What happens to MSDN feedback?
Somewhere I saw a comment to the effect that MSDN feedback seems to disappear into a black hole. I can't speak for any other documentation teams, but I do look at my MSDN feedback. Most comments fall into one of these categories:
- Pointing out specific errors in a topic.
- General suggestions for improvement.
- Random abuse.
Category #1 is easier to address than category #2. If I can confirm there is a specific error on a page, I try to fix it as soon as possible. (The reality of our publishing process is that my documentation is updated at most once per month, and generally less frequently.)
Here are some actual customer-reported errors I've fixed recently. (The last fix is not yet live.)
- Working with 16-bit RGB: BYTE blue = red_value << 3; // <-- TYPO! should be BYTE blue = blue_value << 3;
- AVI RIFF File Reference: ''ckData is a 4-byte value giving the size of the data in ckData'' should be ''ckSize is a 4-byte value giving the size of the data in ckData''
- IAMDirectSound Interface: IAMDirectSound interface does not have a SetWindowFocus member function. The correct function is SetFocusWindow. (D'oh!)
I always welcome suggestions for improving the documentation. Here, the more specific, the better. A comment like "Needs improvement" doesn't help me much. The most common requests are for better/more code examples, and for better cross-linking between topics. Of course, time is finite, and realistically I can only spend so much time revisiting existing documentation. I try to prioritize by (1) my estimate of the relevance of the feature being documented, and (2) whether the existing documentation for that feature is egregiously bad. (Everything could use some improvement, but some docs are 90% good while others are 90% bad...)