The Cupboards are Bare

Over the weekend, and hopefully due to an event unrelated to April Fools' Day, you may have noticed that most or all of your Connect items have disappeared. At least for the SQL Server connection, you will see items that have been created since Friday, a couple of test items created in 2009 and 2010, and then everything else is from August 2006 or earlier:

That represents a LOT of missing Connect items, and I complained about it here. The Connect team's response was to tell me to go start a web-based support incident with the SQL Server team, as it was something that someone over there must have done on purpose (more importantly, they did assure me that the data is not gone, it's just hidden). But why they can't resolve the issue amongst themselves, I'm not sure.

What I am relatively certain about is that they will resolve this soon, though it requires a leap of faith that whatever was done can be undone. Still, I'm seeing many people out there thinking that the issue only affects their own items, when in fact it is affecting everyone. Perhaps this is an intentional and invasive housecleaning, and if it is, then this is a sad day indeed.

In the past few hours, they also took away the "Feedback Superstars" tally from the bottom right of the SQL Server home page; however, don't fret – this is unrelated, and due to an IE9 issue that I filed last night.

The Content is Browser-Specific

A peculiar thing I noticed this morning is that the table of links at the bottom of the SQL Server home page shows different content depending on what browser and OS you are using. Here are just a few examples:

I guess if you're on certain browsers, they don't want you in the forums or learning about SQL Server 2005? What browser/OS are you using, and what do you see in the Links table at http://web.archive.org/web/*/https://connect.microsoft.com/sql/?