[Qgis-user] Re: Donations -> Knowledge mananagment platform

[Bernd Vogelgesang]

A.S: err ... only replied to Gary directly ... really don't know how to  
work with mailing lists:

Hi Gary,
hope my non-diplomatic style is not too embarrassing.


Now, the mailing list here seems to be the place for the power users and  
developers, but how do i retrieve infos from that? i already store all  
those mails and try to do local text search in my mail client, to find  
answers. But here, the threads are scattered over several digests, and i  
can't see a way how to get a grip on that in more structured way.

The forum seems to be mainly used by novice users, who get answers by a  
handful of advanced people.
The default forum settings are set that you won't get an email  
notification when someone is answering, so a huge amount of threads die,  
because the thread-initiators and participants don't get aware that there  
is something going on. I already asked to change that, but to no avail so  
far.
Then, there are only 3 really useful categories (from the users point of  
view):

Help on using QGIS
Build and Install questions
Share Tips, Tricks and Ideas

Here most of the communication is done in the first.
It's very hard to find threads about a special problem, cause all the  
topics are just stuffed into one big bucket and novice users often lack  
the terminology to do successful full-text search to find answers.
Solved problems are mostly not marked as such, so you have to do a lot of  
reading and searching which ends up very often with no results.

Then there is this  
wiki(http://hub.qgis.org/wiki/quantum-gis/How_do_I_do_that_in_QGIS), which  
is in a concurrence to the "Share Tips, Tricks and Ideas" and it seems  
that there is not a lot going on too.
(besides, writing an article and writing an article in a wiki where you  
need just another account are two different things and which rejects a lot  
of people)

What i propose is a platform with a single login, which combines all those  
functions of the forum, mailing lists and wikis.
Posts of any kind should be able to be tagged with an activly developed  
hierachical taxonomy for easier retrieval and interconnection of different  
types of content.

Especially the enormous modularity of QGIS with all its plugins needs a  
better and more structured way of getting informations of what this and  
that modules does, what which setting means, what bugs people found, how  
they found workarounds etc. All this could be accessible just by one  
taxonomy term with the name of the modul for example, spiced up with  
sorting for popularity, ratings or whatever.

There should also be a group system for different audiences, projects,  
interests, languages (not everyone is a fluent english reader or writer)  
so people are able to pick the stuff that suits them and subscribe to  
certain groups, taxonomy terms, projects, events, working fields etc. and  
get notified in a structured way when something of their interest had  
occured.

The easier the access to already produced knowledge, the more likely it  
will be that some people take the effort and collect the bits for own  
articles, tutorials, working examples etc.

I never managed to build sth that i propose myself so far, but i invest  
quite a time investigating "better" ways to connect communities and  
generate and preserve knowledge.
By doing so, i stumbled upon drupal some years ago, where i see a lot of  
tools (nearly too many) to build sth that would provide all means to  
develope a communication and knowledge management strategy.
There maybe other platforms, but drupal is the only one i know enough  
about to be sure that it could solve a lot of issues with a modest  
investment in time and infrastructure.


Thanks for your time
Bernd

Am 27.03.2012, 20:34 Uhr, schrieb Gary Sherman <gsherman at geoapt.com>:

>
> On Mar 27, 2012, at 10:25 AM, Bernd Vogelgesang wrote:
>
>> There are more modern and sustainable ways for exchanging knowledge and 
>> provide user interaction than this. Just my 2 cents, do not wannainsult  
>> anyone with this.)
>>
>
> Such as?
>
> -gary
>
> =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
> Gary Sherman
> GeoApt LLC
> http://geoapt.com
> Founder, Quantum GIS
> Chair, QGIS PSC
> Book:
> http://geospatialdesktop.com
> "We work virtually everywhere"
> =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>


-- 
Bernd Vogelgesang * Siedlerstrasse 2 * 91083 Baiersdorf * +49-9133-825374
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