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Council Spotlight: Demystifying the TechNet Guru Judge System

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Do you know how at the end of the Wizard of Oz, they lift the curtain and see the dorky guy projecting his big head (if you didn't, you do now)?

 

Well we're looking past Peter's big head (projected, of course) to take a look at the inner workings of the TechNet Guru Judge System!

See the full article here:

TechNet Guru Competition: Judge System Explanation

 

Here are some excerpts from that article:

Introduction

The TechNet Guru Competition is a monthly contest. Each month people who post an article to TechNet Wiki can propose their article for consideration in that month's awards. The top three articles each month win a "virtual" gold, silver or bronze award. Winners are promoted across the community in forums, blogs and interviews. Winning a Guru medal also contributes towards TechNet Wiki Ninja Belts.

The competition is split over a number of categories. Each category has at least 2-4 specialist Microsoft employees or MVPs who are experts in that category, as well as 2-3 TechNet Wiki Community Council members. Therefore each category has between 5 and eight judges. The MS experts and MVPs assess the technical content of the article. The Wiki Councillors are also judging content, but they also looking at the format, layout, readability and design of the article.

How it works

Each month, a new Wiki page is posted, where contributors add a link to their articles. Contributors edit the article, adding a new bullet line containing a hyperlinked reference to the article and author, in their selected category list of contributions.

The Import Tool

I have developed a WPF tool which crawls the contributions Wiki page and extracts the articles, authors and links for each category. Once I confirm the import data, it uploads the data to an SQL database in Azure.

The Judge Tool

I have developed a Silverlight application that feeds from a WCF service of a website on Azure, which also feeds from the same contributions database as above.

Comments are very important feedback for the contributors, both good and bad. We hope judges can find the time to add at least a few words for each article. We also ask judges not to write too much, as we have to collate all the comments into one response area of the results blog.

Okay. I'll stop there. This blog post just gives you a little taste.

Go here to read the whole thing and experience its awesomeness:

TechNet Guru Competition: Judge System Explanation

Thanks to XAML Guy for hosting the best contest on the face of the planet!

   - Ninja Ed

Comments

  • Anonymous
    May 15, 2014
    Awesome Ed! Thanks for sharing this!!
  • Anonymous
    May 16, 2014
    Great work XAML Guy!!! Thanks to all that work for the TechNet Guru to be successful
  • Anonymous
    May 16, 2014
    Great work! Beautifully explained! Hoping to get one! :)
  • Anonymous
    May 16, 2014
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    May 16, 2014
    Credit actually goes to Peter Laker for creating such thing.
  • Anonymous
    May 17, 2014
    All the votes are in!

    And below are the results for the TechNet Guru Awards, April 2014 !
  • Anonymous
    May 27, 2014
    You're welcome, Matthew. I love the opportunity to shine light on what XAML guy is doing for the community!
  • Anonymous
    May 27, 2014
    Steven, sorry I missed your comment. Looks like XAML guy got it up one day after your comment. Some fantastic SharePoint articles, including some great ones from you!
  • Anonymous
    May 27, 2014
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    June 17, 2014
    All the votes are in!

    And below are the results for the TechNet Guru Awards, May 2014 !

    The
  • Anonymous
    June 19, 2014
    The Small Basic Guru Awards celebrate the Small Basic articles on TechNet Wiki, contributed from valued
  • Anonymous
    July 16, 2014
    Congratulations
  • Anonymous
    July 18, 2014
    All the votes are in!

    And below are the results for the TechNet Guru Awards, June 2014 !
  • Anonymous
    July 19, 2014
    All the votes are in!

    And below are the results for the TechNet Guru Awards, June 2014 !
  • Anonymous
    July 24, 2014
    Congrats to LitDev, Jibba Jabba, and Nonki! Great articles this month!





    Small Basic
  • Anonymous
    January 22, 2015
    History of TechNet Guru
    First of all, if you don't know the history of TechNet Guru, then you