in regards too what folks are actually actually doing with the product.

Granted I'm going to miss the MVP program just from the standpoint that I'm a BIG believer in having role models (and my personal role models are the MVPs I love dearly as both friends & colleagues - not the M$ Fox Team). But perhaps maybe we ought to atleast give this a chance to see if M$ does get more involved with the various developer communities before we berate the downside of this decision to death?