Phil suggests, if I read him right, that online communities like SQLServerCentral are vital in part to help tech workers cope with waves of change.

That's a great point. That magic can happen in a community like this - but the magic is contingent on some things - otherwise the supply of pixie dust runs low (sorry: my three-year-old has been watching faerie shows a lot lately).

So the magic of helping a tech worker cope with changes to a technology, like transitioning from DTS to SSIS, for instance - that's what I want to comment about.

I turn to Neil Postman (who has put lots of thought on this topic and published Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology and Building a Bridge to the 18th Century) who draws a distinction between information, knowledge and wisdom.

In short, I think the magic is in helping community members move as quickly as possible from finding relevant information, to getting knowledge - which is getting opinions (sufficient to evaluate information and determine its relevance and validity among other things), to finally getting wisdom - which is in part learning why things are the way they are, and learning what's needed to make strategic decisions.

If you allow me that, then one point to get from it is that by posting a list of constants, like the SSIS transaction isolation level constants - you hand over information. But that doesn't get someone who is transitioning very far.

What's also needed is knowledge about why one would choose one constant or the other - or which are most common and why.

If knowledge and wisdom aren't transferred effectively in a community, then the community becomes merely one additional point in the vast sea of information glut that assails the worker on their path to enlightenment.

Community providers and leaders like those of SQLServerCentral, I suggest, need to find a way to promote the transfer of wisdom and knowledge - and find a way to tweak the platform to do so. Otherwise, the supply of pixie dust will run low.

Now in saying what I just said, I've put up an example of knowledge - evaluative information, but I haven't said too much wisdom about how the community might actually distill more wisdom to the transitioning worker. That's a blog post. I'll give it a whack soon.