David (and Terry),

After reading JohnK's reply it was my conclusion that what would be the most advantageous/least cost (to VFP Team) would be to have access to the formal and maintained list of "authorized" (meaning successfully repro'ed, not 'approved' < s >) bugs. You know, the one that the VFP Team is already working with.

I did like the suggestion, though, that UT and other venues could act as pre-screeners. I envision several people trying the reported bug and reporting repro (or not) and suggestion workarounds. All that would be needed in such cases would be some way to get it into MS' hands for addition to their list.

JohnK convinced me of the resource issue, but it is true that WE (collectively) also have a "resource issue", countless people EACH losing lots of time discerning a bug and its workaround. I'd bet that some (well known to MS) bugs have consumed tens of thousands of hours across the user spectrum.
Frankly, some effort by MS to mitigate that ought to be intrinsic to their thinking, company-wide!

cheers

>Terry,
>
>>So now you're saying there is too much VFP interest to allocate resources to service market queries?
>
>I'm not saying anything other than to ask if you read JK's post about how the page would impact the team's resources? THey know much better than I what the internal impact would be of including VFP on the special page, with all the requirements that might be attached to that.
>
>>Just how much of a load would you anticipate if there was a page - most of MS's VFP customers are on this board or foxcite - with all the downplay we've been getting lately one would think the link would never get clicked. You can't argue both sides - either there is too much or not enough - in the same breath.
>
>I'm not arguing any side. It just seems a little silly to be saying that they should just put VFP's name on that page (for marketing purposes, I suppose) and not worry about how they would manage the change in procedures. I guess if I'm arguing anything it would be that anything that makes the VFP team more efficient with the limited resources they have is a good thing. If adding VFP to that page does not make them more efficient, it's not a good thing. It's not like there are hundreds of VFP Team members sitting around with time on their hands. :-)
>
>Let's don't get hung up on appearances more than results -- form over substance.
>
>>Tell you what - have the link shunt VFP inquiries to someplace we can get to them...
>
>I don't know how workable it would be to have "us" handle and vet support requests officially submitted to Microsoft, but someone else suggested that a VFP link on "the page" could just route to the normal bug-reporting URL, in which case the net effect would be just a marketing or visibility thing (and an inconsistency with the rest of the choices on the page.)