a. Seems there are only a few in the Yes column who have two or less total posts on the forums over the past year. Not sure if we should consider those an honest informed vote. But even without them, it still stands as a strong yes but with low voter turnout.
b. I'm not sure who deleted those posts below. (I can see the posts thru my admin tools. It seems it was deleted by the posters themselves, so I won't comment on the content of those particular posts.)
c. Votes from Esri staff should not weigh nearly as much as from someone outside Esri. Just my opinion I intend to use. But then the decision to split the extensions forums was due it to being heavily and almost unanimously requested by both the user community and Esri staff.
d. Despite it being a heavy yes, I still do share Dan's point about de facto abstained votes. Meaning, there are far more users who didn't vote. Will those folks become actively complaining "we don't like the split Python forum" after we split it? Or do many of them simply don't care one way or the other and will use the forums either way? We'll simply need to make a decision without being able to know.
e. I'm going to give this thread one more week (11/19), then I plan on making a decision that I guarantee will make quite a number of people happy, and quite a number of other people unhappy (perhaps unhappy enough to give up and stop using the forums. I'd like to try to prevent that, but I cannot control it.) Here's a hint: If the yes continues to strengthen (with real users), then we'll create a Python forum, but if the strongest opinions either way are limited to just a very small (albeit vocal) set of users, then my tendency without a strong case is to leave it alone.
f. As for "General" forums being bad, I hear your arguments and there are some good logical points there. But at the same time:
- 1. There should be a place for a catch-all for topics that are outside the more defined topics.
- 2. There should be a place for discussion of topics that are more general and cut across several specific topics. Not every question or topic of discussion is that fine grained specific.
- 3. There are always a set of users on the forums who are new to the technology. They may not know what to do, how, or why enough to choose the best specific forum, or they don't know the terms well enough. It's important to remember that the forums need to try to help the most folks it can, not just those who've been in the game long enough to have forgotten what it's like to not know what to do, how to do it, or where to turn. (Maybe the answer here can include more active moderation by Esri staff and selected power-users from the community, moving threads and such. Are there folks out there who wouldn't mind having Mod permissions to better assist these folks?)
- 4. If anyone contends that there are some posts in there because the OP was too lazy to put it in a better forum, and because of that the right users aren't going to be there to answer it, then... ok... it won't get answered. I have to rely on users who take the time to ask a question taking the time to try to put it into the right place. But this is what I've been saying all along about a *fewer* number of more *general* forums. If we go back to making hundreds of very specific forums, that will make it unreasonable for many users to know where to put it, creating more misposting and more inappropriate use of "general" forums.
