The Google Talk Group was today closed for new threads. Instead, Google opens a Forum...
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Talk?hl=en
http://googletalk.blogspot.com/2008/09/new-google-talk-help-forum.html |
Is it just me, or does it seem really disorganized and ugly? |
That's no forum. That's a Q&A site. Move over Yahoo Answers! |
I've posted a good question, however I don't expect an answer soon ;) http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Talk/thread?tid=705cbff0b3a08bb1 |
There are some interesting things in the "Google Help Terms of Service", including these two snippets:
"Description of Service. Google Help Forum is an online community where Google users ask and answer questions on a variety of topics."
"Participants in Google Help Forum only have moderation privileges when logged into an account with such privileges. It is within Google's sole discretion to grant users moderation privileges. Such individuals may not perform moderation functions when utilizing other accounts, and in no instance is Google responsible for the activities of these users." |
TOMHTML, Here's a similar post:
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Talk/thread?tid=6f201aaba6434574
Still no replies to either yet though. |
It's using the same technology (and service) as Google Pomoc in Poland:
http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2008-06-27-n58.html
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So, Google does not update Talk itself, but updates the Talk Help forum? Have they got their priorities reversed? |
Google Groups is valuable to do two things: (1) It preserves a great archive of old (and very old) Internet News (aka: netnews, usenet, etc.) postings and (2) it is an easy to use mailing list for small to medium sized user groups interested in a particular topic.
For very large users bases with lots of activity though it is harder to use than a new reader (for people used to using news readers) and also doesn't provide quite the user friendly front end that people associate with forums. In other words, it is the worst of both worlds.
This will be an interesting experiment. Better they do this than break groups trying to make it be all things to all people.
PS: Gtalk might get improved if the deal with Yahoo goes through. A slide they present shows the possibility of allowing Gtalk to talk with Yahoo Instant Messenger. That would leave MSN as the only hold-out to compatible IMing. |
I think Google Groups is fine (despite the bugs in it). The new Google Talk forum is ugly. You can't post working links according to my test post there today. You can't easily switch to other groups you have subscribed to (which is natural, as there aren't much of other official Google forums to link to that use the same technology).
On the other hand, according to my years of experience of answering questions in official Google forums (including the old official Google newsgroups) there are people who just come to ask one question and they don't look at the help pages before posting as many times their question has already been answered in the help pages.
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Phillip: s/Pomac/Pomoc/ in the screenshot. |