>I still stand by my view of their intolerance of opinions differing from their own. Because of their standing within this community (giving it the benefit of the doubt), some feel that they are able to make pronouncements that should be taken as gospel (for example, Craig Berntston, who prompted my initial comment) & when criticised, the group closes ranks & defends each other (for example, Cindy Winegarden, defending Craig's lack of explanation on the grounds that the poor boy was too busy).

Len,

I'm going to have to take you on about this. Using Craig as an example isn't exactly the best.

Before doing so, however, let me tell you a little bit about both Craig and Cindy.

Craig has been around here longer than I. It's been my experience that he is one of the nicest people you'd ever want to run into. I don't say this because I consider him a friend (which I do). I say it because time and time again he's demonstrated it.

Cindy is a relative newcomer here. During the period of time she's been here, however, she's contributed greatly to the community, not only by answering questions, but through her work with the certification exams as well.

One thing that they both share is that they're MVPs for their contributions. Since I'm not sure of whether or not you realize how one gets to be an MVP, so if the following is known to you, my apologies for stating something you know. One of the criteria is a high degree of accuracy on technical questions. In short, MVPs are monitored by Microsoft for the quality of their contributions.

Unfortunately, giving the "best" possible answer to a question is not always easy. You can, unintentially leave something out. A response sometimes is based upon an opinion. If the information available isn't in sufficient enough detail, it's highly possible that the answer received won't be helpful either.

If a response is based on an opinion, the opinion is based upon the respondant's experience and it's just that, an opinion and the respondant is entitled to that opinion regardless if it be MVP or not.

If the situation is that the questioner didn't give enough information, then there's a degree of likelihood that the answer may not apply.

On this latter point, there was recently a question regarding the best possible way to extract the field name from a string in the format: "alias.field". I responded by saying that if you used JUSTEXT() it would work. The questioner, however, failed to mention that they were using 5.0 and in that version JUSTEXT() was a foxtools function and not part of the language itself.

My problem here is that MVPs and other "gurus" seem to have become targets lately for criticism. Unfortunately, the bulk of that criticism seems to be anything but constructive. Rather than saying what Craig didn't mention, you simply chose to criticize him. In light of that, let me ask, "What does that contribute?" I can find no other answer than, "Nothing".

To elaborate, let me point out a post from today (Jan. 5th). The questioner asked about creating a top-level form. Larry Miller, who is a recent MVP, and, from what I read gave, perhaps, an incomplete answer in stating that what was necessary was to set the ShowWindow property of the form to top-level and to set _SCREEN.Visible equal to .F. This answer, as I said, was, in my opinion, incomplete, since it will cause a flash if SCREEN = OFF isn't included in the configuration file. Did I post this to Larry? No, I didn't. I posted back to the questioner, with this information as an addendum to Larry's post.

The reason I didn't criticise Larry without providing the additional information about this was that it didn't help the questioner. Would I ever or have I ever criticize another MVP directly? Yes, provided I felt that my relationship with that person was good enough so that they knew I was giving them a "playful" poke for missing it, and I've done so in the past. However, I also would've provided the additional infomation and, if possible, copied the questioner on it. Larry and I haven't reached that point yet. It's nothing personal. It's just that he and I haven't interacted enough to reach that point yet. In time, we probably (hopefully) will, because I consider to be a highly talented (and nice) individual. Nothing more, nothing less.

I tend to think the best of people, not the worst. I won't attempt to explain why Cindy posted what she did except to say say that perhaps she thought you were being unfair. I don't see any "closing ranks" here. I see one member standing up for another who they think is being treated unfairly.

Len, about a year ago, there were some very upset people here. Why? Well, the policy up until December 31, 1999 had been that MVPs who had earned that status here got a free PUTM membership. On that date this was discontinued. This came about, principally, because earlier in 1999 some people complained that this was unfair. Among the upset folks were, as one might expect, some MVPs. Some non-MVPs, who happened also to be PUTNs, also were. Why? I don't have a defintive answer to that, but I would hope that they felt by removing this "perk" that the quality of the responses might degrade.

The bottom line here is that people can't have it both ways. The "gurus" are going to give what they feel is the best answer. If this runs contrary to someone else's opinion, so be it. If this is the case, then provide supporting information to the contrary opinion.

In short, no one should mind criticism, provided that the criticism is constructive and provide the questionner with additional information that they might not have add otherwise. To simply criticize without doing do contributes nothing. I've a great distaste for people like this because they do nothing to make anything better, only worse.

Regards,