Hi gang.
It's been a while since I've posted to these boards. I started a new company, am selling my house, got busy, blah, blah, blah. Is that really why I haven't been posting (or reading) here?
I don't think so.
The trouble started with the implementation of the new OpenACS.org web site. Specifically, the forums (or "fora," if you want to be pedantic about pluralizing your Latin words) no longer support a view that shows me new posts on old threads. If I want to see which old threads are live again, you have to click through the fora, page by page. Now, I very much doubt that I would have done so under any circumstances, but as it turns out I spend about half my week in the Catskills where I have only a slow dial-up connection. It's just too painful for me to click through in order to keep up with the various threads. My attention to OpenACS.org immediately dropped through the floor.
To make matters worse, when I killed my old email address due to an overabundance of spam, I realized that I would have to create an entirely new profile on the site in order to keep receiving email alerts. Over my slow dial-up connection. Never mind the time required; I was annoyed. I should not have to create a whole new profile (and lose my entire membership history and therefore the record of my reputation in the community in the process) just because I changed my email address. Maybe that was an OK compromise in 1995, but it doesn't cut it in 2003.
OK, grumble grumble. So I posted today. Why today? Is it because Janine Sisk happened to ping me yesterday? That's probably part of it, but it wasn't enough by itself.
What happened was I updated my RSS client. The latest version of NetNewsWire (which, by the way, changed my life) now shows editing marks to note what is changed when a post is updated. Now, I subscribe to the OpenACS fora RSS feed, but it doesn't provide a whole lot of information. Basically, it gives me a headline, a timestamp, and an author name. Usually not enough to keep me checking a thread (especially when my email alerts are broken and I'm to lazy/pissed off to fix my profile). However, NetNewsWire now tells me when follow-ups have been posted to a thread by updating my timestamp. So now, when I saw a thread about Google and RSS, (a topic that happens to interest me), I knew whenever a new post went up because NetNewsWire updated the time stamp and marked the post has changed. Very cool. Suddenly, I'm back in the conversation.
Note that I am not any less busy than I was when I dropped out of the conversation. If anything, I am busier. I am writing this now when I should be working on a very important document for a client that could mean a huge amount of business for my new company. No, the difference is about how our perceptual systems are wired. OpenACS.org got my attention through my newly improved RSS interface. I was going to have a difficult time getting on with my work until I cleared this distraction from my mind by doing something about it. When the interface made it an effort for me to keep up with the conversation, I didn't. Now that the conversation comes to me again (or, at least, comes closer), I have a harder time ignoring stimulating posts.
OK, so why am I posting this rant to the .LRN bboard instead of the OpenACS bboard? Is it just because I am personally fond of the .LRN project?
Nope.
It's because most learners (even the ones taking courses for credit) have attention spans and usage profiles similar to mine. Hard data has shown again and again that the razor's edge that marks the difference between a successful distance learning course and a failure is the degree to which you engage the learners. I don't care how many features you add to dotLRN; as long as the bboard interface is weak, you will have many unhappy instructors and disengaged students. They may not be able to articulate why they are disaffected, but I guarantee that you will see many cases of malaise caused by a poor interface. It's like trying to pay attention in class when the heating blower is blasting noise and hot air into your face.
I would further argue that Open Source communities probably share some of these characteristics. Beyond the hard-core people at the center of the project, talented people come and go. They may work on the edges, but they can sometimes make a difference around whether your project has critical mass or when their particular areas of expertise happen to be needed at a particular moment.
One of the things that Phil G did right was make the conversation at photo.net extremely easy to follow--which, by extension, makes it harder to ignore. OpenACS and dotLRN both could benefit by returning to these lessons. Adding back in the old stuff as well as a couple of enhancements (like including the the first paragraph of the post in the RSS feed) would have a disproportionate impact on mindshare by making it easier for people to join and stay in the conversation.
</rant>
