Why are the forums so poorly designed?

Question

Hi all,

As an MS enthusiast, I am often pushed to demonstrate why MS is such a good option for development.  But as soon as a developer comes to this site to post a message, they nail me with issue after issue about the site.  And then they make a snide comment that if MS with all their resources can't even build a decent support forum, then how can anyone expect to write decent code using MS products....

Examples (all using IE 7)

Messages are sometimes duplicated (ie 2 messages in sequence will appear twice, in the same sequence...)
The fonts are just plain screwy.  When editing, the fonts look one way.  Click submit and they suddently grow or shrink to silly sizes.
Why do text windows take x amount of space, but the wrapping occures at x + 5 (or whatever) so that I always have to scroll to see all the messages?  This usually happens when there is code embedded in the message.
Why do the "related topics" so often have nothing to do with the title?

I can go on, but it's frustrating that something as basic as a support forum has so many obvious UI issues....

Thanks for letting me vent...

Fletcher

Answer 1

Thanks Fletcher for reporting these issues.

Couple of comments:

- Messages are sometimes duplicated (ie 2 messages in sequence will appear twice, in the same sequence...)
[Don] Are these duplicate posts marked as answers? If so, there's a user setting to turn this off. Click on "My Settings" (left pane) and unselect this option: "Always Show Answers First On Thread Page"

- editing, the fonts look one way.  Click submit and they suddently grow or shrink to silly sizes.
Why do text windows take x amount of space, but the wrapping occures at x + 5 (or whatever) so that I always have to scroll to see all the messages
[Don] We have a bug on Font issues. Recently, we've updated the MSDN brand forums with new design. This has caused some font styling and sizing issues

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Forums Test Lead