During the Bloggers BOF at Lotusphere there was a discussion on how some people were worried that the topic that they were posting might be considered to be aimed at beginners and would not be of interest to others in the Lotus Blogging Community.
My personal opinion is that there are always new people who are starting out as Notes/Domino administrators or developers and that these topics are of utmost importance to them. While they will eventually need to know about classes or the speed issues incurred by using variants, what they need right now is the answer to their current challenge.
It is on this note that I would like to propose a new idea for the Lotus Blogging Community along the same lines of ‘Show And Tell Thursday’ and it’s an idea that everybody can participate in no matter what area or level of expertise you work in.
The idea is called ‘Forum Friday’ and it is very easy to take part. All you need to do is go to the DeveloperWorks ( notes.net ) website and pick one of the many forums that are available, Have a look through some of the questions and pick one to answer. Write up your answer on you own blog and then reply in the forum with a link to your blog entry.
The beauty of this is twofold, not only do the ‘beginners’ get their question answered but they will also get exposed to the blogging community ( you would be amazed at the number of people who work in the industry and don’t read the blogs ). You get increased readership, people will get informative answers and the entire Lotus community will benefit through the shared knowledge.
I would love to hear everybody thoughts on this idea.
Dec's Dom Blog 
Sounds a cool idea. Count me in!—* Bill
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It’s a good idea, and having people link back to their blogs with the answers should encourage participation. I would also suggest figuring out a way to aggregate responses, and have some sort of recognition for those who lead in contributions, perhaps a second category in the Lotusphere Blogger Awards.
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Dec, this is a great idea. I remember years ago (before I had blogging as an outlet) keeping an eye on the most recent forum queries and jumping on ones I could answer. I think this is indeed a great way to “re-link” the two communities which in many ways have drifted apart, with a lot of the experienced folks virtually ignoring the forums now in favor of their RSS readers.”Forum Fridays” I’m not so sure about. Might work, but I’d be open to alternate tag suggestions (although none come to mind right away). Whatever we pick, we should check the Google for originality so we can avoid tag confusion.
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Dang, Dec, that is just plain BRILLIANT! Yes, I hereby commit to participate. Thanks for sharing your idea!
– Joe
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Yes, Forum Fridays is just the initial name I came up with, I’m open to suggestions… It doesn’t even have to be tried to a day however that does make it easier to remember to participate.
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I find myself asking the same question – how much of this tip requires having read this, this, this, and this tip?! This is a brilliant way to keep up relations within the Notes.net/LDD and blogging communities as well as spotlighting the blogging community to those notes users who think that Notes.net is the only resource out there.
It’s like during GURUPALOOZA, when Rocky was asked if he was writing any more books. Someone (I think it was NTF) replied saying something like “Doesn’t everyone just blog now?!”.
There’s still a vast part of the community that has no idea what the blogging community, LUG, BleedYellow.com, etc. can offer the novice or even seasoned Lotus professionals.
In summary – brilliant, and count me in!
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thinking about it – on the bottom of each of these posts, some sort of ‘and there’s lots more blogs out there – check out planetlotus.org’ for instance, might just give the reader something more to look for… ?Just a thought…—* Bill
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Agreed. A while back I’d suggested FGOTO (“firm grasp of the obvious”) as a tag for items that feel like they’re basic concepts but may have previously been overlooked (even by the author) as a way to get some of this stuff indexed by Google, but I like how your idea would accomplish the same but target answers we already know at least one person is seeking.
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So we need a good TAG, a common graphic ( but nothing that may offend ) and maybe Yancy could do a special view on PlanetLotus to only show entries with the special tag that could be linked to from every post.I’d also suggest the blog entry should link back to the original question on notes.net and maybe even include an excerpt of the question in the blog entry ( I’d use a blockquote for this myself )After a while I’m sure every participant would come up with their own standard format.
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Awesome idea, Dec. I agree, we need a common tag, and a nice helpful graphic to alert everyone to the nature of the post.Great to see the community coming together for the common good like this…
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This is a great idea. Count me in.Just a word of warning, as the forums I will probably spend the most time in 2008 will be the Symphony ones. They are not on LDD or Notes based. So I think we should expand this to cover any official IBM product forum.
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– I love this idea. It gives those that are new to blogging; me, a topic to write about. It also diverts the awkwardness’s some feel, ok I feel about posting a beginner topic “I’m just answering a question maaan”.- In a perfect world the subject/title would start with (ForumFriday:) or (F.Friday:) like SnTT: However more appropriate would be F.Monday :).<narcissus> If you post the url that planetlotus assigns your post, the forum clicks that you get will count towards your planetlotus click total. Note: forum clicks would go directly to your.</narcissus>- What about Ben’s question day idea? Wednesday? the week is filling up :).
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Yep…Brilliant stuff, Declan. Count me in. Wait…can I even post in the forums now that I’m an IBMer? Hmmm…need to check that.
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Amazing that you are 13 comments in when this basically “just showed up” on planetlotus.org. The community is plugged in…@13 Chris – yes, you can post. You can even access from your Notes client with the /IBM ID :)Great idea, Declan!
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So, I just do what I normally do on any other day of the week? I’m in.The Happy Couple:{ Link }
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That’s a great idea. I love how it bridges the two communities. I don’t see what’s wrong with Forum Fridays, I think it’s a great title…?
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As the manager of developerWorks Lotus / Notes.net, this idea was certainly a pleasant surprise, and obviously a welcome one!
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Sounds like a great idea. I’ve continually made attempts to blog regularly, this will be a good way to start getting something helpful out there.
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A great idea and also something that gives us all “free” blog fuel!
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the Notes forum suck BIG time (not the questions and responses but the way the forum works)
how can I quickly find questions within my ‘knowledge area’ that are unanswered?
dont get me wrong, I support the FF idea, but also my free-time is ‘precious’…
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OK, everyone that has commented seems to like this idea, and far be it for me to discourage an idea that will actually help other people. But there’s a BUT in here too.One of the biggest advantages of the ldd forums is that you can search for problems that has already been solved, and the answers will still be there several years from now. Will everyone that answers forum posts in this manner really keep their blogs up and running for as long as the forums are?If we look 2 or 3 years into the future, there will be answers to posts that contain only dead links, and the hopeful searcher can only hope that someone will answer the post again.I normally like the diversity, and I will happily help out, both on my blog, and in the forums, when time permits me to. In this case, though, it might very well become a loss of information instead of an addition. Another thing to consider is that people on corporate networks might not be able to read your blog. At my employer, I am not allowed access to about half of the blogs I want to keep up with. If a site is classified as “Social networking and personal sites”, it’s off-limits for us.In the spirit of this, I would like to propose a slight alteration of the “Forum Friday” idea: Answer the questions in the forum. Link back to a blog posting of your own, with perhaps more information on the subject, and maybe a download or two. That way, the answered question is still answered in the future, and there will still be an expansion of knowledge for the people that need help, though the blogosphere.Otherwise a very good initiative, and I will be happy to participate.
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This is an excellent point and I do agree that it would be best to keep the main points if not all of the answer in both the forums and the blog post. It’s not that hard to copy/paste the some or all text from your answer into the reply on the forum. Your blog post could then, as you said, contain further info, images and maybe downloads.
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Good idea, Declan. If I have some spare time in the near future, I’d like to participate by creating a graphic for it. Something in the style of the new SNTT I tried to launch (but wasn’t adopted by the site (yet?).
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@Martin: I was just thinking that someone should create a snappy graphic. But not me, I am not that imaginative.
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Great idea DeclanHow about, for people who don’t blog but do post answers (me as one!), they can answer the question and put “Chosen blog for Forum Friday: http://www.xxxxx” at the bottom? I do agree about still pointing people to the search facility to find the answer before posting. Maybe also post the link to the FAQs at the bottom too?
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It sounds like a good idea, and anything that puts more knowledge out there has to be welcomed. However I think that @21 (Peter’s) idea is good, ie. that the solution be included in the forum, with a link back to the blog for more info. One of the great strengths of the LDD forum is the search, and if the full text of the solution is not also in the forum then it reduces the chances of someone finding it in the first place. This would also apply to follow up questions the user might post out on the blog entry.
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As time allows, I’m in…
Anything to bring a bit more notes/domino content from yours truly…
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Im late to the game as ever, but yes.. count me in starting next week.
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Hi Declan,I posted an image on my website yesterday. Snappy enough for you? { Link }Regards,Martin
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Since I will be on airplanes Friday (flying home from a 2 weeks holiday in Florida after Lotusphere) I just published my first ‘Forum Friday’ response: { Link }
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I back @26 made by Richard Hogan, that full answers/solution should be posted in the Forum.I do not think it is a good idea to provide part of the answer in the Forum and point to somebody’s blog for the rest of answer (just to justify somebody blog -@19-). It would be defeating the object of the Forum and “bad” usability.I will commit part of my fridays to see if I can answer forum entries.
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