@LucMeekes wrote:
Why did PTC move from Jive to Lithium?
Was there a compelling reason?
We will never know for sure, I guess.
Jive was inferior when it came to navigation and clearness, but this here is not really much better from what I have seen so far and when it comes to visibility and waste of space the theme used here is even much worse. But the driving force behind such actions usually is always money in some way. Maybe the motto is "We should have something like this because eventually it is good for customer loyalty and all the others have that, too. But we sure do not want to invest that much money and man power on this." After all I guess that we all made the experience that PTC does not really care what we do here - its just us who see this as a user driven support forum. So forum features which are important for us sure are not really important for PTC.
As things seem to go worse from change to change its no wonder we lose regular contributors because of this. They either leave completely or their posting/answering frequency drops significantly. As Tom Gutman once wrote before he left (a very big loss IMHO) after the migration to Jive - we are here for fun, not for self-flagellation.
> According to lithium, jive, proboards and all that forumsoftware-rubbish:
> All that seems to me, that they think, we haven't enough problems.
Yes Volker, I see it the same way and often enough have already written that. But must see that the problem also could be one of socialization to some degree. The way you see those "features" or the ranking of people given them funny name may differ depending on were you were grown up and got socialized. Were we live it may be usual that a child gets a golden star glued in its notebook by its teacher when it did a task pretty well as a method for motivation and sign of appreciation. This works well up to a certain age (say 10 or 12). After that age such methods are seen as childish and are not welcome. So if we get adult and are treated by given badges or are ranked by "funny" names, get "liked" or "kudod" we don't are motivated but rather feel humbled and demeaned as we feel treated like a small child.
In other countries that system of rewarding and appraisal by giving badges, certificates, small goodies, rank names, titles, etc. for otherwise trivial and normal activities is not stopped at the age of 10. People get used to it even in higher ages and as adults they also expect that their normal activity should be rewarded in some way, being it points in a forum, badges, small goodies like a bottle opener (of course with company logo), etc. and they really can be motivated by such things.
I don't say that one form of socialization is better than the other. I just say that they are quite different and companies working internationally should be aware of that and respect it - most don't.
Guess this explains why we experience this "gamification" here, as mstarkey calls in in that thread/blog about ranks -> rank discussion
EDIT: Just saw Richards reply after posting. Of course he is right. Discussions about the functionality of this forum is discussing a sideline.
Guess most of us will (have to) quit using Mathcad sooner or later and therefore will also leave this forum. Sad, but true.
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