Quote:
Originally Posted by Satri
Specifically to address this, I made a request for an official OmniFocus user-driven Wiki. I think whatever the 'new support material' will be, a collaborative tool like a wiki, enabling us to use the experience of many OF users, would be most welcomed.
If you think that's a good idea, do a feature request about this you too :-)
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I second this idea of creating a wiki. I have always thought that what OF has always needed is a user-developed manual.
It would cover
1) operation from a strategic perspective to supplement OmniGroup's "how-to" mechanics "documentation" and
2) to capture the myriad ways that people actually implement GTD.
A wiki has the potential
1) to build on the Forum by retaining its strengths - its organic, interactive aspect - and
2) to complement and multiply its effectiveness by enabling the points raised in the Forum to be
a) organized more systematically,
b) made more easily accessible and
c) logically extensible.
The current state of affairs is, I'd suggest, unsustainable.
Omnigroup has for years foisted on its OF users the burden of teaching each other how to get maximum value from OF.
Who besides the arbiteratti, who besides the GTD police -- the people who seem to have so much time on their hands -- can really get the full benefit of the Forum's deep knowledge?
The Forum itself is a dysfunctional resource, simply because it more frequently than not does what all online forums tend to do:
It meanders.
While one can occasionally glean a useful point or two or three, who can possibly learn efficiently from the Forum and on a just-when-needed basis?
Most of us haven't the time, the inclination or the patience for the kind of textual exegesis required to obtain maximum value from the knowledge and ideas that reside in
or are immanent within the Forum.
It's one thing for OG to foist this learning burden on its users. After all, this is a common practice and is almost the norm among software publishers.
But it adds insult to injury to fail to provide the customers the right tool (ie., a moderated wiki) to allow the Forum's information to be systematized.
OG will never know just how much customer goodwill it has wasted, and customer churn it has begotten, by failing to provide the right learning tool for users (ie., a wiki).
Ironically, OG has committed several years late to finally hiring a documentation specialist, at a cost that could have hired another software engineer I suspect. One wonders if they could have avoided this and grown their OF customer base faster if they had provided a wiki.
If OmniGroup is going to make its users do so much work for themselves and, by extension, for OG, then it might as well get good at it, and more effectively leverage its customer base as a complementary resource by providing customers the tools they need.
Heck, it's the least they can do for themselves (and for us!). We'll all benefit and it would not take much to get it up and running.
ARE YOU LISTING DOCTOR CASE, Sir? Hey, who knows where this "features" submittal email thingie is.