google's forum

[VisorSpawn]

Recently I've been visiting the Google's palm & visor forum boards. Like pdastreet, they have tons of users, novice to experienced, young and old, and so on. Now seeing that we have this big PDAStreet community here, and at the same time seeing this almost even bigger community of handhelds over at Google, how do you guys feel about this?

[VisorSpawn]

..any of these..

de.comp.sys.handhelds.palm-pilot

comp.sys.palmtops.pilot

fr.comp.sys.palm-pilot

alt.comp.sys.palmtops.pilot

[VisorSpawn]

There's just this huge mass of people (a big community) posting about everything, from technology to arts to academics to careers, and now there's these very well organized forums of handhelds (including palm & visors). And you would think: "Hey...that's not right..PDAstreet is specialized in handhelds..and google is not. But how come they still got this community bigger than us?" The first time I saw the google pda boards (about 2 years ago), that's how I felt. And they kept on expanding. Growing bigger and bigger...probably even bigger than PDAstreet...or soon to be.

[DrMud]

VisorSpawn,

There have always been other Palm oriented boards. BrightHand and PDABuzz are both a thousand times larger and more active than PalmBlvd. I have a friend that is a moderator for BrightHand she has more than 7,000 postings to her credit since last Thanksgiving.
There is a wonderful city called Seattle; I don't live there! There is an exciting town with lots of theater, art galleries and museums, it's called New York; I don't live there.

I post on PalmBlvd.
DrMud

[VisorSpawn]

Yes. I'm also a frequent visitor of techbrains.com (also a pda forum board) and the Google groups. But what I'm saying is that the word "PDAstreet", with lots of sub divisions, looks as if like it's the largest. But when compared to others that simply aren't focused on PDAs only, they seem to have *more* of users, postings, etc. and generally more active.

It's like if you're in a school majored in the Arts, and you see this academic school next to yours winning Art awards and reconition for the Arts, you start to feel a little weird.

Well actually promoting PDA knowledge around the world is a good thing, so actually I probably shouldn't be feeling strange. =)

[DrMud]

VisorSpawn,
I'm not sure I understand the perception you have of the name for this board. It connotes little to me other than a place for folks to visit and share their questions and concerns related to Palmtop devices.

As to the interdisciplinary nature of other sites, well that does have merit. I have not experienced it but might enjoy it once in a while.

I have seen two situations on other sites that have left me concerned. 1) On some of the very largest sites the moderators seem to be very busy and their brief answers may leave the person posting for the first time not much better off than when they started. 2) The moderators on other boards often intimidate new posters and thus slow interaction and cross fertilization of the information stream.

I'll give an example: I posted an answer to a question about "running apps" from a memory card. The "super Moderator" landed on me with both feet and without hesitation posted that my answer was "totally wrong." I sent him a personal email and after three rounds of emails he agreed that he had a "linguistic difference" with me and that after reading two emails that were sent to him from launcher developers he admitted his misunderstanding. But he never corrected his post that I was "totally wrong." That is not an environment that helps others to grow in their knowledge and desire to share.

I would encourage anyone that has a problem which is difficult to solve to seek answers on all of the major Palm boards. When we have had difficult issues on this board I have ask Jennifer from BrightHand to post and she has. I have invited a number of developers and product tech people to post on PalmBlvd; and they have. We may not be the largest, the quickest or the most accurate but we can grow and try to maintain a sense of community and respect. PalmBlvd is a good neighborhood to post in.
Doc