Re: Are you a newbie? Start here! -- MIDRANGE-L

Aaron,

iSociety is exactly that. A place for members to drive the content. The goalis to connect all the web sites that are System i related, and provide ameans to get to them easily. One of the pillars of iSociety is "News andInformation". If you have information that should be connected, you caneasily make sure it is added to that pillar.

The question is, if it was being run by someONE, it might feel a little moreclosely-knit. It is growing, with contributions from many people. Forexample, who do you propose would maintain a central code archive site?Someone from the community needs to come up with the resources necessary tosupport this. What a great idea, but who is going to provide the resources?iSociety is fortunate to have support from COMMON and from System i Portal -both of whom are spending their money to support the effort.


Let's look at your ideas:
1) Central Code Archive - brilliant idea.

Who will support it? For now, you can search System i Portal using the"Code" search - all web sites that have code examples that are able to beidentified by System i Portal will be there. If you see some that are notconnected, send them to System i Portal for inclusion.


2) Research Central - brilliant idea #2.

I am not sure why you are missing this - but System i Portal was designedfor this. A good part of iSociety is that if you have a site to do this, itis easily connected. One site has stepped up to provide that function, andit does exactly what you are suggesting - why are you reinventing the wheel?Sure, there can be several sites doing the same thing - the fact is, we onlyhave one right now. And, to show how it is working, go to the bottom of thispage: http://systemiportal.com/page/blogs for a list of System i relatedWikis. You can see midrange.com's wiki listed(http://wiki.midrange.com/index.php/Main_Page).

I must object strongly to your inference that iSociety is being run bypeople wanting to make money from it. I am involved, and it costs me time,and I am not the only driving force, nor am I making money from it. COMMONis spending money and staff and volunteer time to help this effort.Midrange.com is part of iSociety, and David contributes his time. System iPortal is investing time and money. Each of these entities are here to stay,regardless of iSociety. It is just that they all agreed to connect to aid infostering the community of System i. I have seen the effort involved, andwhy anyone would demean these efforts is truly amazing to me.

Maybe you cannot see anything else because of the small amount ofcontributions being made outside those entities, and because some of thosewho are not actively engaged are complaining. iSociety is in its infancy -give it some time, and you will see the community benefit from all theefforts being made. The pillars of iSociety are being constructed, the baseis being built. In the meantime, the means to grow iSociety is yourcontribution.


Trevor

----- Original Message -----From: "albartell" <albartell@xxxxxxxxx>

To: "'Midrange Systems Technical Discussion'" <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, December 22, 2006 11:15 AM
Subject: RE: Are you a newbie? Start here!

If I were to draw up the iSociety vision I would make it a place that is
user/member driven where members "own" it and add content to it.  To some
extent this is the case (i.e. midrange.com's FAQ's and the like), but in
other respects it is not the case. Wikipedia.com is an excellent exampleof
how I would like to have iSociety.  I put a high level of weight on the
definitions found in Wikipedia as I know it has been (usually) critiquedby
many eyes.

The two things I would LOVE as a developer would be:

1) Central code archive to store everything from small chunks of code
showing how to use the latest feature of version xyz to being able tostore
(or link to) full fledged products (i.e. like my RPGMail at
mowyourlawn.com). This would be very searchable and category friendly.An
RPG version of this would be cool: http://javaref.com/.  An RPG version of
this would rock (look at the User Contributed Notes):
http://us2.php.net/manual/en/function.date.php - note that comments from
users can be added directly to the user manual to relay drawbacks and best
practices, very nice.

2) "Research Central".  This would be a place where links (like the ones
mentioned in this thread) could be posted and categorized for easy access.
They key to community buy in is ease of use. I think that is the reasonwhywikipedia has faired so well - you just edit the page and you're done(oversimplified I know). Last night I had to install a LICPGM on my iSeriesfor
the first time and would have liked a small 5 minute tutorial on the
subject. I eventually waded my way through it (pretty slick actually),but
what about the person buying an i5 for the first time?

To be honest right now iSociety just seems like a messy conglomeration.  I
don't mean to downplay it at all, but that is how it feels to me.  If that
is what first impressions draw out then adoption will be minimal IMO.  I
will do my best to make it into something else, but it sounds likeiSociety
is not run by the people in the System i5 Society but instead by larger
entities that have $$ ambitions (i.e. systemiportal.com). Nothing wrongwith
iSeriesNews making money off of it (good for them, and I think they are a
great company), but I think it limits where iSociety can be taken.

There's my iSociety input for the day :-)

Aaron Bartell
http://mowyourlawn.com