Do We Need To Replace LNOTES-L?04/26/2007 04:30:11 PMLNOTES-L has had a long life. I'm not sure exactly how long, but I'm pretty certain it's more than 12 years. It goes back to before there were web forums. It goes back to before there was a set of Usenet groups under the comp.groupware.lotus-notes hierarchy.
The forum on LDD (formerly Notes.Net) has been available for a long time, and I think it is more active now than LNOTES-L was at its peak. Some people still really like mailing lists, though. They're right there in your mail file, so you can refer to them when you're off-line. But LDD offers Notes replication access to the forum, too, so you can take it off-line, too. It's not the prettiest UI in the world, but it works and a lot of people to use it. I don't know if its more or less than the number who have been using LNOTES-L.
And besides the forum, there are now blogs. Lots of blogs. I haven't counted in a while, and it's hard to say how many are truly active, but I think there are more than 100 active blogs covering issues in the Notes community. No, they're not suitable for Q&A, unless of course you are the blogger and you have built up a substantial readership. But they're there, and a lot of questions are already answered in blog posts, so a strategic google or two stands a chance of answering your question.
Then again, people have still been posting to LNOTES-L. Not as often as before, but it's still been reasonably active. Does this mean that people have not been Googling and finding answers elsewhere. Or does it mean that they have been Googling and still not finding answers. I'd bet its a mix of both. Sometimes, you don't even know what the right words are for your search, and sometimes the answer just isn't out there to be found.
So, here's the question: do we still need LNOTES-L? Or has it run its course?
Comment posted by Brian Moore04/26/2007 06:20:07 PM
I really like the list. I get responses there unlike what I get on notes.net. Because of that, I've created a Yahoo group to replace it:
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/lnotes-l-new/
There is an older one, but it's not been used since 2001.
Brian
Comment posted by Richard Schwartz04/26/2007 06:53:58 PM
Homepage: http://www.rhs.com/poweroftheschwartz
A Yahoo group may not be a bad way to replace it. It's certainly an easy way. The main problem will be getting the word out to all the old subscribers. But that would be a problem no matter what we do; and I'm working on it.
-rich
Comment posted by Narendra Deshmukh04/27/2007 09:07:52 AM
Rich
I like the List . I would love to see it active and kicking :). It has some Notes Guru's like u who have always been a big help and guidence.
Narendra
Narendra
Comment posted by Ron Heller04/27/2007 10:22:05 AM
The last time we proposed doing away with the list, the main reason for keeping it was that there were still a number of people who did not have access to internet resources at work, and so needed to rely on emails from the list.
That was several years ago, so I don't know if it's still an issue.
Comment posted by Patrick04/27/2007 12:19:45 PM
I would hate to see the list go away. The resource of the community is invaluable. You do make a good argument for the other resources out there, but many of my questions were posted to the list after I'd been unsuccessful using Google, so I don't know if they cover the gamut of topics well enough. Or, as you say, if you don't know what to ask for, you may have a problem finding it.
That said, something like the Y! group would be a reasonable replacement for me -- I can't speak to the potential issue of not having Internet access, but can you configure Yahoo! groups to forward posts to an e-mail address, if you want it to? Would you be able to reply to such and have them go to the group? Not sure, I don't spend much time in the Groups.
Comment posted by Brian Moore04/27/2007 12:23:59 PM
I like the list, it offers a type of interaction different from blogs or notes.net.
Notes.net is thousands of people and hundreds of thousands of posts. If you post, someone needs to see it, or search for it. If the header doesn't grab attention, or give someone cause to check it out, you may not get a post. It's a great place to search, it's deep and wide.
Blogs are a commentary on someone's life. Generally, they start the topic and people respond. I don't have a blog, so if my topic isn't on someone's mind, it won't be there. I love peeking in on other people's lives, I love seeing how they do things, and bring up stuff I wouldn't think about.
If you post the list, you may get some ideas, you can bounce things off of people. You may ask about something and someone else may have just gone through it, or is going through it now. You can post that you're brain-dead on a Friday and can't remember something, or just ask someone to scan over something. If I ever get to go to LotusSphere, it's the listers I want to see more than the bloggers or the Notes.netters.
They all have their place, I use them all, I don't want what the list offers to be lost. I've posted a link to a new one above.
Comment posted by Esther Strom04/27/2007 01:22:42 PM
Homepage: http://esthermstrom.blogspot.com
I like the list; it's more of a "local community" than the forums are. You start to know who you can depend on for answers to certain types of questions.
@Patrick - yes, Yahoo Groups is completely email-workable. You can choose to read only online or to get individual or digest emails. You just add the group email address to your address book and send email directly to the group.
Comment posted by Gregg Eldred04/27/2007 01:39:26 PM
Homepage: http://www.ns-tech.com/blog/geldred.nsf
Why did I subscribe to the list, even with the blogs/wikis/forums? Because I knew that the people that were on the list were smart. Smarter than I. And they would respond. I also knew that the people on the list would try to fix their issue before posting. And the questions that were submitted - wow. Now, sure, some of the questions were 'easy,' or just needed another opinion/viewpoint, but I really liked knowing that this was a very interactive support group. And I appreciated the fact that I could post something, just to see if I was correctly identifying an issue.
No bad behavior, either. 
I liked having the questions/comments come to my mail file, and it was easy to respond. From where ever I was. No need for a web browser/rss feed/whatever. Never did the number of messages get out of hand, either.
Esther makes a good point - the community rocked!:
Comment posted by John Dillon04/30/2007 05:20:43 PM
Homepage: http://www.WidgetRacing.com
Maybe I'm old-school, but I really liked having the mailing list, from both sides of the equation. Sometimes I had questions, sometimes I offered answers. Either way, the sense of community was profound.
Like several of you, I've got an archive of many of the lnotes-l messages going back almost ten years. Naturally that's a database I tap into when rummaging about for solutions.
Yeah, I use other resources as well, but the immediacy, integrity, authority and personality of lnotes-l all factored into my appreciation for the list and its members.
Yahoo/Google groups are one thing, and may do the job for us (if we don't run into TOS or BW limits). I'll sign up shortly.
Thanks to all for your ideas and support over the years.
- 
