Feedback on the Microsoft Community Layout

Greetings, Roberto and Adrian!

Here's some thoughs on the Microsoft Community.  There are two points I'd like to bring up:

The first is the creation of three sub communities.  At this point is it too early to break these into seperate sub communities?  Whilst it certainly makes sense from an organization point of view, I think it may also introduce complexity into the user interface that doesn't introduce any benefit to the audience.  Here's what I'm thinking:  Some one comes to the website via a google search or browsing and they end up in one of the sub communities.  Since each sub community is displayed as a "whole community" the depth of all the content related to Microsoft isn't readily obvious.  A secondary concern here is that if someone has a question the subdivision of the site might introduce confusion as to where exactly to post questions or comments.  It implies a "process" that might not be absolutely obvious to folks outside of our teams.  Lastly, until we have some sort of critical mass of content that indicates a demand for a seperate section (such as enough posts are generated everyday to flip new posts past the page break) it may be better just to have everything together and rely on tags to help focus a user's search.

These are just some concerns with the sub communities.

Now, if the sub communities are determined to be a desirable thing than I would suggest that the links to them be available on the main Everything Microsoft Page rather than just the individual content type pages.

Thanks for your consideration.

Rob Tacey
Solution Design Center

617-794-1839