I thought we'd seen the end of the people who are running SPS 2003 yet insist on posting their questions in the WSS newsgroup because "SPS 2003 contains WSS and I'm asking about the WSS bit of it"

This was fine (in certain circumstances) when the WSS newsgroup was only covering WSS 2.0 and *if the question was one that would equally apply to a standalone WSS 2.0 installation* but was often abused for questions that relied on this being a SPS 2003 installation.

It was difficult on occasions to draw a line in the sand but nowadays the line is simple. The .windowsservices newsgroup is for people who have installed the WSS 2.0 or WSS 3.0 product. The .portalserver newsgroup is for people who have installed the SPS 2003 product or the MOSS 2007 product.

The reason this hard and fast division ought to be accepted by everyone is that there are now four newsgroups that are for all products. So if you have a question about "WSS in SPS 2003" you can ask it in one of those new newsgroups and there's no dispute about as to whether it's a WSS or a SPS question as both products are covered.

Mostly this has been clear to everyone and people who have posted in error to the WSS newsgroup just move on. But occasionally there is someone who wants to object to the clear division because "it's a WSS question even though I'm running SPS 2003" and they won't let go.

They of course do themselves no favours. The thread is long and full of the argument about the right to post it there (or not) and with no attempt to answer the question. It would be so much better just to post in an appropriate newsgroup ...

Luckily this only happens occasionally and is nothing like the problem in all newsgroups that are caused by people asking (in some cases) a detailed question but without bothering to say which SharePoint product they are running.

With even the WSS and SPS newsgroups now covering two products (v2 and v3) and the other newsgroups covering all products, such questions almost automatically these days provoke a "which SP product are you using?" question before most people are prepared to spend time on the question itself.

Mostly then the answer (of which product) comes by return and we can get on with answering the original question but today there was a wonderful (?) reply from someone who had asked a question that replied on knowledge of which web part and which SP product and had been asked to supply the names of them. His reply was that he was not a member of the SharePoint team and didn't have access to that information.

It's hard to imagine how someone who can find a SharePoint newsgroup isn't even aware of which SharePoint product is in use, but that apparently was the case. It's also hard to understand the SharePoint team not even being prepared to disclose (to a user who asks) which SharePoint version that company is running.

But maybe that's just me.

P.S. One thing that I'd like to add here while I'm niggling. I do NOT understand people who write a question in a newsgroup and then say things like "Please anyone help" (often more than once). Apart from being completely pointless because people answering questions in newsgroups are going to answer a question they can anyway, it's a fact - at least as far as I'm concerned - a reason to NOT respond. Mind you the people I definately don't bother responding to are the ones who write that a question is "Urgent!" when it is nothing of the kind. For me Urgent should be saved for "my server has stopped working" and not for "my boss has asked me to create a list of who is accessing the site" (the like of which I've seen).