SUN Forums are ultimate source to get help about programming problems and support about Java platform. Its the largest community driven by Java developers. If you are a Java developer then you must have used these forums. You guys will be aware of Duke dollar. You assign duke dollars to your topic (to attract others to get them) and then you credited these dollars to the person who replied correctly. I have seen many forum members with the handsome amount of duke dollars. Sun should promote these duke dollar rich people as valuable professionals. Though Sun has a page on Duke star featured developer, but I didn’t see any other developer got placed over there.

Well as compare to Microsoft, they have a full fledged program known as Microsoft Most Valuable Professional which is for those volunteers who contribute in communities and helped people with their technical expertise. Microsoft used to held summits for these MVPs and send them to various technology events and invites them on tech sessions at PDCs. I am not going to initiate any religious debate but its just a thought to share with you people that I appreciate the benefits and recognition given to MVPs by Microsoft. They have very strong branding in it. Sun should start such community initiative to get more people motivated to contribute on online forums. It will really an edge for Java developers. Please share your comments, what you think about it?

About Java Duke Dollars The Duke Dollars program is Sun’s way of thanking our developers who actively participate in the forums and help facilitate the exchange of technical knowledge in the community. http://developers.sun.com/forums/dukedollars.html

About Microsoft’s MVP Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals (MVPs) are exceptional technical community leaders from around the world who are awarded for voluntarily sharing their high quality, real world expertise in offline and online technical communities. http://mvp.support.microsoft.com