rethinking geonet Places

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12-15-2014 06:41 AM
ElliottRobinson
New Contributor III
0 5 2,521

Sol Wuensch's "Were the previous forums better than this GeoNet Community?" poll, with 14421 views at last count, is perhaps the most commented entry on GeoNet.

Obviously changes must be made, and here I propose a couple of simple changes that may help the average user.

First, let's change the poorly named but trying hard to be hip "Places" to "Groups".

I don't call my Husqvarna chainsaw "Slayer of Trees", I call it my chainsaw.

Second, and here I take a leaf out of the Apple Support Communities book, let's make it easier to find the groups that interest us.

Let's have a peek at the discussions.apple.com website:

This chunk of the website clearly shows a few hardware-oriented forums and one software forum. The iPad forum is neatly divided into two sub-forums, upon clicking the iPad image.

A similar simple and effective breakdown (sans images - I am not a graphic artist) could be something like this:

3D mapping                                                  GIS Developers                                             Software

                                                                        - python                                                       - ArcGIS Pro

MOOCs                                                            - Arcobjects SDK                                         - ArcMap

  - spatial analysis

                                                                      Web Developers                                           Web GIS

Industry & Government                                       - ArcGIS API for javascript                         - ArcGIS online

- utilities & communications                                - ArcGIS REST API                                    - story maps

- forestry

- ArcGIS for local government                      Servers                                                          Older software

                                                                       - ArcGIS for Server                                        - ArcView

GPS                                                                - Geoevent                                                    - ArcIMS

- Collector for ArcGIS

Note: This is not an exhaustive list, just food for thought.

Please rate/like/enjoy/comment on this if you're in my grid square.

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About the Author
I've been a GIS tech since 2001. A few years ago I made a career change and GIS is a part-time hobby now.