If you subscribe to the topicmapmail mailing list, you’ve probably noticed that a couple of weeks ago, Alexander Johannesen stirred up some discussion about TMRA2008 and the Topic Maps community (or lack thereof — and I’m sorry I didn’t blog from TMRA2008).
There are currently a couple of official Topic Maps web sites on the web:
isotopicmaps.org is home of the ISO standards and does, needless to say, not contain too much exciting information — besides the obvious standards documents. topicmaps.org is an “outdated” site of the XML Topic Maps 1.0 specification and PSIs, and topicmaps.com has so far only been used to promote the Topic Maps conferences in Oslo (in a good way).
The problem Alex points to, is that there is no good and up to date source of information about Topic Maps (besides a couple of conference web sites). There is no active, engaging and informative community site that newcomers can turn to — which will show up among the top hits in Google, but a lot of outdated information.
Various people contributed to the thread sharing their opinions on what might be the reason, what the current status is, and what might be done. The suggestions included setting up a working group, setting up a wiki, etc.
I think the main problem is that there is no one in the community that just do it.
Sure, Steve Pepper and others (?) have set up the topicmaps.com web site, wanting it to turn into a community web site. But shouldn’t a community web site be built by and for the community (can wizards (MOO lingo) like Steve really consider themselves to be part of the user community)? And wouldn’t a site built with community (i.e. open source) software be more likely to contribute to and enforce a healthy community? So where is it?
One thing I’d like to add, is that the communication fora of the Topic Maps community is also a bit old fashioned. Of course, there are mailing lists and IRC channels. But ‘come on. This is the 21st century. You already get too much mail, and who searches a mailing list for old threads to bring back to life? Even geeks have stopped using such. Why aren’t there even discussion forums or wikis out there?
I should probably just shut up or do it…
Inge Henriksen
/ 19/11/2008Now I have added a PHPBB forum on a server I have. It will probably take some hours before the domain is copied to DNS’s everywhere, but when it is visit http://www.subjectlayer.com
I worry that no one will post there and that it will die a silent death, my experience with topic maps is that most people are too busy to take time out and contribute to the community, but we will see
Kind regards,
Inge.
Trond
/ 19/11/2008Good news. Hehe
I’ll make sure to register and try to be more than a lurker.
Lars Marius Garshol
/ 22/11/2008Why would you want a web-based forum instead of email? This really baffles me. That’s like replacing a car with a donkey cart. Web-based forums are clumsy and awkward, requiring you to go seek them out regularly. And it’s not true that people have stopped using mailing lists. For one thing, pretty much all serious open source projects rely on them. Web-based forums may be newer, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they are better.
I could expand on this, for example by developing the donkey cart analogy further, but I don’t think I will…
Trond
/ 22/11/2008@Lars Marius: Well, there is one use for mail and there is one use for forums. One thing with mailing lists, is that threads die fast. Mailing lists are also awkward to search – let alone browse. In other words, the information is less accessible — especially to people that are not part of the community (people searching the web for information on Topic Maps, for example).
Of course mailing lists have their usages, and as you say, most communities use these too. It’s not like I don’t like or use my e-mail, or subscribe to mailing lists.
There’s one use for discussion forums, there’s one use for wikis, there’s one use for blogs and there’s one use for mailing lists (I guess my wording was a little bad/easily misinterpreted (“communication fora”)). Also, most discussion forums of today offer RSS-feeds per forum, topic, etc., just like for example blogs … so there goes your need to visit them every day
(Or maybe we should start using the Fido net … I heard it’s great :p)