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I proposed to start a new community for Magik programmers but Robert Cartaino closed it with a announcement that GE Smallworld questions are welcome in GIS community but GENS is a much wider area and gis does not covers it completely. Will other GIS members downvote questions about OMS, SW Schematics, ......? I think they will since it would be considered irrelevancy

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  • I wouldn't down vote a well written question about any of those topics. Is anyone familiar with Magik not going to be familiar with Smallworld as well? Is an OSM not a specialized GIS, that automates GIS analyses (network tracing, routing)?
    – Evil Genius
    Sep 2, 2015 at 18:18
  • Its nice of you, but most of the GENS can not be considered a GIS only and they are far more of that, also some of them have not a map at all, so they can not be considered a GIS(suppose everything that has map is GIS and this community is for its Q/A) Just take look at the questions taged Smallworld ( only 6 ) I dont say Smallworld user find this community relevant to their activities)
    – Iman Nia
    Sep 2, 2015 at 20:40
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    "some of them have not a map at all, so they can not be considered a GIS(suppose everything that has map is GIS and this community is for its Q/A" I would say this is flat-out wrong. GIS != maps.
    – blah238
    Sep 2, 2015 at 21:49
  • I am agree with you, we cant say everything with a map is a GIS, Robert closed the proposal as it could be addressed in GIS community, And I think he assumed such a hypothesis.
    – Iman Nia
    Sep 2, 2015 at 21:52
  • I note that the proposal has now been renamed to GE Network Solutions.
    – PolyGeo Mod
    Sep 8, 2015 at 11:20
  • Yes, the new name supports and covers a much wider range,however the old one was the name of a very specific programming language and since GE is about to switch from Magik to Java ( This October ), I changed the name and I wish the new term covers better.
    – Iman Nia
    Sep 8, 2015 at 11:29
  • This question has just been asked to prove that GIS community does not and can not cover GENS, but thanks for your answer.
    – Iman Nia
    Sep 8, 2015 at 11:31

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It is my perception that in the last few days we have started to see quite a few questions that have been further from "mainstream" GIS than usual.

GIS is a very broad topic as you can see from the discussion we are having at How should we describe GIS Stack Exchange on its Tour page?

I am only superficially familiar with Smallworld GIS which can make it hard to say whether I think the type of questions you seek to ask are on-topic or not, but I think that at least some of them may be.

As you and others start to ask questions further from the "mainstream" of GIS, I strongly recommend that you take the time to ensure that terms/abbreviations that you use are already in use here (just search for them), and if not, always define or link to definitions of them.

You are likely to find poorly framed questions on unfamiliar topics get downvoted more often than those with which we are more familiar, but I think the onus is on you to convince the community that your questions have relevance to the broad topic of GIS by asking very well framed questions.

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  • I was about to prove that GENS community is not a duplicate one and its question can not be addressed here, I have a master degree in GIS and I believe I know the different definitions and aspects of GIS, as you said you are not familiar with GENS, To picture what I have asked above, Consider an outage Managment System in a Electricity Distribution Company, Do you think the questions about this product could be framed into gis community? I am hearing your NO from here
    – Iman Nia
    Sep 2, 2015 at 22:13
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    I used to work for a GIS company that provided software, services and support for the OMS of ArcFM, and that support was provided by GIS Professionals who had no/little Electrical Distribution experience prior to taking on that product suite. GIS Professionals work with far more than maps in computers. My advice would be to proceed with your Magik site proposal in Area 51 but work with the Stack Exchange Network to try and find a welcoming home for your questions until it gets up, or in case it does not.
    – PolyGeo Mod
    Sep 2, 2015 at 22:21
  • thanks for the advise, Acctually thats the plan, I am a simple member of Smallworld community and I like to hand over the community to the products owner and those who are moderator in our current yahoo group, I dont have that time and I woudn't work for free! about your OMS, I shall say some of the softwares are standalone but support location based services and some are completely based on GIS I assume yours are like that, both in most of the time are supported by GIS professionals of course, however the fact that they both are supported by GIS experts doesn't mean that they do the same job.
    – Iman Nia
    Sep 2, 2015 at 22:32
  • Also consider that GE is an energy company not a GIS application Provider like ESRi, this shows itself in their products too, believe me Smallworld products are much more end-user oriented so the core spatial technology (CST) is not a menu driven software like ArcGIS
    – Iman Nia
    Sep 2, 2015 at 22:35

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