in general, it looks as if individualism won the poll against formalization. Although most of the people who voted were positive for both keywords and the poll run by a list member, very few peple actually sent me a vote.
In detail:
1. Introduction of keywords? yes: 13 no:1
2. Polls run by a list member? yes: 11 no:1
On Monday, Dec 7, 385 people were subscribed to the old list.
A summary of comments:
An argument against keywords was "Professional development and continuuing education requires effort. Period." It was noted that there must be some common place where the keyword list is stored for look-up. It was suggested that contact problems should be in the keyword list. A discussion of the pros and cons of more than one keyword was sent to the list as well. It was noted that more than one keyword makes sense, but for the mail tools which sort your mail, only one keywords is better. One was concerned that no development of discussion could happen in a vote that is not 'public', and that someone might not tell the truth about the results, in order to support his own - minority - opinion.
Conclusion:
Although some of the more prominent problem-solvers active on this list, e.g. John Swanson, voted for keywords either to my address or to the list, there are too few votes to declare it a standard. So the only thing I can say is: Do as you like, and perhaps 350 people are laughing because they think that the poll was a stupid idea anyway.
However, most of the people who told their opinion were positive to the idea, so feel encouraged to give keywords a try and see how things develop. Same for the poll issue.
Here is the list of keywords again:
MODEL - selecting, creating, deleting etc. entities, coordinate systems, meshing, element properties CAD - interface to other programs APDL - pure language issues like strange behaviour, possible bugs, parameter or macro problems
THEO - theory, proper problem representation in ANSYS
SYS - OS and licence trouble, file and memory issues
ADV - coupled field, optimization, adaptive meshing, submodeling and -structuring etc.
CONT - contact trouble
For the beginning, I would like to see one keyword or no keyword, because - mail filtering is easier to apply then; - its kompatible to problems that don't fit; - its kompatible to members who don't like keywords; - its kompatible to members who don't know the right category; - a forgotten keyword doesn't matter.
It would be more difficult to have no, one or more keywords to my mind.
Regards and thanks for voting,
Heinrich Acker
Institut f. Halbleitertechnik (Solid-State Electronics Laboratory) TU Darmstadt (Darmstadt University of Technology) Schlossgartenstr. 8 D-64289 Darmstadt