What Goes On At the ASP.NET Website?

First, I think ASP.NET is a great web site, and featuring articles from all over the community helps build a diverse and informative resource for developers.

But…

There are problems which in my opinion devalue the site. I used to think there was some forethought and human intelligence behind the scenes which would take the steps necessary for the site to appear with the polished veneer you’d expect from a site with Microsoft’s name attached, but the ‘man behind the curtain’ appears to be 100% silicon.

Take today’s new article description. This is obviously meant to reach someone who is responsible for the ASP.NET daily article content and not meant to appear on the front page. I’m sorry to say John, even if you used the official contact email of aspnetw3@microsoft.com, you won’t get a response, at least in my experience.

(UPDATE: The article has changed as of 3:20 PM EST. The description used to begin with "Dear Editor, Thank you for accepting my article,,,," Thank you ASP.NET!)

In the past there have been articles that have nothing to do with web development, which doesn’t bother me too much, but when this happens I start to wonder what sort of standards the site maintains. What I do find troubling is how at least two articles were duplicated in the space of 10 days this year, which indicates to me nobody is paying attention to what is going on. The front page content is just a FIFO queue in a database. My guess is, someone could post a link to Michael Jackson's legal documents and the article will show up on the front page of ASP.NET.

I can appreciate filtering content to feature a daily article (indeed, even having a daily article) can be a tough job. Hopefully, someone can step up and address the issue. Given the site’s domain name, and the site’s owner, there are certain expectations to meet. Don’t devalue the site and the work by the author’s who contribute to this resource.