DSpace Developers, Since the OR14 Conference, several of the DSpace Committers have been brainstorming whether we should attempt to encourage more DSpace Q&A to occur on StackOverflow instead of just on mailing lists (like this one and dspace-tech). Specifically, encouraging others to use the existing 'dspace' tag on StackOverflow more often:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/dspace While we do NOT plan to do away with our mailing lists anytime soon, we've been noticing some common problems with Q&A on our mailing lists (both dspace-tech and dspace-devel): A) There are certain questions which seem to be asked over and over (FAQs). B) Sometimes the "best answer" to a question is difficult to find later on. It gets "buried" in the mailing list and may not be as easy to re-locate when asked again (which may result in repeating FAQs) So, we've been brainstorming whether StackOverflow might be a good place to encourage DSpace Q&A. With it's awesome SEO (very high rankings in Google) and the ability to vote up the "best answer" (or multiple best answers), it seems like a venue which could help resolve both of these common issues. However, the big difficulty is that StackOverflow without many questions/answers is not very useful. It is possible & even recommended (see [1] below) to "pre-seed" StackOverflow with common questions/answers. But even then, we'd need others to help take part. So, that is where you, as developers interested in DSpace, could help. Specifically: 1) Would you be interested in using StackOverflow for DSpace Q&A? 2) Would you take part (i.e. help answer questions) on StackOverflow? (NOTE: you can easily "subscribe" to the 'dspace' tag there to get email/RSS notifications for new DSpace questions, see [2] below) 3) Are there major concerns you would have with using StackOverflow? 4) Any other/alternative brainstorms or ideas for how you feel DSpace Q&A could be improved? Again, we have no plans to do away with the mailing lists. There are also some types of questions (e.g. subjective, "which option is best..") which are not fit for StackOverflow. But we wonder if using StackOverflow could improve the DSpace Q&A process overall (and make answers easier to find via Google, etc). I'd appreciate your honest feedback, either on this list or off it. We honestly want to find ways to enhance the Q&A experience for DSpace -- so any ideas you may have are worth considering! Thanks, Tim [Referenced Links:] [1] StackOverflow encourages you to answer your own questions, or even pose questions you know the answer to: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/07/its-ok-to-ask-and-answer-your-own-questions/ [2] How to subscribe to receive email or RSS notifications on a tag in StackOverflow: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/tag-favorites-and-tag-subscriptions/ -- Tim Donohue Technical Lead for DSpace & DSpaceDirect DuraSpace.org | DSpace.org | DSpaceDirect.org ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Want fast and easy access to all the code in your enterprise? Index and search up to 200,000 lines of code with a free copy of Black Duck Code Sight - the same software that powers the world's largest code search on Ohloh, the Black Duck Open Hub! Try it now. http://p.sf.net/sfu/bds _______________________________________________ Dspace-devel mailing list Dspace-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/dspace-devel
