Have SBS Yahoo groups lost all value?

Not too long ago Yahoo SBS groups were filled with people that are at the very top of our field. From MVPs to book writers to technology experts to even Microsoft developers and test engineers, SBS Yahoo groups were the place to get your questions answered.

However, these groups seemed to have little to no moderation, encouraging clueless people to flood them with mindless conjectures, rants that should have been blog posts, direct and personal attacks and down right ignorance, criminal advice and the usual “we’re different so we don’t have to play by the rules” mindset that cripples SMB IT professionals.

I spent probably two hours this weekend trying to hopelessly explain to someone the basics of back-scatter to leave the guy with no response other than “FWIW, I know but I’m not going to tell you” – so much for the community spirit. This got compounded on by a followup poster who opens up his response by saying “Been awhile since I looked at….” and closing with “Reports I’ve heard is that…” – so no experience on the subject, no up to date knowledge, nothing to back his statement with. Why in the world did he even bother responding?

This prompted me to ask “Is this place of any value to anyone anymore?”:

Folks, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: If you’re stabbing in the dark please keep your guesses to yourself, you only make yourself look bad in front of others by certifying you don’t know what you’re talking about when you reply with meaningless conjectures, statements that you cannot back up with a link to the resources, discussions or authorative statements from someone reputable. I’m not for killing the debate, but when the debate is constantly interrupted by people that don’t have any facts, knowledge or experience you end up driving away the people that actually have a clue and something worthwhile to share.

I know the moderators of this list don’t want the bad PR associated with kicking out the repeat offenders and moderating worthless statements, but without that this community is left without experts and becomes of zero value to anyone. If we indeed are all here to learn then we need to start kicking out or silencing those who have nothing to teach or nothing meaningful to share… we’ve lost enough people here this year so can this possibly be a goal for 2007?

The sad truth is that I already know the answer – no, it’s not. At this point the only even perceived value these groups have is in counting the dead bodies after patch Tuesday and pinging a few thousand people to see if they are seeing the same problems you may not be able to see in your organizational vacuum. And to be honest, you can get that information from Susan directly usually accompanied with a resolution or history of the problem.