Much better! Thanks to all of you!
DO move any relevant threads from the WP 8.1 thread to the Preview for Developers forum... but keep in mind, general discussion of the upcoming official release should go in the upcoming/rumored 8.1 forum.
The above is the only part that I'm still not 100% clear on.
AFAIK the developer preview
IS WP8.1. There is no difference, or at least MS doesn't intend for there to be any meaningful modifications between now and the official rollout. To my mind, that means there is no difference between a discussion of the "
upcoming & rumoured\WP8.1" OS and a discussion of the "
developer preview" OS. They are both, for all practical purposes, the same version of WP. Right? At least that is my current understanding (supported by
Dan's article on the topic).
So, to my mind, the reorganization has made it quite clear that basically everything related to WP8.1 belongs in the "Windows Phone 8.1 Preview for Developers" forum (for now). I think you (James) already stated the one and only exception, which would be discussions related to the official release dates on various carriers. However, I do find the devotion of an entire forum to that single topic odd, to say the least.
To say the same thing differently... the only difference between these two forums seems temporal in nature:
- if we are discussing WP8.1 now, put it into the developer preview thread, or
- if we are discussing WP8.1 two months from now, put it into the official WP8.1 thread.
But what happens when some members start receiving WP8.1 through carrier OTA updates, while others are still on the developer preview version? To make matters worse, assume that both of these groups are likely to see the same OS build number on their devices (which is what we had for GDR3). Where do members post then? IMHO we are still asking for confused members... or maybe it's just me that is confused... that wouldn't be a first ;-)
IMHO the developer preview forum should be devoted to the actual program: How do I register? Is this a beta version? Is it safe? I'm not a developer, but can I get it anyway? Those kind of issues. Making the developer preview forum about the actual OS seems (to me anyway) like we are making a distinction between OS versions where there simply isn't one. Am I wrong?
I think it is much better than it was, but I'm not sure it is as good as it could be (sorry for being a pain in the ***). Any clarifications would be greatly appreciated.