>For example, I think it's a bad idea to make one site the one and only "official" site for posting wishes for Europa. Rather than that, why not have all the major (and minor, for that matter) sites have a link where their users can email, directly to MS, a wish.

As I've been involved in it, I may take the occasions to formulate some comments I received from the reasons to benefit of the actual infrastructure.

I also used the email approach for a few years. It was good at first but times evolve. I believe it was time to update that structure. It was a pleasure to work with them to enhance it. Note also that MS still has everything locally. It's just that we provide the front end for collecting the data and delivering reports and related tools.

One good reason was to benefit of a more public interface in order to get more benefits such as avoiding duplicates as some may lookup and comment on an existing wishes instead of formulating similar ones. I don't say that we do not have duplicates. But, there is less than before as the interface is now public to everyone as oppose to sending an email and not knowing what is in progress. Note also that Vlad Grynchyshyn, Nadya, Jim and others have been involved recently to enhance the wish list in regards to MS recommendations and to other suggestions collected by the community. In one of the related task, Vlad is cleaning up duplicates, merging, etc. in order to enhance the integrity of the list. So, such interface do allow this possibility. That is something difficult by email.

Providing such interface allows the data to be immediately archived in a table, validations take place and anyone can use a WS to collect any other related data to it.

So, this is just to name a few of the reasons. Ken and Randy may jump in and provide more reasons if they wish.