If I may contribute my view here. Using StackOverflow is mostly great for StackOverflow. The more people go there to post questions and get answers really helps mostly StackOverflow's bottom line. Also, StackOverflow does NOT allow to simply link to sites for answers, which is smart on their part but very annoying for communities such as Apache (can't link to an Apache project's site for example). Instead the "answers content" must be directly in the answer, so you never leave StackOverflow.
I usually get the following responses when encouraging somebody to post on a mailing list: - a mailing list? Those still exist? - I don't like mailing lists, I have a single question, I don't want to subscribe just to ask a single question - why can't I use StackOverflow? - don't make this harder for me - I don't have time for this - I give up, you're just some nostalgic oldtimer that wants everyone to use Newsgroups, text files, and IRC :) I also agree that if StackOverflow goes bankrupt one day, potentially all the content is lost forever, whereas Apache now has been very good at demonstrating it is resilient. Ideally, content should be easy to search, so better indexing of the mailing lists would be great, and it should be easier to ask just a question and get an answer. Therefore if we had an alternative to StackOverflow that was well indexed, rightly available and hosted at Apache it would be the best of both worlds. In the meantime, I think it is a necessary evil to have to answer questions on StackOverflow, and at the same time find ways to encourage people to use the mailing lists more. I try to encourage the usage of PonyMail as much as possible. Regards, Serge... On Fri, Apr 5, 2019 at 4:11 PM Bertrand Delacretaz < bdelacre...@codeconsult.ch> wrote: > Hi, > > On Fri, Apr 5, 2019 at 3:35 PM James Bognar <jamesbog...@apache.org> > wrote: > > ...Apache is sorely in need of a portal similar to StackOverflow... > > What makes you think we need our own service, as opposed to helping > our users where they are? > > As Ted said in this thread: > > > Just subscribe to appropriate tags on stack overflow and direct > > notifications to the dev list. > > > ...Using mailing lists for > > everything is one of the top Apache-Way principles.... > > All decisions related to project development must happen on a > project's dev list, or be relayed there. > > But apart from that projects are welcome to use any channels that help > them reach their users. > > -Bertrand > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org > For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org > >
