George

I don;t have enough "investment" in this issue to maintain exchange of contradiction enough to get myself in the "top 50 posters"... < g >

>> There are other forums and newsgroups. As far as "life-MVPs", that's no longer the case. <<

I quoted the MS newsgroups and UT. To support your view, can you or whatever MS Support Professional selected them, please tell me what online communities Andy Kramek, Paul Maskens, Doug Hennig and Jim Booth provided with "technically accurate" assistance during 2000 to such an extent as to achieve the MVP status noted in the latest Foxtalk.

Before people rise to their defence, I have *utmost* respect for these people and their expertise which is not at all the issue, nor is the value of the commercial articles or books they do. The issue is whether "contribution of technically accurate advice in on-line communities" is really the hallmark of MVP status. Perhaps commercial Foxtalk articles or books are a contribution to "on-line community" in which case I apologise, but that certainly wasn't my understanding when I got my MVP clock in 1996- I did it by voluntary, non-commercial technical contributions to the Compuserve forums of the time which is what it said on my certificate. At the time, all the above were extremely active as well, by the way.

>>I don't know if all the reports are available to BUTMs or not. There is one titled "Top 50 Posters - MVP" that lists a bit less than than the total number that's available to all PUTMs. I think it shows 38 of around 50 MVPs.<<

Sure, but the issue is "technical" contribution. Heaps of threads are just friends bantering, or in some cases flaming each other for hundreds of messages. Meanwhile others provide a real technical value with a few dozen directed messages but never appear in the top 50.

For example, Ed Rauh comes top of the MVP posters in 6 months. Whether his baiting of WM or participation in JVP flares is a "technical" contribution is not something you can read from such a statistic. And if "total messages" over the years is a useful cue then "life-membership" is a real possibility based on previous activity.

As I said, lets see the names of all the MVP's so we can judge.

Regards

JR