Online Communities for User Assistance Professionals

By Chuck Martin

Introduction

You may not realize it but you have thousands and thousands of colleagues across the country and around the world. If you run into a problemSomeone, When you can't find the FrameMaker function. When your Word document is suddenly full of gibberish and garbage characters. When you get a "file not found" error in your HTML-based help system. When the compiler gives you an error and you wind up with a 0KB file on your hard drive. When your program crashes and corrupts your project file or content database. somewhere, has probably run into--and possibly solved--the same or a similar problem. And they may very well jump in to help you. So how do you find these people? They are just a mouse click away in Online Communities.

Online communities help people connect, and their invention spurred the creation of such communities of every type imaginable. Many of these online communities became centered around industries and technologies, including ours.

Online communities also share a bit of the characteristics found in old-time small towns (and what some say are missing from larger modern urban areas), characteristics that include sharing and support. People involved in online communities share without qualification, share their knowledge, share their experience. People involved in online communities (especially professional ones) are supportive of one another, offering support to anyone from rank newcomers (newbies) to grizzled veterans.

Online communities also have another useful characteristic: they are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

The article is presented through the following sections:

• A Brief History of Online Communities.
• Web-based Discussion Groups
• Other Communities

A Brief History of Online Communities

In the early days of the Internet, people involved in online communities were known by identifiers such as this: 45126.46024. That's how usernames in a service called CompuServe were designed. CompuServe, which is still around, began in 1969 as the world's first time-sharing service. It was available through modems and transmitted primarily text-based information, because early modems' speeds were measured in hundreds of bits per second.

CompuServe offered the first email for PC users in 1979 and real-time chat in 1980. It was acquired by America Online (AOL) in 1988. CompuServe's greatest contribution to online communities was its forums feature. CompuServe's forums were the beginnings of professional online communications. They were the places where experts would go to trade tips and the places where beginners would go to get answers. CompuServe forums were moderated by volunteers who would make sure messages stayed on topic. Forum topics that were useful to user assistance professionals included Windows Help (WinHelp) and FrameMaker.

Before the World Wide Web made the Internet a household word in 1993, other avenues were available for creating online communities, but they flew somewhat under the radar as they tended to appear more to the techies than the masses. Among those were computer bulletin boards, IRC, Usenet, and email.

Computer bulletin boards were all the rage in the mid-80s. They were set up by many computer enthusiasts and often focused on single topics. They were primarily local because they required dialing on on modems, and they were either primarily social, used for communicating about common interests, or used for exchanging files, the seeds of the shareware revolution.

IRC stands for Internet Relay Chat. It's a protocol that allows real-time chat in channels that are hosted by central servers. It began flourishing within the university communities and was primarily social, rather then professional. It's included here because it was a precursor to instant messaging.

Usenet and email are the main non-web technologies that have been used by professionals to create useful online communities.

The proliferation of email led to the concept of mailing lists. The key to email's usefulness is one-to-many communication. That is, email makes it easy to send the same message to dozens, hundreds, or thousands of people virtually at once. (This characteristics also led to the proliferation of spam, which just goes to show how technology can be used for both good and bad.) Mailing lists useful to user assistance professionals include TECHWR-L, WINHLP-L (no longer used), and FRAMERS.

The names reflect the limitations of Unix file systems, which allowed 8 character filenames. the -L at the end of the name became a convention for identifying mailing lists.

Mailing lists are subscription based and work by having a single email address for the list itself. List subscribers send email to the list address. Mailing list software receives messages sent to the list address and then send messages out to all subscribers.

And last, but not least, the invention of the World Wide Web fueled the explosion of the Internet (to such an extent that some people unknowingly interchange the two). Because so many people use the web, and because web browsers have become more ubiquitous than even email programs, web-based discussion groups came into being.

Online communities aren't useful if people don't participate. BUt with participation comes responsibility. The term for how to act online is called "netiquette." Principles of netiquette include:

• Stay on topic.
• Don't add "Me too" responses.
• Search for answers before posting (many questions have been answered already).
• Be specific when asking (what you’re trying to do, what platform you’re developing for, what tools (and what versions) you’re using, etc.).

That said, the main "rule" is to participate. And remember, there's no such thing as a dumb question.

These user communities are just the tip of the iceberg, some of the most popular and well known. There are many others out there, and all it takes is a little bit of searching to find more.

Web-based Discussion Groups

Web-based discussion groups combine the functionality of Usenet and mailing list and makes it all available through a browser. Like Usenet, many companies host web-based discussion groups--including WritersUA.

Most tool developers and technology creators have some sort of forums where you can ask questions. These web forums typically require some form of simple registration. Some useful corporate web-based forums include:

• www.adobe.com/support/forums/main.html (Adobe)
• www.helpcommunity.ehelp.com/ (Macromedia, for eHelp products)
• www.webworks.com/forums/ (Quadralay)

User-driven resources, such as wikis (user-modified web sites) are beginning to proliferate. There's a wiki specifically for Microsoft Help at http://www.mshelpwiki.com/index.php?page=MsHelp. And many experts in the field have their own web sites, and many of those have links to lots more resources.

The Help Authoring Tools and Techniques (HATT) Community on Yahoo

The Yahoo site has combined mailing lists and discussion groups similar to the way web-based discussion groups have, but have made it simpler, made it faster, and do almost all the work. In Yahoo Groups, anyone can start a discussion on any (legal) topic. And in Yahoo Groups, there are many topics of interest to user assistance professionals. One of the most relevant is The Help Authoring Tools and Techniques group - or "HATT" for short.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HATT/

To take part in Yahoo Groups, you must have a Yahoo ID, which is free (and asks for very little personal information). Once you have a Yahoo ID, you can join a Yahoo group. From the search results, click on the HATT link to go to the HATT home page.

The HATT home page.

To join HATT (once you've created your Yahoo ID and signed in), just click on the Join This Group button. That takes you to the Join This Group page.

The HATT Join This Group page.

This page provides a number of membership options:

• If you have multiple Yahoo IDs, you can choose which one to use for this group membership.
• If you have multiple email addresses registered with Yahoo, you can choose which one to use to receive messages from the group or private messages from group members.
• Choose how you want to receive messages. You can choose to get each message as it is posted to the group or a daily digest, just like with mailing lists, or you can choose to read messages on the Yahoo Groups HATT pages, like with newsgroups.
• If you choose to receive emailed messages, choose whether you want the email in HTML or plain text format.

Finally, to prevent spammers and other ilk from joining, you have to type the word that's shown in a graphic. Click Join and you're in! Then the HATT home page looks a bit different. You can then read and respond to existing messages and create new ones.

A list of HATT messages.

HATT is what I call semi-moderated in that group moderators monitor messages to make sure they don't stray too far from topic and don't get abusive, but aren't gatekeepers: They don't pre-approved each message to enable them to appear in the group. The group's "non-public" designation means that you have to join the group to read and post messages.

As of early June, 2004, HATT has more than 3800 members from around the world. Message volume has dropped over the years since the group first began, but still numbers in the dozens of messages a day.

Chart of HATT message volume.

Problems and issues discussed and resolved in HATT run the gamut, from the merits of JavaHelp vs. Oracle Help, to RoboHelp or WebWorks Publisher for FrameMaker, to hot to translate HTMLHelp from English to French, to how to create cross-platform screen shots. I've seen questions answered within minutes of being posted, which is one of the wonderful things of online communities. There are just so many people taking part that it's not only likely that someone will have an answer, they will be available and willing to provide it.

Other Yahoo Groups by and for user assistance professionals include:

• author-it users
• Helpweavers
• HATT-OT

TECHWR-L

But HATT has been around for just a few years. TECHWR-L is a mailing list specifically created for user assistance professionals. It currently has more than 5000 subscribers and an estimated more than 10,000 daily readers.

TECHW-L was started in 1993 by Eric Ray. First hosted by university computers, as the list grew it overwhelmed the offered capacity. Ray took the list public, and created a web site to support it and the community that uses it. It's currently supported by advertisers and by companies who place job listings.

The original way to join TECHW-L harkens back to the text-based Unix days, and still works. It's done via email: send a message to lyris "at" lists "dot" raycomm "dot" com. Leave the Subject line blank. In the body of the email message, enter only the text SUB TECHWR-L first_name last_name (where "first_name" and "last_name" is your own name). You'll receive a confirmation email that you simply reply to, and you're in. You'll also receive a set of list rules, which you should read.

You can also join on the web, at http://www.raycomm.com/techwhirl/techwhirllist/webinterface.html.

The web site that hosts TECHW-L enables you to search the list archives. More than 10 years of messages are archived here, and it's a very good idea to search the archives before you post a question. While people are ready and willing to help, it's not uncommon in many online communities for veterans to get a bit snippy when it seems obvious that someone didn't try at least a little bit to find the answer for themselves first. ON TECHWR-L, such snippiness is generally kept at a minimum because the list moderators work hard to keep the tone civil. That's not always the case in other online communities.

Many people read TECHWR-L not from list messages, but on the news server that also carries list messages. It can be easier that way for any number of reasons, including the fact that you don't get dozens of additional email messages in you Inbox every day, and messages are somewhat threaded, meaning the topics more or less stay together.

You need newsreader software to read TECHW-L messages from the news server. Outlook Express is in part a relatively capable newsreader and is available on nearly every Windows PC. Agent and Free Agent are popular Windows newsreaders as well. The following two graphics illustrate the news server properties in Outlook Express.

Other newsreader software uses similar descriptions to identify news server properties. The name of the news server is lists.raycomm.com. Very important: While you can read messages on this news server at any time, to post a message to the TECHWR-L group here requires that you be a list member and that you put the email address that you used to subscribe in the Email address field.

Once you set up the news server, you'll download a list of groups available. Select TECHWR-L and choose to subscribe. Note that to "subscribe" to a newsgroup is not the same as actually subscribing to the list. In the vernacular of Usenet, "subscribe" means to select a group to save and read.

Once you set up your newsreader software, posting a message to the group is the same as sending a message to the list address. The news server is set up to send posted messages to the mailing list.

You use the same technique to read and post to news servers that companies set up for support and user communities. (The difference is that you don't have to subscribe to a mailing list first.) Enter the news server information, download the list of available groups, then read and post messages. Some useful news server addresses include:

• msnews.microsoft.com (Microsoft)
• adobeforums.com (Adobe)
• forums.macromedia.com (Macromedia)

Other Communities

Usenet

Usenet is also known as newsgroups or discussion groups. Newsgroups are text based (to get into the technical details, they use 7-but characters) and are hierarchical. The Usenet hierarchy divides groups into categories, with the most common being biz (for business topics), comp (for computer-related topics), rec (for recreation and sports topics), soc (social and cultural issues) and alt (the Wild, Wilder, Wildest topics).

Usenet is server-based. Messages sent to a Usenet newsgroup are sent to a server using newsreader software, which works similarly to email, except that you address messages to the group name. Most Internet service providers (ISPs) and some Usenet companies host news servers, and these Usenet servers all over the world are constantly synchronizing newsgroup messages so that within seconds, a message sent to one group on one server is propagated worldwide.

Newsreader software can keep track of message threads, or replies to original messages (and replies to the replies, and so on). This creates easy-to-follow message "trees."

A Usenet hierarchy exists that "shadows" many mailing lists. Shadowing is a one-way transaction in that messages sent to the mailing list appear in the newsgroup, but if you post a message to the newsgroup, it is not sent to the mailing list. Mailing lists can be found in the bit.listserv.* hierarchy.

Many companies have taken advantage of the Usenet concept and set up their own news server. Most of these servers are private, in that the messages aren't propagated to the general Usenet community. These company-hosted news servers are used for technical support and for communication within user communities.

FRAMERS

FRAMERS is another useful mailing list for the user assistance community that has its roots in the text-based Unix world and is now supported on a web site. That web site makes joining the FRAMERS list easy. Simply go to http://lists.frameusers.com/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?enter=framers, enter your email address and a password, and click Join Framers. You're in!

Like FrameMaker itself, the FRAMERS web site isn't as easy to navigate and use as some. But, also like FrameMaker, there's a lot of power and usefulness there once you learn how to use it.

Chuck Martin has been online since before there was a World Wide Web, before he recognized his passion for Technical Communication, and before he saw the power of both together. Based in San Francisco, he has developed world-class documentation for large (IBM, Oracle), medium (Red Pepper Software, FWB), and small (Rivio, Project InVision) companies in parallel for advocating better usability for products everywhere. He's worked at the WritersUA conference since the beginning, publishes the conference newsletter, and occasionally even speaks. He's one of many who offer assistance in HATT, TECHWR-L, and other places and is one who speaks out on other issues, passionately. Visit his home on the Web (http://www.writeforyou.com).