Microsoft MVP
MVP is Microsoft-ese for "Most Valuable
Professional" and represents someone who has contributed much
valuable information on these newsgroups. These people are all
volunteers and do not work for Microsoft. The designation of MVP, though,
comes from Microsoft and represents a Microsoft judgment. A website listing
the Word MVPs as well as MVPs in many other categories is at:
http://www.word.mvps.org/AboutMVPs/index.html
The Word MVPs have an awesome FAQ site at:
www.mvps.org/word/.
It is far more comprehensive than this site and a work of art in its own
right.
BrainBench MVP
You may also see people on the newsgroup designated as
"Brainbench MVP." This is not the same thing as MVP! My
experience with the advice of Brainbench MVPs is much more mixed than that of
the Word MVPs. The advice of Word MVPs has been uniformly helpful and correct.
That from BrainBench MVPs has seemed more mixed in value to me. (I am thinking
of one in particular.)
Both designations mean someone who knows a lot about Word.
However, the knowledge of Brainbench MVPs is sometimes more limited. I am not
knocking these people, who are also volunteers. Nor am I knocking what it
takes to become a Brainbench MVP, one qualification for which I have, passing
an examination on a program at the Master level. Click on the Brainbench logo
at the beginning of this page for a description of what this means.
(Both types of
designation are applied to human beings who are sometimes wrong; the Word MVPs
seem to be wrong less often. People (your FAQ editor for one) who are neither
Microsoft MVPs nor Brainbench MVPs, are
often right as well.)
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