Also, since SO is a broader tool than just the Qx community, I'm also concerned
about how you sort out knowledgeable answers from SO noise due to non-Qx
readers posting inaccurate answers to posted questions. Granted, I see it has
a "voting" mechanism for helpful answers, but the Qx team can't control this
voting, which can be manipulated. How do they keep SPAM out of the answers?
How can the Qx team control the usefulness of the SO system to insure it's
accuracy?
I would only say that I don't see this as a problem on SO for other
topics. SO often comes up in my Google searches for C++ or other subjects, and
at least 95% of the time has a very useful answer... I'd love to have that
capability with qooxdoo questions!
-Bruce
________________________________
From: Gene Amtower [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Thursday, January 07, 2010 8:24 AM
To: qooxdoo Development
Subject: Re: [qooxdoo-devel] Stack Overflow
Been reading everyone's comments, and thought I would throw some thoughts into
the mix...
If SO is to be a Q&A forum, is it possible to create entries for FAQs based on
discussions on the ML, rather than SO questions only being initiated on SO?
I'm thinking a Qx person should be able to enter a question and answer at the
same time on SO in order to maintain a set of helpful entries there.
Also, since SO is a broader tool than just the Qx community, I'm also concerned
about how you sort out knowledgeable answers from SO noise due to non-Qx
readers posting inaccurate answers to posted questions. Granted, I see it has
a "voting" mechanism for helpful answers, but the Qx team can't control this
voting, which can be manipulated. How do they keep SPAM out of the answers?
How can the Qx team control the usefulness of the SO system to insure it's
accuracy?
Additionally, it seems that many questions on the ML go through a period of
discussion and info sharing before coming to a conclusion on the issue
involved. I wonder if the ML is a better forum for discussions among the whole
Qx team, while SO serves more as a place to find known answers to common
questions for those who don't want to subscribe to the ML - i.e. build process
configuration, theming, etc. Also, the one entry in SO today provides an
answer to a specific question on build-process configuration, but it's not very
complete and would ultimately require a reader to locate the Qx documentation
on build configuration files, so there should really be a link to the pertinent
Qx docs. Without trying it myself, I would hope the SO provides the ability to
embed links to the Qx site in any answers offered.
Also, maybe it's possible for SO to be monitored by the core team, then have a
link posted to the ML for needed discussion among the community, then provide a
final answer back to the SO database. This would keep a lot of "noise" out of
SO, making it a better resource for non-ML users. It would probably be
convenient to create an RSS-feed-reader mechanism that receives SO questions
and posts them to the ML with the link, allowing the ML to monitor SO activity,
while retaining the ML as a primary discussion tool among the active Qx team
members instead of moving to SO for all discussions.
All ML posts automatically generated from SO activity should include a link
back to the SO post, so this would allow ML readers to locate the pertinent SO
question easily, especially if there's an answer available that will enhance
the info on SO. Ultimately, keeping all of the extra ML noise out of SO will
make it more effective for the broader Qx user community. I think we still
need the openness of our ML discussions, as they are among friends; meanwhile,
SO is intended to serve more of a public service that would not benefit from
internal discussions of Qx priorities and debates.
Granted, all of this involves some extra legwork, but it might serve to avoid
fracturing the Qx support community, while providing the additional
improvements suggested by some wrt SO as a support tool.
HTH,
Gene
On Thu, 2010-01-07 at 15:53 +0100, Tobias Oetiker wrote:
Today thron7 wrote:
>
> I guess, if you give SO a chance, looking for answers (also in other
> areas, e.g. Javascript, PHP, Web application frameworks, ...), you will
> find it very useful. You will probably find that both searching existing
> questions, easily spotting relevant answers, voting and accepting
> answers, as well as answering, cross-linking answers and building up an
> easily accessible Q&A knowledge base makes it worthwhile.
I agree ... I think for Q&A stuff SO is much better ... recently
when looking for answers, I increassingly find that google direts
me to SO and I am often rather amazed at the quality of the stuff I
find there, so the concept does obviously seem to work quite well
for other toppics, so why should it not for qooxdoo ...
I am not saying the it is a replacement for mailinglists, but the
Q&A type questions are much better at home there ...
cheers
tobi
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