Hi all,
I'll just describe which QGIS user I'am, and how I try to grab knowledge
on QGIS.
- I'm not a GIS professional, just use some basic features (open a file,
look at some data, sometimes some process). I'm not a scientific user
- QGIS is my favourite, mainly because it's open source, and it's "swiss
knife" functions. I use it every day since a year
- I can write basic python plugins, for very specific needs (proprietary
and weird formats)
At the beginning, I tried to use the qgis forum. I think there are many
useful posts, but it's not easy to find what you're looking for, mainly
because of the search engine. Well, anyway, Google may lead you to the
right post! So, it may be useful to keep the forum online, closed or not.
I realized that the Qgis user's manual contains the essential, and read
it (in french!)...
I surfed to blogs like linfiniti.com
I watched youtube qgis videos
I subscribed to this list and followed new developments from here, and
read many interesting mails that helped me to understand some advanced
features.
For plugins, spent hours in QGIS API to understand "how to", read some
plugins code, and used "copy /paste".
Don't know yet what Stack Exchange is. I'll never use Facebook.
What may be the right criteria to choose the way to organized QGIS
documentation on the web is QGIS (small?) team time. Many new users will
still ask questions they can solve just by reading user's manual,
whatever you do. Learning a new GIS software is also time consuming, but
there are already many ways to get the right information you need about
QGIS on the web. To me, QGIS on the web looks a bit like the software
itself. Many, many things, but scattered. You often need 2 or more
plugins to achieve what you want to do, use differently organized
dialogs, etc... But it's also its strength.
The forum closure won't be an issue for users, as far as they can find
what they need somewhere else. Someone who need information will use
forum, or mailing list, or stack exchange, or what you want, because
that's the way QGIS developers choosed to do it, and that's where it is.
Alain
P.S: Sorry for my awful english.
Le 01/04/12 22:37, Yves Jacolin (free) a écrit :
Martin, all,
Le dimanche 1 avril 2012 14:59:51, gene a écrit :
ESRI has forums and there are also many questions on Gis - Stack Exchange,
and that's not a problem.
The problem is that managing forum, ML, etc. is time consuming and we have
definitively not the budget of ESRI and at this moment QGIS community is far
from the ESRI one. So you can't compare them.
I really think that if the community needs forum or whatever else, there is no
problem to create one. Just **do** it!
In France we created a forum with ML linked each other. We can answer question
to QGIS and some other topics. Everybody can do the same! It is not easy and
time consuming but you can do it.
Y.
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