Telephony Community

I agree with Clint. It's very frustrating when the questions we ask get lost in the shuffle before those knowledgable enough to help us ever get to see the question.

I believe using telepiphany.org will help us help each other get the needed answers much faster and more effectively.

Thanks for provid> I've found that there is a major abyss when it comes to collaboration

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Clint,

I agree. I have spent weeks troubleshooting issues that I believe would be common enough that others have had the same problem. It would be nice if these things were documented in some way. This would be a secondary benefit to telepiphany.org, but I believe it is as strong as the first.

Many times I end up opening tickets with the manufacturer and wait several weeks for a resolution. This severely hampers turn around time on new product, or product feature development.

I look forward to watch> I've found that there is a major abyss when it comes to collaboration

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Good idea. Too often companies want to keep this knowledge under lock and key and only let the paying customer have a peek at it.

That's their right, of course.

But so many people face similar problems and keep reinventing the wheel that having some public place to store knowledge born from use, troubleshooting and invention would be a boon to all that are trying to apply telephony technologies to real world problems.

Great idea....thanks for the thought....

burris

I came from the world of telephony and many years ago, at the time of

Now the forums and newsgroups relating to a subject seem to be full of trolls and a variety of unpleasant, foul mouthed posters who can't wait to bash someone who might be offering or asking for help. Manufacturers....forget it. Once in a while one of their employees may appear in his/her free time and contribute something. I was subscribed to BellSouth DSL for over 4 years and during the numerous crashes with e-mail and newsgroups and even with the DSL, not once...never did a suit from the corporate side come on line to do damage control or apologize or sympathize with anyone. I believe this is simply a sign of the times and I can't think of anything that would compel it to get better.

burris

WELL IF YOU DON'T LIKE IT YOU CAN LEAVE....

oh, that was reserved for feeding the trolls :-)

I doubt that there are many young people that even know about Usenet Newsgroups. Now with AOHell dropping it, it may get better

It is depressing to see the trolls, Trojan and Virus spreaders and just plain buttholes in a serious discussion group. Or the people who don't stay on topic. I've received very few answers to the questions I ask, but I'm the one who searches for the obscure stuff like a Comdial 1432B manual or the 1988 manual of something or another.

I try to answer as many questions as I can. Geeze, I pay my $55/month for the broadband and the deluxe newsgroup access.

Carl Navarro

All excellent points. Let me address them:

1. The idea is to be "searchable" from the http world. Google currently ranks this site at 4/10 and I hope to get enough interest that the content and other sites pointing to it may even improve that.

1. I would also like to see more alt topics, but I'm not sure the process that needs to be gone through to make that happen. I know that as I have searched the newsgroups (including alts) I have found very few groups that talk about these issues. If you have some insight into how to add alt groups (or any other type) please share, even if we don't do it for these topics, it's good information to have.

2. It's true I can't put them all on the list, but there are a couple remedies for that: 1 - people can tell of a switch they would like on the list and I am more than happy to add it. and 2. There is a "General" section that can be used for somethings. It's atleast specific to carrier switches.

1. My bad... I will change that, I don't pretend to be an expert, I'm just trying to fill a void. Feedback like that is expected and appreciated.

2. Again, not being an expert, this kind of feedback is valuable, that way I can add those types of forum sections as people mention them.

1. Good idea. Any suggestions for a forum section title?

My intended audience is mainly developers and switch techs. Of course anyone who is interested is welcome to read and post, but my intent when I created this was to make a place where developers and switch techs could talk to each other about telephony issues.

I really appreciate your feedback, and expect much more from you and others (if you are willing to invest your time to give the feedback). This is a new undertaking and I want this to be a community forum, not mine, but everyone's. I know it sounds all gushy, but I honestly think creating a community of very smart (and diverse) developers and techs can benefit us all.

Clint

Clint,

the idea in itself is good, however I do see quite a couple of problems in the approach you have taken.

1. A http forum is very nice as long as people can find it.
2. Why not create separate newsgroups (perhaps in alt.*) for specfic topics?
3. On your site you mention carrier switches, of course the problem is that, even if you mention quite a few, most brands are not in the list.
4. Siemons (forum topic in Carrier Switches) to the best of my knowledge is Siemens?
5. You mention Carrier Switches but there is no section under protocol topics for carrier protocols (ISUP, C7/SS7, V5.2).
6. Perhaps a nice addition could be a topic about different laws in different countries.

What is the intended audience of your forum? Is it telecom techies or interested users?

Arnold.

What, you didn't have to configure and compile up your copy of B-news? What a slacker! ;-)

OB telecom: Looking for a company selling voip DID's in the SF Bay area with a sip gateway in the Bay Area too. (VOIP has enough delay without routing the packets to east Bumsville and back.)

-wolfgang

Good job, Clint.

The software you've chosen is easy to use and maintain, so you should have no problems supporting the site. A Web developer in me, however, has something else to say on the subject. It takes great deal of time or money, and usually both, to get any traffic onto a new site. Without the traffic the questions will not find someone able to answer them, and the whole idea can easily dwindle down to a halt, as it happened to quite a few forums I have setup during last 9 years. So, be persistent and bring people in any which way you can, and then, after some time, the site will accumulate that critical mass of users that will make it useful. For you as the owner and for your visitors.

I cannot help to insert a shameless plug here: the reasons you brought up (spam, low retention of messages) compelled me some time ago to install and maintain a Web interface to Usenet newsgroups relevant to the main theme of my site. Comp.dcom.telecom.tech happens to be one of the groups we archive here:

It takes a great deal of time to manually clean the newsgroup off spam and idiocracy, but, hopefully, the end product is worth it. I use it all the time and get a lot of useful info from there.

So, you are welcome to take a look at an alternative approach to the same problem:

Thanks Dimitri,

I know the number one issue is traffic. It's a bit of a chicken/egg problem: If you want people to use the site, then you have to convince them they can get their answers there... but until you get people visiting the site, no one is going to get answers. That's why I wanted to start here and see how everyone felt about the topic. I figure people that come to this newsgroups would have some insight into what they think would work best. And if they were interested then we could entice them to help "build" a new community.

Thank you very much for the link, it's all in the spirit of trying to come to the best solution to getting answers to questions and like you said it's "an alternative approach to the same problem"... I'm all ears on finding the best way to accomplish the goal (that is the real reason I started the thread).

Being a developer by trade, I've thought of two possible additions to the forum format: 1. I'd like to connect mailing lists into the forums. So for instance I could hook the Festival mailing list into the Festival forum section and I would create a daemon that would check the snipped-for-privacy@telephiphany.org mailbox regularly to download any new mailing list entries into the forums. and 2. Similar to what you are doing, I would hook a daemon to the few relevant newsgroups and download those as well. The idea is to have a centralized location for information. Searchable, relevant and constantly updating etc. Thanks for your feedback and insight.

Clint

Point made.

Actually creating alt groups is fairly easy, or so it appears. The proces involves sending a control message to one of the news servers that accepts these kind of messages. The problem with alt, this is new for me as well, is that the alt groups do not get propagated automatically, so you would therefore have the same 'problem' as with the webbased forum. Creating a new group in comp.* takes weeks to months.

One title could be 'Regulation'. I'm guessing the US has some form of regulation? In Europe most countries have a formal body that controls the movement of a government controlled monopoly to a market driven commercial model.

I just registered.

Arnold.