Why I Fully Support the XPages Forum

Shortly after Lotusphere a number of XPages developers came together in the community, for a number of reasons. One of our early discussions was that the Notes & Domino 8.5 forum did not make it easy for those of us with knowledge to help those who don’t. I agreed with the need for an XPages-centric forum and I still firmly believe what we have is a significant step forward, but just a step on a road many do not seem to be aware of. Tim Tripcony and Niklas Heidloff have already blogged about why we did it, but criticism is still being levelled, and it is being levelled not at those of us who contributed to it, but at IBM. I believe IBM should be praised for their efforts and approach.

Encouraged by the messages from Lotusphere we communicated with IBM and our main points were these:

•The current forum covered so many topics and did not make it easy to answer queries or know when an answer has occurred. Searches make it relatively easy if you’re looking for an answer. But if you’re looking to answer a post, you have to scroll through pages one by one and open posts to see if it’s something you can answer. This is time-consuming and we’re all busy. And when you post a question, you have to go back each day to see if it’s been answered.
•The categorisations on the current forum template hampered those efforts. We needed something that allowed topic-related posts.
•Wherever the forum was, if it was about XPages, it needed to be built on XPages.
•If IBM didn’t act, it was probable that the community would.

The first point on which IBM should be praised is that they listened. More than that, they acted. Yes, it took time, but it took less than two weeks from initial discussions to live (here it is). For that IBM alone deserve the credit both those from IBM we communicated directly with – Niklas Heidloff and Joyce Davis – but also those behind the scenes who took on board the points raised. Those of us who asked for this are very grateful to them and it’s important that the community is too. This is an atmosphere I have seen prosper and thrive over the last year. It’s one I want to see continue. So it’s important to praise them as well as aim any criticism.

A lot of the criticism seems to be about usability. xTalk was discussed as a possible solution – Declan was part of the community discussing this with IBM. The consensus was to use the forum template. The choice was not foisted upon us by IBM, it was an agreement between ourselves and IBM. We had seen the template and begun using it, so it was a decision taken in full knowledge. So we ALL deserve criticism if you’re not happy. We could have kept this our own little secret and worked on the template, then released the project in a few months’ time. We didn’t. We felt the need the enthusiasm for XPages was so powerful, the need from the community so important, and the opportunities for us to help answer those frustrating queries so great that this should be released sooner rather than later. Again, this is not an IBM forum, it is a community resource which is fully owned by community members.

But in my opinion, when you look at the quality of responses on the forum, the names appearing in the slider, I think the decision we took was fully justified. And let’s add a bit of balance on usability. For those of us who want to help it makes it much easier to do so. If a good tag or set of tags is added, again that can help subject matter experts filter accordingly. And for those asking a question or interested in a question, you have a link to get an RSS feed of responses to that question (how many have used that or even realised it’s there?). That means you can overcome your issues or get useful information more quickly. And I would request that once you do get an answer, that you mark the question answered. That hasn’t happened often in the old forums, but let’s make that a best practice of this forum. Yes, it’s a shame that history couldn’t be transferred, but again, we were aware of that and accepted it. So in terms of the quality of responses, I would hope there are no criticisms because there are some illustrious names determined to make this a success.

And in terms of the criticism on usability, we have a category for Forum Design, so we can quickly aggregate those. Yes, currently we have to use the ‘Expand All’ button and collapse the other sections, but that will be addressed. I know it will be addressed because those of us who requested it have already committed to get involved in the decision process. Again, that’s not because IBM want us to do their work for them. It’s because we’re happy to work together on this and other projects for the community. And what you will gain is a template that contains the sum of our knowledge and ideas, an OpenNTF project with a host of contributors. Yes it will take time (the template does not even make use of the Extension Library yet), and I ask that you be patient with us. We want to progress as quickly as possible, but this is a big change in the way all of us have contributed to OpenNTF.

But I stress again that the benefits in the short term from the quality of responses and the speed of answers are too beneficial to ignore. And in my mind, that’s what makes a forum – it’s use to those asking questions or trying to find answers. For me, this is better than the web experience of the old forums, which opens it up much more to new XPages developers. That is why I would not consider this a beta forum – it’s a beta forum templ ate. And one that will, through community involvement, become more powerful as a result.