Let's document the problems on the Microchip forum

[Roche]

I don't know why people don't just use this forum - great up time, better moderated. The only reason I go over to the microchip one is for historical posts.

[ric]

The main reason would be that the people asking the questions are following links from the Microchip website, so they don't know any better.
They are then greeted by an unfriendly board that rejects posts containing images, code, or mentions Apple products, and often have to wait a few days for their first two posts to be moderated...
I guess Microchip had to buy Atmel to catch everyone who tried to escape that way

[Roche]

Yes, but there is also this thing where whenever the mchip forum goes down, some people shift over here, but only until mchip goes back up...It would be good if they stuck here.

[Jorgef]

Hi

Well, I just showed around, but not strictly because of the last oddities of the MCHP forum.
Been curious about since a long time, and finally decided to join.
But I'm not switching forums, just adding this one to my list.

I guess the issue is that most of the guys around here don't have many questions to ask. They more frequently repply/help to others.
Its only natural for newbies to start with the official forum, and, as long as they find the answers they need there....

Just my 2 cents .....

[Roche]

I suppose though that the more posts there are here, the higher up search listings it will get...

[ric]

...
Its only natural for newbies to start with the official forum, and, as long as they find the answers they need there....

Now if all the regular question answerers were to go on a general strike ...

[twelve12pm]

Sometimes the copyright statement at the bottom of the forum page says "APG vNext Trial Version 4.5" and sometimes it says "APG vNext Commercial Version 4.5."

Accessing the forum through http means that things are even worse than usual. You have to access it via https. They should set up http to forward automatically to https.

I got bit by antipodean" causing my message to just disappear down the memory hole just the other day. I didn't even type it. All I did was quote his reply in my reply, but that was enough to make his name appear in the body of the message.

How hard is it for a multi billion dollar a year company to have a properly working forum?

Or to put another way: How can a multi billion dollar company present itself to customers this way? What am I supposed to think about their products?

[Jorgef]

Hi

I would say that the products is the only thing Microchip really cares about.
Forum and development tools seem to be nothing more than a "necessary evil".

[KTrenholm]

The bulletpoint of a "Support Community Forum" that they can put on marketing copy is seemingly more important than the functionality of said forum.
If it wasn't you would actually see some of these issues addressed.

I feel bad for the forum team, TBH they'd probably love to address these issues but without support from upper management what can you do?

[twelve12pm]

Hi
I would say that the products is the only thing Microchip really cares about.
Forum and development tools seem to be nothing more than a "necessary evil".

A necessary evil but one that you must get right! The designers who use said forum are the ones who specify Microchip parts for the designs! If the designer gets pissed off and goes to another vendor whose forum works better (cough Texas Instruments cough) then Microchip loses those sales!