Re: E-mail notification from AS400 -- RPG400-L

Hi Hans,

I can think of one obvious place for an eServer iSeries FAQ to be posted,
but finding it on any of IBM's website's can be somewhat challenging. The
other obvious place for folks on these lists is www.midrange.com. Then
people can happily refer others to the FAQ as wells as the archives. David,
are you willing?

Regards,
Peter Dow
Dow Software Services, Inc.
909 425-0194 voice
909 425-0196 fax


----- Original Message -----
From: <boldt@ca.ibm.com>
To: <rpg400-l@midrange.com>
Sent: Thursday, March 08, 2001 6:48 AM
Subject: Re: E-mail notification from AS400


>
> Gary wrote:
> >Hi Hans,
> >
> >I think I might be slightly surprised by your comments.
> >
> >The magazines are a business. They won't be for long if they don't do
> >anything to recover costs. I wonder if the obliteration of the trade
> >magazines would be more helpful for the AS/400 community.
>
> Hi Gary!  I'm surprised over your surprise.  The first thing I
> wrote in my note was that I have no problem whatsoever in anyones
> desire to be fairly compensated for their work.  That's a given
> in a capitalist economy.  (Another given in a capitalist economy
> is that no one owes you anything either.  Forgive me for being
> blunt, but if your son doesn't go to MIT, well that's not my
> fault, is it?)
>
> What I was pointing out was that in other areas of the computer
> field, there are working business models in which information is
> offered with no strings attached.  I brought up Linux as a
> general area where this seems to work quite well.  I also
> pointed out the fact that the process of registration keeps the
> search bots out of the AS400Network and MidrangeComputing web
> sites, which makes the information in them more difficult to
> find (even though much of that information IS available for
> free).
>
> Both you and Brad mentioned that you both answer upwards of 50
> questions a day from people.  Doesn't that strike you as somewhat
> excessive?  How many of these questions are the same?  In other
> domains, there are excellent FAQ files listing answers to
> commonly asked questions, and people are very often referred
> to these FAQs.  If you and other experts would spend just ten
> minutes a day contributing to an RPG FAQ (placed in a prominent
> publically accessible place), perhaps you'd have more time for
> other more important matters, like your regular consulting jobs.
> (Or other even more important matters like spending time with
> your family, or even your model trains.)
>
> (If someone else would get the ball rolling on a FAQ, I would be
> quite happy to contribute a couple of thousand words gratis!
> One person has already offered to start that ball rolling in a
> private e-mail.)
>
> To summarize:  There is certainly quite a bit of information
> already out there (available for free), but it's scattered over
> multiple web sites, and is poorly indexed by the search sites. A
> FAQ, with definitive answers contributed by the experts and
> easily located, would go a long way to help AS/400 programmers.
> And ease the burden on the overworked experts.
>
> Sorry, I don't mean to sound critical of the good things you and
> Brad and others do.  But I DO see how things are done elsewhere
> and the contrasts are striking.  There are, in my opinion,
> things to be learned from the experience of others.
>
> Cheers!  Hans
>
> Hans Boldt, ILE RPG Development, IBM Toronto Lab, boldt@ca.ibm.com
>
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