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View Poll Results: Should we merge the CoCreate User Forum into the PTC/USER Portal Site?
Yes, I think the CoCreate forums should be part of the PTC/USER portal 16 18.60%
No, I prefer to keep the CoCreate User Forum separate 70 81.40%
Voters: 86. This poll is closed

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  #16  
Old 07-01-2008, 06:21 AM
Peter Boks Peter Boks is offline
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Re: Proposal to Merge CoCreate User Forum with PTC/USER Portal Site

I have voted against migrating (forgot to log in though).
I am registered at 4 CoCreate forums (2x Dutch, 1x German and of course this forum) and have never found this to be a problem, although this forum is defenitely my favorate one.

I wonder why we should be affraid of loosing readers/members when PTC starts up their own forum. Why, if you consider the amount of data that is stored in this place.
Fear is a bad counsellor.
I have been a member of this forum, and the old ME10 forum, for more then 10 years now and through the years, this has allways been a fantastic place for asking questions.
I've allways had valuable help with my questions anyway.

And have you considered this:
I have entered this forum in the past with the impression that my personal data and e-mail address were safe and never to be sold or given to another party.
What happens with that if this forum moves to PTC.

Has CoCreate been taken over in the past before?
What happens if PTC decides to sell the CoCreate stuff in a couple of years? Do we loose everything?

In my opinion it is best to be independent.
Maybe a company like PTC can even benefit from an independent source.
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  #17  
Old 07-01-2008, 08:04 AM
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jeffz jeffz is offline
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Re: Proposal to Merge CoCreate User Forum with PTC/USER Portal Site

PTC/USER is not PTC, but a volunteer run user organization. Our mission is as follows:
  • To provide education and communication services for its members;
  • To act as a unified voice representing the membership to Parametric Technology Corporation.
We work closely with PTC, but are an independent group that is run and maintained for and by the users. For some more information click here:

http://portal.ptcuser.org/p/cm/ld/fid=12

z
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  #18  
Old 07-02-2008, 03:01 AM
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Wolfgang Wolfgang is offline
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Re: Proposal to Merge CoCreate User Forum with PTC/USER Portal Site

Quote:
Originally Posted by jeffz View Post
Making Forums public for read-only available without login -
No one has actually asked for this, but I like the idea. Certainly should work for the public forums.
I' fear you can't do it now/afterwards. Based on the history of the mail list server PTCUSER seemed to be used to reply with full quotes (regardless whether they are reply withing the web or by email) and also the standard company signature is attached many times. There are lots of threads where you can read (today as an registered user only) email addresses, phone numbers (also direct calls), postal addresses etc. Making the forums public you have to remove this information first or get the permission of all users. Looks like this is not feasible.

But I admit: I'm not sure what you mean exactly with 'public forums'. I assume you are talking about the 'Public Discussions' as they are titled at http://portal.ptcuser.org, don't you?

In vBulletin we have less information about the people but this makes "public life" easier.

BTW: because of the full quote method unfortunately used many threads are quite lengthy and hard to read IMHO. I'm more scrolling than reading. Don't like that.
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  #19  
Old 07-02-2008, 02:18 PM
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rbrennen rbrennen is offline
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Re: Proposal to Merge CoCreate User Forum with PTC/USER Portal Site

The overall discussion is great. As things stand right now, though, I would prefer that the CoCreate User Forum stay separate. Perhaps after more discussion and some concrete proposals for a merge and/or changes to the PTC/USER forum, I will change my mind.
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  #20  
Old 07-02-2008, 02:36 PM
mgb mgb is offline
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Re: Proposal to Merge CoCreate User Forum with PTC/USER Portal Site

I also like the discussion. At the current time I would prefer not to merge the forums. I do like that Google reminds me I could have found what I was looking for in the forum.
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  #21  
Old 07-02-2008, 02:39 PM
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John Scheffel John Scheffel is offline
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Re: Proposal to Merge CoCreate User Forum with PTC/USER Portal Site

Quote:
Originally Posted by jeffz View Post
Making Forums public for read-only available without login -
No one has actually asked for this, but I like the idea. Certainly should work for the public forums.
Thanks very much Jeff for getting involved in the discussion. I'm glad to hear that you are open to making the forum viewable to people who are not registered. That was my main concern because we have a lot of guests who use this forum as a resource but don't want to register or post. I also think it is valuable to have the forum contents indexed by search engines so people who don't know about the forum can find answers.

BTW. I just broadcast an Email message to all registered members who have visited the forum in the last year, so we should see some more voting and posting.
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  #22  
Old 07-02-2008, 02:51 PM
John Westerman John Westerman is offline
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Re: Proposal to Merge CoCreate User Forum with PTC/USER Portal Site

And I would be one of those who just received the email from John Scheffel. As an infrequent user of this forum I'm inclined to go with the flow. Looks like some good discussion is happening already. I definitely resonate with the privacy issue, especially for email addresses. Seems like a number of times a year I see large, internal distribution lists compromised (with my address in the list), resulting in the requisite number of SPAM's. So, to make a short story long, I'll follow the lead of our seasoned members on pursuing the correct course of action. I do like the ability, however, to view the forum for info without logging in.
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  #23  
Old 07-02-2008, 02:53 PM
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rxcited rxcited is offline
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Re: Proposal to Merge CoCreate User Forum with PTC/USER Portal Site

I agree with all commentary posted so far. Presuming that PTC/User continues to enforce these basic incompatibilities (non-guest access and search-ability) on their forum, I don't see any advantages to merging until these issues are worked out.

I like that you can search the info on this forum without being logged in. Google is the first place I turn to when I need to find something out, CoCreate or otherwise. And I think the idea of excluding competitors is an unenforceable ridiculous holdover from earlier PTC paranoia. Moderators can choose to ban members who clearly demonstrate bad intentions or post misinformation. Spammers are another matter that I would prefer are never allowed to join. But of course any human spammer can claim to be a non-competitor non-spammer and get in anyway (until s/he is banned). Allowing guests to peruse the forums doesn't lead to spammer membership, but of course it would allow the "evil competitors" to snoop in on the discussions. To this, I say: So what?
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  #24  
Old 07-02-2008, 03:00 PM
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John Scheffel John Scheffel is offline
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Re: Proposal to Merge CoCreate User Forum with PTC/USER Portal Site

Quote:
Originally Posted by Peter Boks View Post
I wonder why we should be affraid of loosing readers/members when PTC starts up their own forum. Why, if you consider the amount of data that is stored in this place.
....
Has CoCreate been taken over in the past before?
What happens if PTC decides to sell the CoCreate stuff in a couple of years? Do we loose everything?
Thanks for posting your thoughts Peter, some perspectives I haven't heard yet. I'm not really afraid of losing members if PTC starts a separate CoCreate forum. I just think it is best for the user community to have "one stop shopping" so they don't have to follow or post questions in two different forums.

After CoCreate spun off from HP I think they were owned by two different private investment firms over the years, but they were never bought/sold by other companies. I think it unlikely that PTC would sell CoCreate to someone else, but it is something I hadn't considered. I don't think PTC has ever acquired a company then sold it, but in business anything is possible.
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  #25  
Old 07-02-2008, 03:12 PM
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John Scheffel John Scheffel is offline
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Re: Proposal to Merge CoCreate User Forum with PTC/USER Portal Site

Quote:
Originally Posted by Wolfgang View Post
BTW: because of the full quote method unfortunately used many threads are quite lengthy and hard to read IMHO. I'm more scrolling than reading. Don't like that.
I have to agree. The Socius package may be a good all-around choice for managing an organization the size of PTC/USER, but the forum part seems pretty weak compared to vBulletin, phpBB, and other popular options. Maybe PTC/USER should consider using a separate package for the forum portion of their site.
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  #26  
Old 07-02-2008, 03:52 PM
MichaelA MichaelA is offline
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Re: Proposal to Merge CoCreate User Forum with PTC/USER Portal Site

So I put in my vote as a Yes but I would put some qualifications on it. First we need to have a similar structure to the one in use already, need the various catagories otherwise information is too difficult to sort thru. that seems to be do able from the screen capture of the PTC site. As much as I like to keep "control" of our own stuff, having it supported and monitored by the folks at PTC should be a good thing for us. Just need to ensure we can still find it, easily share info and add topics/forums as necessary in the future.

My 2 US cents (definitely not worth 2 euro cents),

Michael
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  #27  
Old 07-02-2008, 04:34 PM
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jeffz jeffz is offline
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Re: Proposal to Merge CoCreate User Forum with PTC/USER Portal Site

Quote:
Originally Posted by Wolfgang View Post
But I admit: I'm not sure what you mean exactly with 'public forums'. I assume you are talking about the 'Public Discussions' as they are titled at http://portal.ptcuser.org, don't you?

BTW: because of the full quote method unfortunately used many threads are quite lengthy and hard to read IMHO. I'm more scrolling than reading. Don't like that.
We have both public and private access controlled forums. The access controlled groups cover areas like the PTC/USER leadership, Technical Committees (they discuss proprietary information), Regional User Group leadership and various administrative communities (i.e. World Event conference, etc.)

The quoting behavior is configurable per each forum. The Adepters list (Arbortext users) use the classical forum model so there is not the overhead of the hybrid forum/listserv. If it were my choice we would be straight forum all the way across - but we have some users with 15 years of experience with the listserv model.
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  #28  
Old 07-02-2008, 04:37 PM
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jeffz jeffz is offline
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Re: Proposal to Merge CoCreate User Forum with PTC/USER Portal Site

Quote:
Originally Posted by John Scheffel View Post
I have to agree. The Socius package may be a good all-around choice for managing an organization the size of PTC/USER, but the forum part seems pretty weak compared to vBulletin, phpBB, and other popular options. Maybe PTC/USER should consider using a separate package for the forum portion of their site.
We used to do this with our previous provider. Too much overhead with user account to forum maintenance, synchronization issues, etc. In terms of forum functionality I don't really see any gaps. From the list here the overall concern is being able to hit it from Google and threading (non-issue as this is per Forum configurable).
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  #29  
Old 07-03-2008, 12:35 AM
Bobo82 Bobo82 is offline
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Re: Proposal to Merge CoCreate User Forum with PTC/USER Portal Site

Hi all,
my opinion is that this forum is really useful and it's take me out of trouble a lot of time.
For me the best solution (if possible) is to insert a section about CoCreate in the PTC forums that redirect the user to this site. The problem of the required log-in, for me, is realy important. Probably the 95% of the register user, first visit the forum as guest to see if the forums really helps them and than, they become member (try and buy :-).

Thanks John, for ask our thoughts about this important decision.
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  #30  
Old 07-03-2008, 02:04 AM
munich munich is offline
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Re: Proposal to Merge CoCreate User Forum with PTC/USER Portal Site

Hi,

also I don't use this forum much, I think it's better to remain independent till we really can expect that PTC will not sell CoCreate again.
Nevertheless, a link from PTC/User to this forum would be great.
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