About MVPs

What does MVP stand for?

Most Valuable Professional. Each year, Microsoft recognizes with an MVP award those whom it considers the most outstanding members of its online community. The award lasts for one year.  Candidates for the MVP award can be directly selected by Microsoft; but most are initially proposed by the existing MVPs, who are in the newsgroups every day and often are more closely familiar with each new person's work.

The Usual Suspects

It's nice to be able to put a name and a face to the people we correspond with.  There are perhaps a thousand MVPs in the whole program.  Unlike help desk analysts, MVPs do not claim to have expertise with all products.  Each MVP is very highly specialized in only one or two products; the ones listed here are the ones who have Microsoft Word as a specialty.  Click the links at the left to read our bios.

 How to become an MVP

According to Microsoft, the MVP Award is given in recognition of a recipient’s technical expertise, spirit of community, thought leadership, and willingness to help peers and customers.  The MVPs have a simpler definition: Someone who enjoys helping people and is good at it.

If that's what you have been doing, then simply keep doing it.  One of these days you may receive an email from Microsoft, offering you the chance to become an MVP.

Many of us have very funny stories of our reaction to that initial email:  "An email from "Microsoft"?  Yeah, riiiight... that's gotta be Spam!"  No.  Not this time.  This time, it means that the existing MVPs and the Microsoft MVP Leads have been watching your posts for a few months, and have collectively decided that we want you to join us.  Those who have received that email can tell you that it's a pretty magical experience – one you never forget.

How NOT to become an MVP

If you have been posting regularly for several months and no-one has shown any interest in you, you may wish to run your eye down the following list.  These are the most common reasons that we would not propose a candidate:

• Wrong answers.  We expect an MVP to be correct most of the time.  We do not expect you to "know everything", but we do expect you to take care that what you post is correct.  If you're not sure, say so in your post, or leave the question for someone else.

• Untested Answers.  An answer that doesn't work is a pretty good sign that the poster did not bother to test the solution. Remember that a person who needs the answer is unlikely to realize that something is wrong until they have wasted hours or days trying to make the posted solution work.  We all make mistakes, but we try not to be careless on the newsgroups.

• Cryptic answers.  Many questioners are posting because the Word Help is too cryptic: they do not know enough to be able to join the dots.  If questioners appear from their questions to have little experience, in addition to telling them what to do, take a moment to tell them how.  Of course you only need a line or two if the question obviously came from a fellow expert.  But take care to encourage beginners; they are the very most important people here. Without new people to keep the groups alive, there would soon be no people!

• Rude or argumentative manner.  People do get under one's skin from time to time, and the Microsoft newsgroups have "trolls" like any other newsgroup.  A troll is a person who intentionally posts an inflammatory comment to stir things up.  On the Internet, not everyone is nice, and not everyone is sane.  Learn to ignore the ones who are not.  The only thing that hurts such fools is being ignored: the more you respond, the more they enjoy themselves.

• Posting to the wrong server.  Some ISPs' news servers do not peer correctly with the hosting server at msnews.microsoft.com, so your post may not get replicated back to base correctly.  Of course, that could mean that it will not be seen on any other server except yours.  Most MVPs and the MVP Leads from Microsoft are all reading from the Microsoft server.  If your posts are not appearing there, or are being cancelled, your hard work is not being seen.  If your post is cancelled from msnews.microsoft.com, it may remain visible on your local server, but we can't see it there.  Note:  This also applies to deprecated groups such as the microsoft.public.word.general newsgroup: Microsoft cancelled it years ago; and neither they nor we are looking at it, so we won't see anything you post there.  Click here for a list of the groups we do actively follow.

Do MVPs get paid?

Absolutely!  Well... most of us do.  But never by Microsoft!  Most MVPs have a day job.  There is no payment for participation in the MVP program.  In fact, if an MVP is hired by Microsoft, Microsoft immediately cancels their MVP status. 

Some MVPs are available for commercial hire: MVPs who are show a "Business Contact" link on their bio page.  If you have an extensive problem that cannot be solved by newsgroup advice alone, you may care to propose a consulting arrangement in an email to an MVP with expertise in the area.  Please do not email an MVP directly instead of posting your problem in the newsgroup.

Microsoft does provide MVPs with some knowledge-ware tools that make answering questions easier; and they do offer MVPs discounts on a small range of Microsoft products once a year.  But most stuff MVPs use we have to buy, at the same price you paid for it.

One of the greatest benefits that an MVP offers to you is that the MVPs and their advice are absolutely independent of Microsoft.  We guard this independence very carefully.