SharePoint Knights and the MVP Program

May 6, 2009 09:34 AM

I don't know how many of you saw this (because it seemed to be mainly a SharePoint thing), but I thought it was interesting. I say that as someone not familiar with the MVP program, nor particularly outgoing or focused enough to be deep into the community, so it'd be interesting to get other people's reactions. I also say that as someone who didn't pay a great deal of attention to it, other than skimming the blog posts.

Joel Oleson posted a suggestion for a community-based group called SharePoint Knights, where membership was based solely on contribution to the community, tracked liked points). Nothing more than brainstorming had been done, but obviously it drew some pretty clear lines within the community.

It was followed by Luther's 10 Points to the MVP program, a critique of some of the problems with the program and the reason for creating a separate, community-focused organization alongside the MVP program. And finally, the response to both of these posts was so heated that the SharePoint Knights project has been put on hold.

I think he has a point about the politics often involved in community, especially when the public face is to pretend there aren't any politics and everyone's one big happy family. Perhaps Luther's theses were a bad choice for his critiques--here was a man who meant to reform an institution, and instead unintentionally created an enormous rift within it.

Comments

Michael Neel • May 6, 2009 10:49 AM
I saw some of this yesterday, didn't dive into the specifics to see where it wrong. On the surface it seemed the problem was the appearance that Oleson didn't get MVP, so he was making his own program combined with some subversive ploy by his current employer to boost it self. No idea how valid these assumptions are, but you are right in the result stopped things.

Ironically this does exist in ASP.NET - we have ASPInsiders which is an exclusive (in the sense you have to be voted in by the members) separate community group from Microsoft's MVP program. It used to be 100% separate from Microsoft, but then worked out an agreement for ASPInsiders to have NDA's with Microsoft (so we can see and comment on future project and direction). The trade for NDA was giving Microsoft veto power over the votes - in practice to make lawyers happy, I don't think it's ever been used.

Dylan Wolf • May 6, 2009 01:57 PM
Yeah, coming from a non-MVP, it kind of looked odd. That, and there seems to be a fundamental problem with any program to give people official rewards and/or status for contribution to the community. Inevitably, it will run into problems with politics, and it will be used by people who just get involved to get ahead themselves. Creating a new program doesn't eliminate the risk of that cropping up, it merely resets the timer.

Of course, I'm naively idealistic sometimes.