> On 23 November 2015 at 07:24, Stephan Eggermont <step...@stack.nl> wrote:
> Why the link to StackOverflow? It is not our data, our community or the
> possibility to influence the answers. Please delete it.
> I'll continue answering questions there, we should not point people there.
A link to Stack Overflow is valuable in lots of ways:
1) It is a very good code facility for questions and answers, which is
exceptionally searchable via Google Bing et al.
Good facilities which we do not need to write or maintain ourselves
means that we can focus our effort on other things. There is no
reason for us to re-invent a question-and-answer facility, or do the
work of keeping it as searchable as a curated site is.
2) Why does it matter who hosts the data?
It is freely and publically available, and Stack Exchange are
well-funded to keep it that way over the long haul.
What benefit does owning the data provide? (My general experience is
that trying to control and own data leads to greater data losses over
time, compared to putting them in a well-funded public repository.
Does the rest of the world use github, or does it builld its own facilities?
We don't own the github data. Github is not our community.
Do we use Slack, or have we built our own?
We don't own the Slack data. Slack is not our community.
3) We certainly *do* have the possibility to influence the answers.
If we cannot influence answers to Pharo-specific questions on a public
Q&A site, who can?
4) Why Stack Overflow?
There was a famous bank robber in the USA who was on the FBI’s list of
Ten Most Wanted Fugitives.
He was asked by a reporter "Why do you rob banks?"
His answer was "Because that's where the money is."
Going to where there are valuable resources is a good idea. For us,
the most valuable resource is developers. People who develop the
Pharo platform and developers who *use* the Pharo platform.
At Stack Overflow, we have the opportunity to access the hearts and
minds of a *very* large group of developers.
We are a very small community, chronically short of developers,
documenters, testers, and many other roles.
Stack Overflow is a good way to help us encourage people to express
interest, and possibly even join us.
Stronger, wider, deeper awareness of the benefits of our platform can
only help interest in using it.
Pharo is not intended as an academic pursuit.
It is intended to help make a difference:
to the professional lives of developers;
to organisations;
and
to individuals who need a good way of being introduced to OO fundamentals.
We make the best difference by making a difference to a large number
of people and organisations.
We make the best difference if a lot of people help us accelerate the
speed of progress and help us complete and maintain and document our
feature sets.
Cheers,
Euan
