RE: [nv-l] another list

["Barr, Scott" <Scott_Barr@csgsystems.com>]

Well, I will weigh in on this from a different perspective.

 

I think the mailing list and a newsgroup both have significant limitations. In this day and age, more facilities should be available for a user community than just a simple email thread. If you look around at other software products and their support forums, you see a feature list like this:

 

1. Message threads / bulletin board

2. Download area for user contributions (i.e. let me share my script / rulesets with you)

3. Chat room for online meetings with product experts

4. Patches

5. Documentation

6. Surveys / questionnaires

7. Enhancement requests

 

Just to draw a parallel - I play online games. If you go look at the support site for a user community from one of the popular MMORPGs you find a suite of tools and features that is quite robust and usually these are supported by fans without a lot of capital to pay for fancy features - they just use whats easily obtained and create some DAMN good web sites to support their "guilds". It is extremely annoying to me, that the user community for NetView is still living in the text only 1970s bulletin board format.

 

I don't really have a preference about news vs. email, I just hate the limited feature set for support so we have to keep answering the same questions for folks over and over (no threads so we can't have a sticky topic with FAQs) - no download area so we can't share files / scripts, etc.

 

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-nv-l-digest@lists.us.ibm.com [mailto:owner-nv-l-digest@lists.us.ibm.com]On Behalf Of James Shanks
Sent: Wednesday, October 15, 2003 10:30 AM
To: nv-l@lists.us.ibm.com
Subject: RE: [nv-l] another list

Folks,

I sent a posting to this list a couple days ago, which I don't seem to be able to find any more, so I'll try again.

I inquired about this and was told that a  Tivoli executive had ordered the creation of this NetView  newsgroup so that he could say that all Tivoli products, like all IBM products, had one.  Furthermore, the mention of the newsgroup in the next version of each product's Release Notes was also mandated.  No one in my group nor in NetView development even saw this boiler plate before the ID group replaced that  book on the CD.  It was not considered technical content and therefore was not given to them to review.  That's why the nv-l list was not mentioned there as well.   I have already escalated this and I think that will be rectified in the Release Notes to the first FixPack for 7.1.4.  

As for the newsgroup itself, even the people who created it say that they do not think of it is a replacement for the nv-l list, which they admit is monitored by people with much more expertise than any newsgroup is.  

So my advice is that, as users, you "vote with your feet" as it were and use the vehicle you prefer.   This list is your forum after all; it was started by customers for customers, and until it suddenly needed a home and a Tivoli guy volunteered to rescue it, it  was not maintained by IBM at all.  If you choose not to participate on the newsgroup, you  need not.  I don't plan to, myself.  


James Shanks
Level 3 Support  for Tivoli NetView for UNIX and Windows
Tivoli Software / IBM Software Group