What About Moderators in the New Forum?

So the "Adobe Community Expert" title was dreamt-up as a sop to the MM "Evangelists" when Adobe took over MM (and their lousy programs!) and by God they are going to fight tooth and nail to keep their precious titles.

The pomposity, self-justification and conceit of those so-called "Experts" (as displayed so clearly in their recent postings) totally confirms everything that I had always assumed about them!

I am neither hostile nor jealous. If Adobe offered me a fancy title I would decline it.

I just think it smacks of a high school mentality (and an inferiority complex).

Very well said David, I wanted to get across the exact points you mention in your post - but you said is so much better :-)

Thank you David for your posts. I have to say, the hostility towards Macromedia, and Adobe Community Experts has shocked me. I don't really care about the former because I never used the Macromedia webforums in the first place, but the latter is certainly a bit offputting,especially given the fact that it's an ADOBE program and a title awarded by ADOBE in recognition of product excellence. And to tell you the truth, I'd bet money on your ability to stand up to any other person, Community Expert or not, in your awarded area (Dreamweaver). So, what's the deal with this criticism? I don't get it....

I have to say that in the time I have been an Adobe Community Expert (and before that a Team Macromedia member, and before that a Dreamweaver Evangelist), the attitude you describe above is the *only* one I have encountered whenever I see such posts, and it's certainly one that I hold as a personal obligation of the title. I'd love to see cited examples where this is not the case.

Now AVATARS? Well, that's surely something to spend a lot of time worrying about.

> some drive-by posters give brilliant advice without the need for a tag. And bad advice is soon jumped on by those who do know what they are talking about!

No one doubts that excellent advice is given by all sorts of people. However, bad advice doesn't always get jumped on - at least not in the Dreamweaver forums, which have a very high volume of posts. Unlike "hosts" in the Adobe forums, Community Experts in the former MM forums don't act as moderators. We're there to participate in the discussion on equal terms with everyone else, but our special relationship with Adobe makes it easier to escalate problems to the relevant Adobe manager. For example, the other day I alerted the Dreamweaver QE team about a potential conflict with the beta of Safari 4. An engineer is now working with the person who first reported the problem. Dreamweaver incorporates a version of the WebKit engine that also runs Safari, so this has potential implications not just for one individual, but anyone who uses the program.

> Knowing the application itself is only part of it.

It's also only part of being recognized as a Community Expert.

This antagonism towards a title that Adobe has chosen to give certain people sounds like inverse snobbery tinged perhaps with a hint of jealousy. It has never caused problems on the former Macromedia side. Originally, there were unpaid Evangelists. That system was later transformed into Team Macromedia, and subsequently became Adobe Community Experts. But let's get it straight: this isn't just a former Macromedia thing: there are many Community Experts who represent Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, Acrobat, and other programs from the original Adobe lineup.

Community Experts receive certain benefits from Adobe (http://www.adobe.com/communities/experts/faq.html). So, I think it's better to be open about our relationship with Adobe. Some people think we're Adobe stooges. We're not: a lot of vigorous debate goes on between Community Experts and Adobe officials. Whether you trust us or not is up to you, but at least you'll know who we are. You might also find out that a lot of people you have been slagging off as a group turn out to be the very experts you already look up to in the forums.

Public identification also means a Community Expert is likely to be more careful in the advice he or she posts online. But we all make mistakes from time to time. When somebody points out an error in one of my posts or suggests a better way of doing something, that's fine by me. I post a public acknowledgment, thanking the person for putting me straight.

A lot of the point on titles, avatars, and other items can easily be handled by preferences if the software has such options (would be nice). The concern is that the preferences will not provide such options and the forums will look just like the last time they made the change - ugly and time consuming.

If options for different layouts are available in many of these forums, including reply buttons and threaded messages, it is surprising that all of the other requests can not be made into preferences. That way everyone is happy with the layout and look they like. Speed may be a different issue if a lot of preferences are available. However, avatars and other items will slow down the forum at least some, though possibly only a little. For folks like me, I don't want to see avatars and a lot of the other stuff that wastes space. Give me the options and I am happy.

"We still object to the pretense of the title"

What pretense - the title was given out Adobe, so why shouldn't we be able to use it. It most certainly instills a sense of trust in the newbie posters.

Other forums I participate in use titles of one sort or another: Mentors, Advisors, Leaders... people whom the community as a whole can trust.

As a few here have stated they never visited the old MM forums, either via web or NNTP, and probably won't even when the forums are combined. So why worry about 'titles' if you aren't even going to be there to see them. If you don't want a title, so be it - if others do, that's their perogative surely.

> I would not want an "expert" label automatically alongside my name when posting in a forum outside my own field of expertise.

Good point! Might not be so simple to implement.

Forum members soon learn whose advice they can trust. Also some drive-by posters give brilliant advice without the need for a tag. And bad advice is soon jumped on by those who do know what they are talking about!

Titles are a form of elitism which the Photoshop forums seem to manage without.

> it's particularly galling to see people calling themselves Adobe Community Experts when they clearly have next to zero expertise on genuine Adobe products

Perhaps you would like to tell David Blatner, the editor of InDesign Magazine and author of Real World InDesign, Real World Photoshop, and other books. He's an Adobe Community Expert, and I'm sure would be delighted with your description.

Now the truth is coming out. The concerns being expressed in this thread have very little to do with the performance of the new forums. It's a knee-jerk reaction to anything connected with the former Macromedia side of things.

As a "retroactively legitimized trespasser" (as you so charmingly put it), let me assure you that I consider the web interface of the former Macromedia forums to be an abomination. It is slow, and impossible to search. The majority of regular users will not mourn its passing; and the decision to introduce "features" such as avatars and number of posts comes entirely from Adobe. It is not being done at the request of users of former MM products. All we require is a fast, easy-to-use system.

As for identifying Adobe Community Experts in the forums, I believe it will help newcomers to recognize that an answer is coming from someone Adobe trusts, even if some of you here don't. However, there is one point on which I agree it would be inappropriate. I'm a Community Expert for Dreamweaver, a program I know inside out. I'm also a user of Photoshop and InDesign, but consider my skills in those programs to be intermediate at best. I would not want an "expert" label automatically alongside my name when posting in a forum outside my own field of expertise.

Nadia and others,

Speaking for myself, yes, I've tried the newsreader route, specifically during the ill-fated attempted changeover last time, and I hated it.

The web interface of the adobeforums.com forums suits me much better. The former Macromedia forums are utterly irrelevant to me. I don't use or care for any of their products.

I did and still use Fontographer, which Macromedia bought from Aldus, then sold it again to a third party without ever having made a single improvement, contribution, enhancement or even the slightest update.

No doubt for those reasons alone I'm predisposed against anything that has to do with Macromedia.

As for the "Community Expert" label, it must also have been a Macromedia thing. I've never seen such an animal in any of the genuinely Adobe forums (adobeforums.com) and that confounded term had never appeared on the scene before the Macromedia merger.

Therefore, it's particularly galling to see people calling themselves Adobe Community Experts when they clearly have next to zero expertise on genuine Adobe products. Perhaps they should be called CEFMPBA, "Community Expert on Former Macromedia Products Bought by Adobe". I view them as intruders, not experts, retroactively legitimized trespassers, if you will.