Esri GeoNet, worth the effort?

Question

So Esri has taken down its vBulletin based Forums and put up a Jive (v7) based collaborative site called GeoNet. Threaded content of the June 2010 - June 2014 epoch forums was migrated over the July 4th weekend.

A bit of square peg - round hole in forcing the well defined vBulletin Forum topics into broader Jive "Spaces", but as Jive is more about tag driven filtering and search it is not that difficult to find specific content.

What is less clear is how much of a knock the Esri hosted forums will take with the migration to Jive's much less focused format. And, I guess conversely how well is GIS Stack Exchange positioned to take up the slack?

The new GeoNet has some nice features compliments of its Jive underpinnings (blog and document content), but are users going to wade through some of its sludge to get answers to their questions, or use it to follow discussions? Are heavy contributors going to stay on?

I don't know--I do have some skin in the game. But the Esri forums have lost their one major advantage over GIS SE--that is a well structured hierarchical and historical archive of technical support exchanges. It has now joined GIS SE as an index and tag driven search engine. Frankly the Stack Exchange based model has that aspect mastered.

I'm just not sure if either is going to be very efficient in walking folks through installation and configuration steps that seem to have become my lot in supporting GIS. Not so sure it is going to be worth the effort, but you're welcome to visit with me on GeoNet ArcGIS for Desktop Installation support group if you like.

Answer 1

Adapting to change is hard, even when it is for the better. I am going to hold off judgment until I have had a chance to work with the new site, observe how others use it, and see how well ESRI fixes and adapts to the inevitable bugs and quirks that attend such rollouts.

What most impresses me is how ESRI has gradually been moving towards involving its active user community in its help forums. Twenty years ago it maintained a tight corporate grip on the Arc*-L list servers, its automated e-mail based user help system. (Many of you might recall how, one evening 15 years ago, I became so frustrated with the cavalier and draconian moderation that I started an alternative competing list server, which overnight picked up over a thousand users. It continued to grow and remained active for several years until Web-based forums took over.) ESRI's original Web-based forums (now defunct and rarely used) were a little better but were still managed entirely by ESRI with almost no involvement of the users. The subsequent system--the one they are now replacing--began to capitalize more on user involvement and was run by people who seemed genuinely respectful of the users and responsive to them.

This newest ESRI help site goes much further along that evolutionary path, clearly borrowing, adapting, and improving on many ideas from StackExchange. (This debt to SE is openly acknowledged within ESRI.) We ought to watch it closely to see what works and what could be changed for the better. What we learn can only help both ESRI and SE and thereby benefit GIS users everywhere.

Answer 2

Here's my take on what could be improved on GeoNet, for what it's worth.

I think Esri have combined a marketing site with a community site and a tech support site - and the whole may be lesser than the sum of its parts.

The social-media stuff arguably has a place, but I think it's a distraction when it comes to tech support. See I want a forum, not Facebook.

When debugging a problem, it helps to have a definitive area to research, ask and respond - and I'm not seeing that at the moment.

I honestly have no idea where to start here. Discuss, Connect, Collaborate and Explore? or Content, People, Places and Sub-Places? For all its faults, the old forums had a clearer hierarchy and organisational model.

Contrast this with the Apple discussion forums, where it's immediately obvious where to begin:

Esri have removed the focus on Products (eg there's no obvious ArcMap forum) which might make sense from a marketing perspective - but when encountering a problem in ArcMap it would be nice to have a dedicated forum to research it.

Kudos to Esri for trying something new, and perhaps the tagging metaphor will work, as it does in Stack Exchange.

Answer 3

'Hierarchy' is the word I keep reading in the discussion here as well as those generated at ESRI in response to the new GeoNet. That is what I valued most at that site. (As an aside, what I always was a bit surprised at was the number of unanswered questions given that the software provider was the one hosting the forums.)

[A]re users going to wade through some of its sludge to get answers to their questions...?

I honestly do not think so, but can answer solidly for myself: 'No'.

The comment someone posted here from over at GeoNet regarding SE: "I find gis.stackexchange a little over-regimented but it is really easy to use"

IMO, that regiment is what makes SE successful. I think its safe to say that vague questions, lack of structure, speculation & opinions are simply not tolerated here. [Which ironically we're wading into here; myself being equally guilty as I waver on posting this]. If I've not done my research, or I've not asked a well structured question, then I fully expect to get thrown to the SE judo mat. For this reason, I have a strong doubt as to the potential success of GeoNet.