Hi All
This may be old news for some of you, in which case you can skip the
email, but for others... StackOverflow is a programming-focused question
and answer site, with excellent google-foo, quite wide use, and growing
use. At the moment I'd say there's something like a new Tika question a
day on it, and that number seems to be climbing. (It's quite bursty
though, 2 one day, nothing for the next few)
Increasingly, new users seem to be turning to StackOverflow to get help
with projects, learn how to use them etc, in place of joining a mailing
list and asking a question. There's also a lot of people out there who
know about Tika, aren't on our lists, but are posting helpful replies
(answers) to questions on how to use Tika.
(There's also a fair number of useless people asking very basic questions,
without full information, and without having done any research / checked
existing questions / checked out site / etc. They tend to get moderated
down pretty quickly though, or they learn and edit the question)
Because StackOverflow gets a lot of newbie traffic, they have some rules,
and can be quite strict on enforcing them. A lot stricted than many of the
other StackExchange network sites, largely because of that traffic. That
means you will find some restrictions at the start, but they go away soon.
You do need to be careful to actually answer questions with an answer,
asking for clarifications or saying "can't help, ask on the list" as an
answer won't go down well.
If you're interested to see what sort of questions there are, see
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/apache-tika?sort=newest&pageSize=50
for what has been asked recently, and
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/apache-tika?sort=votes&pageSize=50
for the most "popular"
There are a few of us on StackOverflow already, but you might want to join
in too. You certainly don't have to! But you might want to, not only to
help, but also to get bug reports, find out what docs we need to update,
and maybe even spot people answering who we can ask to join the project.
If you sign up for an account, you can get emails when people ask Tika
related questions, so you can know to go look if it interests you. To do
that, go to
http://stackexchange.com/filters/212512/apache-tika-questions
On the right it should have an "Email Updates" box, where you can
subscribe to get emailed for new questions on a timing of your choice
If you have questions on using StackOverflow, I'm happy to do my best to
explain. They have pretty good help/documentation, and they have the
"meta" site to check policies / why reasons / etc.
You will suffer some restrictions as a new user, but they go away when
your answers get a few up-votes. Let us know your username if you sign up
and answer something, then the few of us who already use StackOverflow can
up vote you to get you to the minimum rep score to escape them!
Nick
