The OpenEdge Hive

Consultants answered questions about his/her participation in email and forums. For a breakdown of Consultants participating in this section of the Progress Consultants survey, refer to Participating Consultants.

Of Participating Consultants,
65% of respondents answered about participation in PSDN;
67% of respondents answered about participation in PEG;
35% of respondents answered about participation in ProgressTalk.

Reading Patterns - PSDN

This chart shows how Consultants, domiciled in different continents, have divergent reading patterns of PSDN. Click on the chart to load the popup image.

These are the most interesting remarks about reading patterns on PSDN:

• I read only the one forum.
• Formerly went there, not currently.
• I visit psdn.com and the forum.
• I visit psdn.com rarely. Never go to the forum.
• However, I had one contract because a colleague noticed someone's posts and told me about him. It was a good trigger for me to get introduced to a new Partner. Got a big contract. Big success!
• I only go to the site when I’m looking for something.
• Long ago I subscribed. Now I visit periodically to read, but not too often.
• I get all postings on email, read more of them for some forums than used to.
• When I need something, I’ll hunt around forum. Never post.
• All participation at site is researching some issues I have; I don't get curious and hang around much.
• There are lots of discussions about stuff I'm vaguely interested in but don't work in.

Reading Patterns - PEG

This chart shows how Consultants, domiciled in different continents, have divergent reading patterns of PEG.Click on the image of the chart to see the details of this section of the survey.

These are the most interesting remarks about reading patterns on PEG:

• The signal to noise ratio is too low. People get buttonholed into one aspect of a problem and don't look at the whole problem. Then 87 people answer, many in a very similar way. Some of the answers may even be correct. I usually respond when a PEG email is forwarded to me by someone I know well, because the post's something I know about. Then I try to respond to all the issues in one post.
• I read the DBA forum once every 2 weeks from the archive only.
• PEG used to come up on web searches (maybe still does).
• Depends upon whether I’m really busy on a project. If I have time, I visit.
• I download data every 2 or 3 months and then look through it. Depends upon how busy I am.
• I'm a lurker, not a poster. There are 4-6 heavy posters, at least one of whom will respond to 95% of every posting. I can't imagine the amount of time these guys spend writing replies—I don't see how they can get any work done ;)
• I used to read 10%, am now reading 50%.
• I’m a PEG subscriber, but don't check it often. Spot read now. In the past I was a heavy PEG user but since PSDN has come around, I get most of what I need from there.
• Depends on the list. I subscribe to peg with a gmail account, so it's already grouped by argument. Currently have 3000 unread messages. A message being read depends largely on the title.

Reading Patterns - Progress Talk

This chart shows how Consultants, domiciled in different continents, have divergent reading patterns of ProgressTalk forum. Click on the chart to load the popup image.

These are the most interesting remarks about reading patterns on ProgressTalk:

• I go to ProgressTalk only once or twice per year, only when I’m looking for information.
• Recently I've been visiting every couple of days. Previously I *never* used to come here. Am coming mostly to keep myself busy, not because I think the resource has improved.
• I don’t actually think it is much of a resource (for me at least)
• Go to ProgressTalk maybe 5 times per year. Some stuff is posted there which is no where else.

Combined Reading Patterns

Here are the average reading patterns of PSDN, PEG and ProgressTalk forums compared together. Click on the chart to load the popup image.

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