I just finished a conference call with HP to talk about the Forums replacement, the HP Communities. I too, have had many of the above concerns about moving to a very different user interface and possibly losing the some two decades of irreplaceable information.
From the program manager:
We will port 100% of the information and attachments from the ITRC Forums into the new Community format.
There is a comment from Kevin about content prior to 2011 not being ported, but that was somewhat misunderstood. What was meant was that 2011 ITRC links pointing from one thread to another thread will be translated as the first priority. At the same time, a tally of the most commonly referenced links between Forum threads will be translated. There are hundreds of thousands of ITRC threads, and many thousands of links between threads that are used to answer other Forum threads, so these are a top priority. But it will a fairly manual effort and will take several months. What will be welcomed from Forums' members are your favorite ITRC bookmarks to threads with good answers and explanations. I will start a new thread for everyone to contribute your bookmarks.
There are two other types of URLs found in the Forums: answers that are found in a document at docs.hp.com, and URLs that refer to white papers, quickspecs, marketing and other HP documents. docs.hp.com links were not addressed in today's conversation as they were broken many months ago, but it is still a major issue that perhaps can be pursued at the HP Discover conferences. As for the non-docs.hp.com references, they will be tallied and again, the most popular links resolved where there is enough detail to identify the new location.
Here is the Enterprise Business section of the Communities:
http://h30499.www3.hp.com/hpeb which maps most directly to the HP-UX (and other computer platform topics like Linux, Windows, MPE, OpenVMS, Tru64). The user interface needs work. Too much white space, very little in site navigation, way too many clicks to get to a meaningful category or topic. In the current Forums, there are 20 major categories, all non-ambiguous and with 3-5 popular related categories listed under each category. All told, there are about 100 direct links to technical content with just one click.
But on the (albeit preliminary design) EB Community there is the ever popular Converged Infrastructure and Business Support Forums.
Big sighhhh.
I am hopeful that the Lithium templates can be replaced with a site map format similar to what we have now. I can do without the giant JOIN THE CONVERSATION logo -- the classic hp logo is just fine. The current Forums won their awards based on content, navigation and participation, not web designer creations.
There is concern in the Forums about points -- they will indeed be ported to the Communities. And the point system will be expanded to categorize the 8-9-10 rated posts into answers and solutions. These same 8-9-10 ratings will be categorized as kudos and part of ranking contributors as to effectiveness.
There will be a new search engine to replace the aging ITRC search capability. One of the reasons that HP is moving to Lithium is the age of the Forums code -- it is difficult to maintain and enhance as a lot of it is two decades old, with a lot of expertise having moved on to other opportunities. Lithium's products are very well suited to the type of user interface found in the Forums and will constantly be enhanced and maintained. The Advanced search has 4 useful search refinements:
With all the words
With the exact phrase
With one or more of the words
Without the words
I did ask about the new search engine's limitations with respect to special characters, a common oversight with technology searches. A summary of special character capabilities and restrictions will be forthcoming. I know that most of us will be concerned about characters we can't use in a search.
So I am convinced that the new Community pages will not lose any of the current ITRC Forums' content, and that there is genuine interest within the ITRC management team to enhance and improve the Community value to HP customers. The over-exuberant promoters of the Lithium design may point to video and audio capability, but this comes as part of the product and should not detract from the ongoing development of the user interface and navigation features. Like most technical users, we need answers quickly. Perhaps videos and podcasts can be dropped into in a learning corner.
There are additional interest group conferences scheduled between now and mid-June, the estimated date for the ITRC transition. I will share what I can about the plans and also about the opportunities for other ITRC users to provide ideas and feedback.
Bill Hassell, sysadmin
