Recommendations for active community or group?

[bryandhughes]

I'm looking for recommendations for user groups, social media, anywhere that is an active community that can assist with troubleshooting. This community would be great but there's just nobody that uses it – the majority of issues have some views but no answers, so it's not useful. Any recommendations?

[jcarlson]

The next best place besides here would probably be the GIS Stack Exchange. But it really depends on what your questions are and how you want them answered. There's not a whole lot of Esri-specific action on the GISSE boards either, but plenty for web-centric map platforms and open source tools like QGIS. And if you're asking a really niche question, you may never see it properly answered.

There are some other GIS communities on platforms like Slack and Discord, but again, most of these center around other applications and communities, not Esri. Not that you can't find Esri users out there on these other platforms, but it's less common.

[Katie_Clark]

I figured there had to be some kind of server on Discord for GIS stuff but hadn't been able to find one. If there's a well known/active one, could you possibly post a link here? 🙂

[jcarlson]

My Slack and Discord connections are specific to OpenStreetMap, but there's plenty of tangential discussion of other GIS that goes on in them.

Esri's staff person who manages all of their OSM layers in Living Atlas has even showed up in the Discord before. The folks who develop the Daylight Distribution that powers the Esri/OSM vector basemaps have their own channel in the OSMUS Slack.

https://discord.gg/openstreetmap

https://osmus.slack.com/

[Katie_Clark]

Cool, thanks for sharing! 

[Katie_Clark]

Who knows, maybe I'm biased, but I would have to respectfully disagree about this not being an active community. 🙂  I've had *so* much help troubleshooting things on here. That doesn't mean every question I've had has gotten an exact answer, but it's really helped a lot. I'm sorry to hear you haven't had as positive of an experience though.

But anyway, aside from this community, there's GIS Stack Exchange which is geared a bit more towards developers. If your issue is something really specific that you can't find guidance to with Google searches, calling Esri support might be your best option.

[JohnSobetzer]

If I have a specific problem I usually Google on it first.  I have found answers in forums like this, blogs, articles, papers, etc.  For daily learning I use the Stack Exchange GIS forum.  It's members will readily tell you over there if your question is too general, subjective or lacking in specifics, and they will also ask you to show what you have already tried to fix your problem.  You will find way more views than comments or answers, just like here.  You want answers, not speculations or expressions of sympathy.  For informal GIS discussion but also problem resolution you could go to the Reddit  GIS forum or related subforums at https://www.reddit.com/r/gis/.

[samking]

Hi there,

I understand your frustration with inactive communities. Here are some active places you can check out for troubleshooting help:

1. Reddit: Try subreddits like r/techsupport, r/sysadmin, r/AskTechnology, and r/ITSupport.
2. Stack Overflow: Use specific tags to get help from experts.
3. GitHub: Use issue trackers and discussion boards for open-source projects.
4. LinkedIn Groups: Join professional groups related to your technology.

Hope this helps!