I am disappointed in SA Dev

# Craig Nicholson said on Tuesday, April 12, 2005 2:14 PM

Well I agree with what you say, but I must also point out that a lot of us SADeveloper members are rather busy and don't have the time to scour the forums looking for posts. I'd personally find the forums a lot more accessible if we could subscribe to a combined RSS feed or even if an OPML feed was made available. Note that an announcement forum would need to exist to let people know that the OPML has been updated.

# Brady Kelly said on Tuesday, April 12, 2005 2:43 PM

I am also dissapointed of late. Even when I am busy, I still take a few minutes to quickly glance over the forums, even if I don't scour them.

If I have an issue, I always have time to post a question about it, and just doing that without checking for new posts from others to see if I can help, seems selfish to me.

# Ryan said on Tuesday, April 12, 2005 2:48 PM

all very well; but i struggle to find the time to get my current work done in a decent manner! how do you propose i fit this in? if i were able to help out i would, but right now there is just NO WAY!

# Hannes said on Tuesday, April 12, 2005 4:30 PM

It seems Sa Architect is also quieter than normal. Maybe people are getting bored and looking for newer playgrounds. So how about bringing back some excitement to Sa Developer.

# Paul Sainsbury said on Wednesday, April 13, 2005 10:17 AM

Bru, don't take out your frustrations on the rest of us. Personally I use the RSS feeds to keep track of the forums, and I currently don't subscribe to the Tech Chat forum.

Why? Well, it wasn't there when I subscribed to the RSS feeds. I agree with Craig's suggestion - there needs to be some kind of announcement newsgroup that lets us know that a new forum/feed has been added.

Also it would be kinda cool if the RSS feeds were "comment" enabled so we could see the replies directly in our aggregators. Its something I suggested an AGE ago, and I even offered to help with the code, but nothing happened. (In fact I suggested that they use RSS feeds shortly after SA Developer.net started, so that it would be easier to keep the community involved - but that took over a year to arrive.)

One other possible explanation for the lack of people on the forums is that for quite a while SA Developer.net UG meetings in JHB didn't really happen. Maybe now, with the more regular meetings, we'll start seeing some interaction happening.

Personally, I've found very few questions that I can answer on SA Developer.net without spending some time writing code to try it out. I just don't have the time to scan over 43 RSS feeds, click through on each post to see if someone has actually responded helpfully, then try and write code to reproduce the problem and work out a solution. (Especially since some of the problems have been solved on sites like CodeProject) If I was paid to do that, it would be another story, but I have deadlines, and I'm guessing that most other developers in SA have them too.

So please forgive the community if they don't have the time to read every post or if they don't have time to take part in development projects outside of their usual working day.

# Paul Sainsbury said on Wednesday, April 13, 2005 10:27 AM

Oh, I almost forgot... I didn't see a reply to that post from you saying you'd be keen to get involved. So is that the pot calling the kettle black, or are you somehow exempt from your own criticism of the community?

# Armand du Plessis said on Wednesday, April 13, 2005 1:06 PM

Well put Paul!!

As for the commentRSS enablement, it's something that bugs me as well. At the moment only the number of comments is available but not a commentRSS feed. Will have a look at what is required to implement that and if you're willing to help do it super. There's an add-on for Community Server forums, the forums engine SA Developer is using, to enable NNTP on the forums. I haven't tried it but that would be an option worth considering. With the upcoming RSSBandit Wolverine release you have the option to subscribe to both rss feeds and nntp newsgroups from within the same application.

I was mistakenly under the impression that there was an announcements forum :S We are restructuring the forums to make them more accessible and make it easier for people (who uses the web interface) to spot forums where there is new posts. Getting rid of the nesting. You should see the first of the this by the end of the week.

Will take your suggestions to the relevant people and hopefully it can be implemented soon.

Thanks for the suggestions.

# C said on Wednesday, April 13, 2005 2:23 PM

So I see this has caused quite a stir and Deons blog is getting some good hits :P

Paul,

Firstly a community is not based on how much you get paid to do something, it based on how you are willing to help people knowing that you are not going to be paid. I don’t believe in the story of you just don’t have time, how long does it take you to google the answer get the code project link and post it, and then explaining to the user that you just had to use Google and codeproject maybe next time he should try that too – the good old don’t give a beggar the fish teach him how to fish. No question is stupid and no question should be held back because of someone being scared of some respite from senior members in the community. They should actually feel at home in the community knowing that the senior members are there to care for them.

I run the biggest non-Microsoft Active Directory group in the world , I have a day job which is really demanding for the biggest shipping/container company in the World, I am part of the R2 (new version of Windows Server 2003 and Active Directory) team and am always testing writing code, doc’s etc. I am also the lead network specialist for the 4th biggest hosting company in the USA. But I have time to look at SADev help in events offer help to the leads in advice etc, talk at SADev events (ADAM, how to use Active Directory in your environment etc), do three Active Directory Boot camps for Microsoft South Africa, and together with other community leaders (actually two) start a IT Pro group to HELP the community, and the list go on so long that its actually boring. For all this I am awarded the MVP title and I have major responsibilities with that too.

All this done in the 24 hour period, Ruari is a good example. He didn’t get a job at Microsoft cause he is a bit of a looney, he got it for the commitment to the communities for that special spark that makes him stay until 3am helping people showing them how to do things because he knew what it was like when he didn’t know what was going on. That is why he is a special person, and that’s the beauty of a community what you put in you will eventually get out, maybe not in monetary value but in many other aspects.

So dead line smed lines don’t give me that crap. I still have a woman to take care of to!

Deon’s post was merely a prompt to get some people interested in an opportunity to work with DotNetNuke and .net 2.0. It was for volunteers and yes it is disappointing that out of a 2000+ user base no one answered not EVEN ONE. I would have been happy with one post.

I agree with the announcement RSS feeds and I will actually make that number one priority on the IT Pro group as well. But thanks for reading this post/blog, at least we know what the feeling is like out there in the community.

C

# Paul Sainsbury said on Wednesday, April 13, 2005 3:48 PM

"C",
Whoever you are, I am guessing that you are an exception and NOT the norm with regard to how you use your time.

Firstly, only 251 people have been to the SA Developer.Net website since Ruari's post - as is currently reflected on the members list.

Any estimates as to how many of them would have had the time to read the posts, and both have the skills and time to join the project are purely subjective. But I'm guessing that it would be a pretty low number. So maybe Deon's post gave it some limelight that it needed, and hence it has now had some responses. However the tone of his response yesterday was rather critical of the community for responding slowly when he himself only responded to the post yesterday. On top of that there seemed to be very little attempt to understand why there was such a small response. I don't mind that he complained, but I do mind the tone, especially considering the fact that he is one of the people who should be building the community instead of berating it. (He's an SA Developer Lead)

From
Paul
PS: "C" at least let us know who you are if you're going to criticise so strongly. Without knowing who you are we can't find out if your claims of technical excellence and amazing community service are valid, which kinda casts some doubt on them.

# Carlos said on Wednesday, April 13, 2005 4:15 PM

Oh Paul, just to humor you my name is Carlos Magalhaes have fun man, if you have time to research this and not post on the communities my point is made. You could save alot of time just phone Ruari and he will do all the confirmation you willing to waste your time with.
C

# Sean O'Driscoll said on Wednesday, April 13, 2005 7:54 PM

And for the record I've known about Carlos' community contributions for a few years...indeed an MVP.

Sean O'Driscoll
Global Director, MVP Program
Microsoft Corp.

# Carlos said on Wednesday, April 13, 2005 8:12 PM

Sean - thanks for the backup, it really makes me proud being a MVP.

# Tomasz Onyszko said on Wednesday, April 13, 2005 8:56 PM

Hi guys, I know some of you some of you not - but lately I get to know few peoples form SA and first thing to say that You are really great :). I'm just passing through this site and I've read through this post and comments. I see this a thing which killed so many communities before - talking about wahy community is not working and who did what for community - but instead of that I will suggest You to spend this time on doing something for commmunity. I'm personally also working with some communities in far country called Poland :). I have my job and I'm trying to do my best after the job hours becouse I like to help people (right now I'm making a webcast about security bulletines for community site). I think thath this is what runs community - if everyone from You will spend few moment for reading some posts and maybe will give one answer in a week for some problem it will let Your community grow and be very productive also for You (becouse sometimes to answer the question You have to learn something). As I said I know some of you (Carlos) and probably most of You also is doing some things to help other - I'm pesonaly doing a lot of such things becouse I can remember a times few years ago when i was the one who need help and somebody spent his time to give me that help, answer stupid questions and guide me through hard times with broken server and mug of coffee. So my suggestion for You is .. don't arguee, let's start a talk about how to impreve community if it is not working as You are expectiong it should. Just few thoughs from other half of the planet :). Sorry for mistkaes - english is definitelly not my first language :). And regardin this community sitedirteam.org - I will try to help guys to start it maybe not with development but with some content -becouse every such site is very usefull for peoples who are looking for help with a problems - and I think thath i SA there is a lot of people whom needs help with IT from the peoples whom already went through this. OK, getting back to my recording session :)

# Paul Sainsbury said on Thursday, April 14, 2005 10:20 AM

Carlos, thanks for the name. :-) At least now I know who made the comments.

# Hannes said on Thursday, April 14, 2005 12:30 PM

It's all about priorities and how much time you are willing to spend on IT related matters. Carlos, you obviously are very passionate about IT and that is why you are so involved with it. I also love it but I have other things that also needs my attention besides IT matters. Sa Dev is a community where participation is voluntary.

# Carlos said on Thursday, April 14, 2005 4:10 PM

Hannes,

Agreed, IMO communities are voluntary - as soon as money is being made out of a community its a business and not a community*

But point taken.

*Note money made to sustain the community by fund raisers etc does not count as thats the community trying to raise money to improve the entire community and not a single person and/or governing body.

C

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