Well, well, well … there has certainly been a lot of chat about Eddie’s new OraQA site over the past couple of days, to a degree that I wanted to clarify some of my own thoughts after reading other blogs. In no order at all (other than the order they fall out of my head …)<\/p>\n
1) Community Fragmentation<\/span>. From my original blog …”but if there are many sites serving a particular purpose, maybe it’s a distraction?” A lot of people seem to have taken this as a criticism of diversity. If you read that comment carefully, though, the key words for me were ‘a particular purpose’. I’m very keen on mass participation in and of the Oracle community and there are many out there who would confirm that I encourage everyone<\/span> to write papers, present, start blogs etc. (I’d like to think some of them might post comments here confirming that). There’s room for everyone and most people will have an interesting story to tell that will add to my experience. I think what was really behind that comment and perhaps I would have been more honest but didn’t want to hurt Eddie’s feeling was this :- What does OraQA achieve that the cooperative FAQ<\/a> doesn’t already achieve, with more substance? Or even OraFaq<\/a>? Consider this :- if Eddie, me and everyone else decided that, instead of creating new question and answer sites, we’d all decide to contribute to one q&a site (kind of co-operatively, if you will) , then that site would have so much more value as a result. Remember, I’m talking about the specific species – Q & A sites. That has nothing to do with blogs, articles, presentations or whatever. We can all still write our own personal material in our personal style. However, if a Q & A site is to be a valuable resource, the bigger and more correct it is, the better as far as I’m concerned. There are many views on what ‘community’ might mean but ‘everyone doing their own thing’ isn’t the only one!<\/p>\n 2) Howard<\/span>. I know it’s contentious to even start commenting about an individual (an ‘ad hominem’ even – thanks Howard, I finally took the trouble to look it up although, as a football fan, I still like ‘playing the man and not the ball’) when he’s been clear in trying to stick to the substance. However, (and I’ll be very frank here) I don’t always see eye to eye with Howard; I think he does tend to get pretty upset about things that I might not; actually, I could add a whole list of personal differences here and he can vouch for that… but I personally agree with what he has to say and I don’t think he’s having a dig at anyone personally. Here’s an experiment for you. Look at the question that he had a problem with<\/a> then look at the article he wrote on the same subject<\/a>. There’s simply no comparison in the quality and depth of the material. That’s not to denigrate the rather neat idea expressed on OraQA but I, like Howard, get concerned about reductionism when it comes to Oracle technical matters. I’ll tell you the truth. When I was trying to come up with a question and answer for Eddie’s site, I was stumped. My head just isn’t full of nifty single-liners because I can’t think of many Oracle subjects I could address properly that way. At least on the co-operative FAQ, there’s scope for long answers, later updates and so on – all on the same page.<\/p>\n So let’s not decide that people are just being grumpy stick-in-the-muds. When you’re asked what you think about a site, you can only say what you think, right? So here’s what I think. What’s wrong with the co-operative FAQ? If there’s nothing wrong with it – why don’t we all just post there instead of coming up with a new one?<\/p>\n Oh, and Eddie? I still love you to bits 😉<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"