Good point, I never thought about that but I can totally see this. I definitely want to help out anywhere I can! Although it seems like the questions I know are either answered or I don’t know the answer ha. I think I’ll try and lurk around the Moodle.org forums more but of course stick around Ning : ) . I’m also in other Ning communities so it’s easy to navigate there.

Thanks for your guys’ opinions! I’m sure this will continue to be discussed in the future. By the way, Patrick, I’m bummed I was not able to make it to the OK Moot. Hopefully I can get to one some day. Our district, here in Minnesota, is looking to join with other districts to put together a smaller Moodle workshop/conference type thing next summer.

The problem is that the majority of people who join an online community supporting software are there simply to gain knowledge, and there are very few who are actually willing to give back in any substantial way. Since both of you seem to want to give back, I’d just rather that you channel your efforts into helping out on moodle.org.

However, the one problem with ONLY using Moodle.org is that is is basically just forums. Other communities like Ning, Moodle Share, Moodle Commons, etc… offer other types of information and in a different way that people may enjoy. I think having a few big communities would be ideal (in my opinion) because people like different types of interfaces/information/resources and ways to access it.

I do think that Using Moodle, and Moodle.org in general, is already popular but I think that there are many users who are unaware of it. I have noticed that some Moodle.org forums (ex: teacher tips and tricks) do not get much attention that have so much potential.

I’m not sure of the right solution, but there are positives and negatives of having one huge Moodle community compared with a few big Moodle community sites giving you information and collaboration in different ways.

I would like to hear others opinions. Or maybe if there is anyone at Moodle.org or anywhere else working on a solution?

I was at the MoodleMoot in Oklahoma a few weeks ago and someone brought up the fact that there are a lot of little Moodle communities popping up in England. This made me think that these little communities (while nice and cozy for the participants and the people who start them) should really all just join the bigger community on Moodle.org. After all, imagine if someone like Laurie, who can gather over 700 people together in one place, actually put all that effort into helping people at the site of the software itself. I think there can never be enough helpful people on Moodle.org, and it’s a shame that so many other communities exist.