The end of Adepters (?)

ClayHelberg · ‎Apr 28, 2015

Hi folks—

For those of you who may not have stopped to read these messages from PTC/USER, or who may not have caught the implications, here is the summary:

PTC/USER is shutting down the server that runs the Adepters email list.

Their idea is to migrate all the PTC/USER discussion groups to the PTC-hosted PTC communities system. For those who haven’t used that system before, it’s kind of like Facebook for PTC users. They do have a dedicated area there for discussions of Arbortext related questions and issues, and that area does see a decent amount of traffic.

Since PTC/USER are shutting down their system, keeping Adepters running as-is will very soon not be an option. Going forward, some of us have talked about a few alternatives:

1) Follow PTC/USER’s suggestion and migrate to the PTC Community Arbortext board for Arbortext related discussions. The upside to this is that we get to integrate our community with the Arbortext user community over there (which has some overlap, but also some other users who have never belonged to Adepters. The downside is that it doesn’t offer the familiar listserv interface for reading and replying to messages.

2) Migrate to LinkedIn discussion groups. If we want to maintain more independence from PTC, there is a LinkedIn group for Arbortext users. LinkedIn has pretty good infrastructure for discussions, though again it wouldn’t have quite the same feel as an email server like we’ve been using for Adepters.

3) Migrate to another email discussion group service. We’ve looked at a few options, including Yahoo! Groups and Google Groups, and they would have a more similar flavor to the current system, but there are also some quirks about them (for example, you can’t create a Yahoo! Account without giving them a mobile number, and apparently some numbers like mine aren’t recognized so they won’t work).

From my perspective, the easiest approach is to go ahead and switch over to PTC Community. But I’m interested in what other people think, and I wanted to open up a discussion, in the hopes that we can come to something like a consensus in order to best preserve the sense of community and mutual support that has made Adepters such a wonderful virtual space for so many years.

I hope that wherever we end up, we’ll see most of you there as well!

--Clay

naglists · ‎Apr 28, 2015

I would love to see Adepters relocated to an independent email group
discussion platform. The push of an email list is superior to the pull of a
forum as far as my engagement is concerned. I do intend to participate in
the Arbortext PTC Community but I know from experience that I will feel
that slightly greater friction having to "go" to the forum.

On Tue, Apr 28, 2015 at 1:15 PM, Clay Helberg <->
wrote:

> Hi folks--
>
>
>
> For those of you who may not have stopped to read these messages from
> PTC/USER, or who may not have caught the implications, here is the summary:
>
>
>
> PTC/USER is shutting down the server that runs the Adepters email list.
>
>
>
> Their idea is to migrate all the PTC/USER discussion groups to the
> PTC-hosted PTC communities system. For those who haven't used that system
> before, it's kind of like Facebook for PTC users. They do have a dedicated
> area there for discussions of Arbortext related questions and issues, and
> that area does see a decent amount of traffic.
>
>
>
> Since PTC/USER are shutting down their system, keeping Adepters running
> as-is will very soon not be an option. Going forward, some of us have
> talked about a few alternatives:
>
>
>
> 1) Follow PTC/USER's suggestion and migrate to the PTC Community
> Arbortext board for Arbortext related discussions. The upside to this is
> that we get to integrate our community with the Arbortext user community
> over there (which has some overlap, but also some other users who have
> never belonged to Adepters. The downside is that it doesn't offer the
> familiar listserv interface for reading and replying to messages.
>
> 2) Migrate to LinkedIn discussion groups. If we want to maintain
> more independence from PTC, there is a LinkedIn group for Arbortext users.
> LinkedIn has pretty good infrastructure for discussions, though again it
> wouldn't have quite the same feel as an email server like we've been using
> for Adepters.
>
> 3) Migrate to another email discussion group service. We've looked
> at a few options, including Yahoo! Groups and Google Groups, and they would
> have a more similar flavor to the current system, but there are also some
> quirks about them (for example, you can't create a Yahoo! Account without
> giving them a mobile number, and apparently some numbers like mine aren't
> recognized so they won't work).
>
>
>
> From my perspective, the easiest approach is to go ahead and switch over
> to PTC Community. But I'm interested in what other people think, and I
> wanted to open up a discussion, in the hopes that we can come to something
> like a consensus in order to best preserve the sense of community and
> mutual support that has made Adepters such a wonderful virtual space for so
> many years.
>
>
>
> I hope that wherever we end up, we'll see most of you there as well!
>
>
>
> --Clay
>
>
>
>
>
> *From:* - [
>
> Thank you,
>
> Dan Glenn
>
> PTC/USER Board of Directors
>
>
>
>
>
>

ryankelley · ‎Apr 28, 2015

Hey Clay -

Ryan from PTC Community here. Thanks for sending this out to make sure everyone is aware of the upcoming changes. As you illustrated our plan is to migrate all of the content from the public discussions into the Arbortext product community on PTC Community over the next 48 hours. There are some great contributors, including PTC Technical Support and Product Management,already participating in the Discussions, Documentation, and Product Ideas (feature enhancement suggestions) within this space and I hope you'll all consider joining us as we continue to grow this community.

How do I create a Group? - PTC Community

Let me know if that's something you'd be interested in persuing to maintain connections with your peers here at PTC/USER and I'd be happy to walk you through setting this up. I'm available at: -

Best,

- Ryan

ptc-1908075 · ‎Apr 28, 2015

What happens to the adepters archives?
Suzanne Napoleonwww.FOSIexpert.com"WYSIWYG is last-century technology!"

ptc-953343 · ‎Apr 28, 2015

At 04:25 PM 4/28/2015, Paul Nagai wrote:
>I would love to see Adepters relocated to an independent email group
>discussion platform. The push of an email list is superior to the
>pull of a forum as far as my engagement is concerned. I do intend to
>participate in the Arbortext PTC Community but I know from
>experience that I will feel that slightly greater friction having to
>"go" to the forum.

+1

Forums are the death of my involvement unless I have a real problem.
With the email list I at least look over all the messages in a timely manner.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Danny Vint

Panoramic Photography

naglists · ‎Apr 28, 2015

Suzanne,

This is quoted from the first communication I saw about the migration of
adepters to the PTC Community Forums. It appears that the archives will
continue to be available within the new home.

We're pleased to announce that in April we will be finalizing this
migration, moving all account information and content contained within the
public discussions forums to the recently redesigned PTC Community,
available at their all-new, independent domain: www.ptcusercommunity.com
We realize some of our PTC/USER members may be hearing this for the first
time. Please take this opportunity to check out the new community

On Tue, Apr 28, 2015 at 4:33 PM, Suzanne Napoleon <
suzannenapoleon@fosiexpert.com> wrote:

> What happens to the adepters archives?
>
> Suzanne Napoleon
> www.FOSIexpert.com
>

jsillari · ‎Apr 29, 2015

I agree with Clay and support following the path of least resistance. We will have to adapt our expectations (“pull” instead of “push” behavior) but it would put the Adepter community more in touch with the mainstream content coming from PTC.

John Sillari
Chief Technologist
Dayton T. Brown, Inc.
M +1 631.742.3477
V +1 650.735.5864

ebenton · ‎Apr 29, 2015

If I don't get stuff pushed to my mailbox, I won't really have much awareness of what's going on in the Arbortext world. It's highly unlikely that I will make the effort to go to a forum.

GregoryMackenzi · ‎Apr 29, 2015

Reply got me again… Ok, posting to the group this time!

Times change, I suppose we have little choice but to change with them short of setting up an independent group elsewhere. Firewalls in place at my place of employment preclude almost all use of social media. That is why I preferred the email group. PTC’s Community isn’t blocked, yet… Frankly though I’ve had better responses from Adepters than PTC Community although that may be because most of the Arbortext users are here. If the group’s archives don’t make it to the new site that would be a significant loss of a resource.

GregoryMackenzi · ‎Apr 29, 2015

It will send "PTC Community Updates" regularly via email with a bunch of links to each, but it is a kitchen sink, I get Creo, TC Dojo, and more. I really should look at that and see if I can filter what it sends me.

jbaldwin · ‎Apr 29, 2015

I believe the PTC Community forums offer RSS feeds. That may be of value to some folks who prefer more of a "push" model.

In Reply to Greg MacKenzie:

It will send "PTC Community Updates" regularly via email with a bunch of links to each, but it is a kitchen sink, I get Creo, TC Dojo, and more. I really should look at that and see if I can filter what it sends me.

ryankelley · ‎Apr 29, 2015

Correct Greg, for all the content you've participated in (including this discussion I'm typing right now) you'll be notified by email when someone else creates a new reply. To get email updates on all the new discussions within the Arbortext community you'll have to Follow that space, by adding it to a stream or your community Inbox (notification center) and enable email updates. Here's our documentation to help you get started:Streams and Email Notifications - PTC Community.

byork · ‎Apr 29, 2015

Okay I wanted to chime in here a little. I’ve been a member of both for some time.

Over the last few months I have noticed a up tick in activity of the PTC Arbortext community. Not in just quantity but also in quality of questions. I would hope to see everyone in the Adepters community make the migration over. That will in turn make the Arbortext Community site stronger.

I wanted to share some links that other may find useful/helpful.

Arbortext Community Link:

https://community.ptc.com/t5/Arbortext/bd-p/Arbortext

Attached to this post should be a PDF called “The Old Farts Guide to the PTC Community”. Written by David Haigh.

Here are some other useful links.

How do I Follow people, places, and content?

https://community.ptc.com/t5/PTC-Community-Help/How-do-I-Follow-people-places-and-content/gpm-p/450714

Streams and Email Notifications

https://community.ptc.com/t5/PTC-Community-Help/Streams-and-Email-Notifications/gpm-p/450779

What Does Making Someone a Connection Do?

https://community.ptc.com/t5/PTC-Community-Help/What-Does-Making-Someone-a-Connection-Do/gpm-p/153071#M829

Community Help

https://www.ptcusercommunity.com/groups/community-roundup

A full list of product communities

https://www.ptcusercommunity.com/groups/community-roundup

A bunch more useful links:

https://community.ptc.com/t5/PTC-Community-Help/Need-Help-Here-s-a-List-of-Helpful-Places/gpm-p/451923

One other note you can also submit product ideas on this site. They are even reviewed by PTC as well. 🙂

https://community.ptc.com/t5/Arbortext-Ideas/idb-p/ArbortextIdeas

ClayHelberg · ‎Apr 29, 2015

Thanks for the useful information, Ryan. I think many Adepters participants have been concerned about having to actively go to the PTC Community web site as opposed to just having messages come to their inbox. It sounds like there are some workable ways around this, at least as far as notifications go (though it seems we will still have to go to the web site to post replies, correct?). Hopefully that will ease the transition.

--Clay

ryankelley · ‎Apr 29, 2015

Brian - thanks for the comprehensive list of helpful links, really helps inform this group on the spaces and places to keep tabs on moving forward. I'll also have a similar recap in a blog post within the PTC Community Help group tomorrow.

Clay - yes, our hope is that continuing to provide email updates about content that matters to you will help ease this transition. As others have noted the main difference is that you must visit the community to actually create content and will no longer be able to create or add replies to discussions via email. We've had a lot of great conversations over the past year plus about this feature and are pleased with the recent increase in activity on this space.

jbaldwin · ‎May 01, 2015

Well, here we are...

byork · ‎May 01, 2015

Really surprised how well and existing thread transferred over.

SuzanneNapoleon · ‎May 01, 2015

Unfortunately, every discussion has April 30, 2015 1:08 p.m. as the date of latest activity.

ClayHelberg · ‎May 01, 2015

I agree, Suzanne, it would have been better if they could have preserved the original dates. But apart from that, it looks like the migration went pretty well.

The other thing I noticed is that markup samples tend to get eaten by the email->HTML transformation, which is unfortunate.

ryankelley · ‎May 01, 2015

Clay Helberg‌ - can you send me a link to the issue you've described above? I'd like to see if we can continue to improve the migrated data with some post-migration scripts to continue to clean up the discussions. Thanks!

ryankelley · ‎May 01, 2015

Yes, Suzanne Napoleon‌, we were able to add the correct timestamps to your content, but could not effect how the Activity Engine interpreted the content migration, leaving all of the migrated content from PTC/USER with a "Latest Activity" date of April 30th. Luckily this is a temporary issue as we all continue to update content you'll see these dates change. The best part is it's all here, indexed by our search engine, and available to additional discussions and replies today.

ClayHelberg · ‎May 01, 2015

Excellent, Ryan, that will be great to get the original dates back.

Any hope on getting the markup samples in the message bodies back as well? Many messages had XML snippets in them to illustrate a particular document structure, or stylesheet code. Those don't seem to be visible in the messages I've reviewed, probably because they are being passed through as is, and the browser doesn't know what the non-HTML tags mean so it throws them away. Could we get the angle brackets converted to < and > to help sort this out?

ryankelley · ‎May 01, 2015

Can you send me an example of a discussion that is effect this way on PTC Community? A few would be even better so we can take a look and review with the team.