Bob Schneider is a Partner in 
Wilson So is the Director of Hitachi Consulting Corporation XBRL Blogs and Forums
Written by Bob Schneider Posted January 26, 2007
In my last two posts, I described (mostly) online sources that approach XBRL from a business (rather than technological) point of view. My XBRL Reading List detailed writers and publications well worth looking at. In Presentations at the Philadelphia Conference, I mentioned several of the most useful speeches and articles from the December meeting, among the many that have been posted online.
In this post I’ll talk about blogs and public forums that are either dedicated to XBRL, or at least discuss XBRL-related topics from time to time. One of the great challenges to widespread XBRL adoption is that most people outside the XBRL community still don’t know what it is. In spreading the word, XBRL blogs and forums have an important role to play. Some of these venues are likely familiar to you, but I hope I’ve found a couple that will be new.
The blog of the IR Web Report regularly has articles on XBRL. In the past few weeks there have been stories about Canada’s recent inauguration of a voluntary XBRL pilot program and the launch of the SEC’s XBRL tool. The articles are usually authored by Dominic Jones, who has long experience in the investor relations field, particularly in Canada.
Another leading XBRL blog from our northern neighbor is the XBRL Canada Blog. The focus, naturally enough, is XBRL developments in Canada; but blogger Gerald Trites, a Project Director of XBRL Canada, has useful comments on other topics as well (full disclosure: he did post a positive comment about Data Interactive about a month ago). Mr. Trites has been a Professor of Accounting and Information Systems at St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia, and a partner at KPMG.
Jack Ciesielski at the AAO Weblog doesn’t write about XBRL that often, but when he does write he has interesting things to say. Ciesielski is both a CFA and CPA who has long experience as an analyst of accounting issues.
CFO.com, which I have previously recommended for its longer articles on XBRL, also discusses XBRL issues in its CFO Blog. The posts are listed in The Skinny On XBRL box in its XBRL: You Can’t Ignore It Anymore collection of links.
Fund r2 was just launched this month, but it already looks promising. Blogger Max Rottersman, who says he has been analyzing funds for 17 years, is just the kind of writer XBRL needs, ie, an experienced investment pro eager to tackle highly technical financial issues and explain them in everyday terms. In XBRL: eXperts Business Reporting Language, Rottersman describes how XBRL combines both aspects of databases and traditional documents, and elaborates on how this mixture causes problems for XBRL adoption.
Shifting from blogs to groups, the public forums for discussing XBRL issues are not thriving. The main reason is that most discussion of XBRL issues has now moved to the Listserv and Sharepoint groups of XBRL.org. These so-called e-Groups can only be accessed by consortium members. The XBRL groups on Yahoo, which formerly provided a venue for debate, are now mostly dormant. XBRL-Public, with 1,200 members, is the largest, but new messages only average a couple every week. XBRL-COREP and XBRL-FINREP, which center on European developments, tend to be the most active. There is little activity at Google Groups.
Have I left out any important blogs and forums readers should know about? Please use the Comments section below or email me and let me know.