PTC/USER - PTC Community Update

[DanGlenn]

I’ve made it through the latest wave of comments on the PTC/USER – PTC Community forum merger from both sites. You are all very late in getting an update from the PTC/USER Board of Directors.

I agree that email posting and responding to posts is an essential element of what makes the Exploders useful and valuable to our membership. That membership segment tends to be admins or users of the authoring applications like Creo and Arbortext.

-Passive notification of responses with complete information, don’t have to go looking for information.

If there are more points to add to this list in a succinct manner, I would like to hear from you to add to it.

The survey of our members overwhelmingly concluded one community was preferable to two. Specifically referring to PTC/USER and PTC Community. There is confusion about where to post, and the purpose of the two sites. As the representatives of the PTC/USER community we felt we had no choice but to take action and enter into discussions of merging the public forums. This is not a “PTC takeover” or absorption. Much like the conference discussions that started internally on the Board, this is the result of many hard fought discussions and is the right decision in the long run. PTC has a long range vision for the integrated community and its link to product support and enhancement that would be difficult to achieve by linking to a third party site.

“PTC/USER is the independent voice of the PTC user community.”

PTC has made a commitment to an open community forum, only regulated for spam and inappropriate behavior. As far as I know, they have held true to that commitment since the opening of their Community. If anyone has experienced anything to the contrary, I would encourage you to respond and let us know. This is an essential tenant in merger. There is considerable mistrust of PTC in the posts. Besides the worry of censorship, what is the value of independence to you in the hosting of these discussions?

Thank you,

[iceblink1]

Thank you for the information mr. Glenn. It is much appreciated.

Is it possible to keep us informed about the decisions that are about
to be made? There is a lot of knowledge in the PTC user base, and I'm
sure that this knowledge can assist in tackling problems that are
encountered. All that is needed is to speak up about these problems. It
would be a shame if PTC and PTC/User all of a sudden came with a news
post saying that Solution X has been chosen and we are all moved to the
PTC communities now. It always helps if users get to influence decisions
along the way and discuss about it. That is the way towards consensus
and a happy user base.

I suspect there is still much unhappiness about the decision, because
going from a questionnaire (that most have never seen) that shows people
prefer one point of knowledge, to abandoning the PTC/User mailing lists,
is a huge step to take. In the analogy of cars: it is like asking
someone if it would not be better to have 4 people drive in one car,
instead of all taking their own car. Most people will agree that filling
the car is better. But then when you tell them that based on that
interview, it was decided to take away their car and have them travel in
someone else's car, is not something they expected and they will not
like it. (Except perhaps for the one who gets to keep his car and drive
the others in it).

Lastly: For general interest: here is the thread on the Communities
site:

[kimndave9]

I may have forgotten - when was the survey taken and what were the questions?

x

[bruce.chastain]

About censorship, if it is true that so far PTC community has been good on allowing free expression of opinions that's great, of course. But what mechanism would be in place to guarantee that this would continue into the future?

[BrianMartin]

The simple answer is that PTC owns the site- and with that power comes the ability to do whatever they wish with it. However, from the outset, PTC Community was about bringing people together in a forum of shared knowledge and ideas. I certainly don't believe it's ever been about censorship. There have been some absolutely scathing indictments of PTC's products and services in those forums. With the sole exception of vulgarities (which are automatically masked with a series of asterisks *****), I can't recall anyone being censored on PTC Community. Even in the rare instance someone has claimed censorship, I think we've managed to disprove it. If I'm wrong, I'm sure someone will let us know. 😉

While I understand the premise of your question, I don't think there's any reason to believe PTC will suddenly change their perspective on censorship. There's a tendency for people to view PTC's motives and goals with cynicism but in this case, I think they've proven their commitment to a free and open forum. At the minimum, I think they've earned the benefit of the doubt with respect to your question. It seems implausible that they'd embark on a campaign of non-censorship for several years in hopes of enticing a merger with PTC/User only to abruptly change their policy. In my opinion, it's more likely PTC Community will continue to welcome both critical and supportive posts alike.

[DonSenchuk]

This thread (below) about the cache recovery tool makes me curious about where PTC keeps their cache recovery tool available for download. I've tried searching the Knowledge Base and it provides a link to the PTC User file. Is there a library for user created resources such as this?