Will "answers" be obvious?

Well, if you look at the top of the page, it does say User-to-User forum. If Adobe was to take the hands on approach that you seem to be advocating, then it would quickly become a tech support forum. All messages that criticize Adobe would be pulled, and probably unsolved problems would be hidden somewhere, as a marketing tool.

I kinda prefer it to be an open, user-to-user tool where a thread in PS Win called "Photoshop CS4 is a disaster" can exist and get over 700 postings. I have seen marketing department controlled boards for other companies that are far less useful to the consumer.

"I would guess that the forum people will be watching the operation of the new forum software... if nothing else, the Forum Hosts should be able to funnel comments to the software engineers."

This statement is exactly to the point I was trying to address.

What essentially is the position of "The Adobe Corporation" in the support of this New Forum !!!

Are the only posts to any threads going to come from only participants ?

Why would a Host have to funnel select comments to Adobe, when it's in their best interest to view and digest user comments and issues on a regular basis ?

If it was my Company, I'd actively monitor the User Community with MY NAME ON IT, and selectively respond to major issues (when appropriate).

I wouldn't wait on a random view by an employee, or host, to funnel major issues that are impacting my Customer base.

Rather than Adobe taking a causual approach to the Forum, look at it as an effective tool to enhance the customer experience, build loyalty, and increase sales...

I am DEAD against ANY answer marking or "Points" system.

Those "markings" just cause confusion because they are often applied by people who have a very narrow perspective, and insufficient knowledge of the wider picture, so that they do not understand the full context (and further ramifications!) of the topic under discussion.

That has been one of the things that has been more than evident to me when I have visited the MM Forums and is one of the reasons why I now avoid them completely.

One particular case that I remember was the total inability of the Contributors and Community "Experts" in the Kuler Forum to understand the difference between Kuler RGB and CMYK "values" and their translation when used in conjunction with RGB/CMYK working spaces!

One advantage to having the experts group working in the forums is that they have fairly direct reporting abilities into Adobe for significant issues... much better then us mere hosts have.

The pattern seems to be that after a major update (such as the release of CS4), that the Forums ARE monitored, and responded to, by a goodly number of senior Adobe engineers particularly when a dot release is still in the works to fix any major problems that may have crept into the released Retail version of the software.

Once that is done, there is less participation by the Adobe personnel who will already be needing to begin work on the next version.

It has been said elsewhere:

In many cases there are more than one answer.

Maybe especially in the Photoshop and Illustrator forums an answer marking may lead to unfinished threads with a great loss of useful interchange, maybe especially if a point system should be implemented.

I am not the only one against answer markings, and points, and some other things.

I'm not sure that "never" is a good word... there have been Adobe employees posting in various forums... just not "all" of the time

I would guess that the forum people will be watching the operation of the new forum software... if nothing else, the Forum Hosts should be able to funnel comments to the software engineers

As far as product support... I would not expect that to change

I was wondering if Adobe Technical Support would monitor the new Forums for MAJOR issues that surface with their software.

If not to address major issues, at least acknowledge that they exist and will be addressed maybe sometime in the future.

If I understand the current Forum format, Adobe doesn't look, nor comment on any thread or individual post.

All support is supplied by the participants and there is never an official Adobe response to anything, no matter how serious the issue.

I always wondered about a Company that didn't at least peek at their user Community to see what was going on, (and maybe actually post an answer to a question every now and then).

Will any of this change with the new Forum, or is it business as usual..

I think the saying is "You can make something fool proof you just can't make it idiot proof" :-)

Dorothy - Thanks for the response. I understand and agree. "You can make something fool proof - but you can't make it damnfool proof."
JL