On Tue, Dec 18, 2012 at 7:20 AM, jcbollinger <john.bollin...@stjude.org> wrote: > > > On Monday, December 17, 2012 4:13:40 PM UTC-6, Dawn Foster wrote: >> With the focus on asking questions, it is a little harder for people >> to digress into endless debates. However, the main benefit is that >> great answers and knowledge live on, and it gives us a better place to >> point people for good answers than mailing list archives. Because this >> Q&A site lives on puppetlabs.com, you can easily do a google search >> with site:puppetlabs.com along with your query to find answers to >> questions along with relevant documentation and other information all >> in the same location. >> > > > At the same time, a Google group such as this one is also similar to a forum > if you access it via the web interface, and there is already a community > coalesced here. The majority of new threads here are questions, and as far > as I know, the group's archives are preserved indefinitely. Although we do > have debates from time to time, that seems a small proportion of the > traffic. And although the group is hosted at Google, it's controlled by PL > staff. Plus, I can get the group delivered to my mailbox if that's the way > I want it. > > So I guess I'm saying I don't really understand what makes > ask.puppetlabs.com different, or why it makes sense to establish another > PL-controlled, community-based assistance resource. Or, indeed, why I > should be interested in answering questions over there when I already do > that here. > > I do hope the project is successful, as I said, and I apologize for being a > wet blanket.
No problem at all. Many of us who have been using mailing lists forever are perfectly comfortable with them. I like mailing lists, since I can filter things coming in and quickly scan through them to find the important things that I want to respond to. There are others who really don't like email, are intimidated by it, or who just want something different. Many of those people would prefer to use something else. Unfortunately, the Google Groups web interface isn't a great choice, either. It's more forum like, but can be painful to use. The idea is that the people who like the mailing lists will continue to ask and answer questions here. The mailing lists will never go away - in my opinion, they are the basis for most technical communities, especially open source communities. The Ask Q&A site just gives those people who prefer something more like stack overflow (with voting and other interactivity) also have a place where they can feel more comfortable asking questions. On the one hand, I hate fragmenting the community by introducing yet another site, but I also want everyone to feel comfortable asking and answering questions. Hopefully, the Ask Q&A site will be a place where people can also get great answers to questions. Dawn -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Puppet Users" group. To post to this group, send email to puppet-users@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to puppet-users+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/puppet-users?hl=en.
