Stackoverflow
No discussion at the ASF is complete until we have had it twice. A month or so ago, there was a lengthy thread about stackoverflow.com on members@. It rather dribbled out. Recently, someone re-stirred that pot, and Nick Burch recommended taking it over here rather than fill all the members@ mailboxes *again*. A slightly biased summary: 1) Some of us observe that many people are posting questions about Apache projects on stackoverflow.com. Some of them are getting good answers, some less so. Some TLPs have taken note of this and made some effort to provide support there. Some haven't. 2) Some of us find the format of stackoverflow.com and related sites to be an interesting and efficient way to facility a community of support for some kinds of issues. Other people don't see the attraction. 3) The stackoverflow.com family uses a particular CC license that would seem to pose problems for anyone grabbing 'too much' material from there and incorporating it into an Apache activity. Note that this question poses a risk independent of anything else described here. Possible reactions discussed on members@: 1) Nothing. Let TLPs do what they want in interacting with so.com. Perhaps, as a side-order, get some guidance from legal about how much copy-and-paste is too much copy-and-paste from so or other CC-whatever sources. 2) Actively encourage engagement with the SEI sites to push the Apache brand and improve our image by providing high-quality assistance to users in any reasonable forum. 3) Host our own variation on the theme, presumably using OSQA (an open source clone/tribute band) of SEI. 4) Talk to the SEI management about their choice of license. 5) Propose an ASF site for SEI at their area51 site. 6) ? I'm personally not invested in any of this, but this thread is intended to at least be a lightning rod to spare members@ an interminable debate about all these topics.
StackOverflow
Hi All There's been the odd bit of discussion around StackOverflow on various lists, but I thought this was probably the best place to discuss things. Firstly, I want to make clear that I'm not suggesting we abandon all our user lists, and shift everything over to stackoverflow! However, for quite a few projects, there is an active community of people over on stackoverflow answering questions on our projects. If a project was to want to engage more with that community, what's involved? What should be in place before a project starts suggesting that SO might be the place for some users for some questions? Personally, I've been playing with SO for a few weeks now. For some of the tags around projects I'm interested in, I've seen people I've never encountered on our lists giving excellent answers to questions. In other cases, I've managed to get people to submit bug reports and patches to the project for their probems and solutions, which seems to me to be a win. (I don't think that having our own SO site is likely to work - we'd loose out on the existing community that's much of the draw) Before a project might list its stackoverflow tag as something to use from its website (as we currently do for our mailing lists, and in some cases things like nabble), what's needed? One thing that springs to mind is the licensing. Can we get SO to dual license content on our tags? Next up is probably visibility. Could we get the feather logo shown? Is that worth having? Can we get an aggregation point of all our tags? The content itself on our tags would need backing up. That way, if SO ever went under, we wouldn't loose the content. (Even if we couldn't immediately read it...). Can we use the API to do that? Can we make it work in a way that infra can easily support? What about cross polination between the mailing list and SO? Do we post the list of questions to the mailing list, or simply require that interested people sign up to both? Pros, cons? How about existing committers coming to SO. How can we ensure they have enough rep to quickly take part in the tag for their project? And what about moderation of the tag, should we push for extra access? Anything else? Nick
Re: StackOverflow
I think that the problem of 'committer shows up as 'rep=1' is not a big problem. The existing moderation circus on SO seems to work reasonably well, and it isn't tag-specific. If committers show up and answer questions, they'll get upvotes, and eventually acquire privileges. I can't predict how Atwood & crew would react to a proposed treat with us. The non-tag-specific nature of moderation privileges is a fairly big practical problem for any scheme to give Apache people ex-officio reputation -- unless we went for the 'apache.stackoverflow.com / stackoverflow.apache.com' separate site route.
Re: Stackoverflow
On Thu, 12 May 2011, Benson Margulies wrote: No discussion at the ASF is complete until we have had it twice. Or maybe three times, looks like our emails were sent at the same time, doh! 1) Some of us observe that many people are posting questions about Apache projects on stackoverflow.com. Some of them are getting good answers, some less so. Some TLPs have taken note of this and made some effort to provide support there. Some haven't. And some TLPs are enjoying the good answers being supplied by people not in their existing community :) 3) Host our own variation on the theme, presumably using OSQA (an open source clone/tribute band) of SEI. Not sure infra would go for this, and there's the issue of missing out on the existing community of people answering questions on our projects for us 4) Talk to the SEI management about their choice of license. We'd probably be asking them to dual license code (but probably not text) in answers to our tags. Not sure how they'd take that, but it presumably isn't too big a deal. In the mean time, some people recommend just asking people posting code that they want to push upstream to agree to re-license. 5) Propose an ASF site for SEI at their area51 site. Again we miss out on the existing community of people answering questions for us. For me, the big value to SO is that existing community of smart people answering questions. Personally I find the SO interface better for some question types, and a mailing list better for others, it's the community that interests me! Nick
Re: StackOverflow
On Thu, 12 May 2011, Benson Margulies wrote: I think that the problem of 'committer shows up as 'rep=1' is not a big problem. The existing moderation circus on SO seems to work reasonably well, and it isn't tag-specific. If committers show up and answer questions, they'll get upvotes, and eventually acquire privileges. One possible workaround is for the committer to let other committers know their SO user id, and everyone jumps on up voting their first answer. "Comment Everywhere" @ 50 points is probably the main one that's needed, as that lets you ask clarifying points before answering. I can't predict how Atwood & crew would react to a proposed treat with us. Nor I, but we'd need to figure out what things matter to us and which don't before we go asking :) The non-tag-specific nature of moderation privileges is a fairly big practical problem for any scheme to give Apache people ex-officio reputation -- unless we went for the 'apache.stackoverflow.com / stackoverflow.apache.com' separate site route. The downside of that is loosing the existing community. Not sure how much difference the moderation makes though? Nick
Re: Stackoverflow
On 12/05/2011 15:09, Nick Burch wrote: On Thu, 12 May 2011, Benson Margulies wrote: No discussion at the ASF is complete until we have had it twice. Or maybe three times, looks like our emails were sent at the same time, doh! Can we merge these two threads. I'm going to respond here for both threads. Please keep all responses here. 1) Some of us observe that many people are posting questions about Apache projects on stackoverflow.com. Some of them are getting good answers, some less so. Some TLPs have taken note of this and made some effort to provide support there. Some haven't. And some TLPs are enjoying the good answers being supplied by people not in their existing community :) A *very* important point. As far as possible we need to limit the dilution of our projects support efforts, but we can't (and shouldn't) control the world. Things will happen outside, we should seek to be inclusive. 4) Talk to the SEI management about their choice of license. We'd probably be asking them to dual license code (but probably not text) in answers to our tags. Not sure how they'd take that, but it presumably isn't too big a deal. In the mean time, some people recommend just asking people posting code that they want to push upstream to agree to re-license. I don't believe we (ComDev) should be addressing this issue, this one belongs to legal@ We can ask them to look into it if we have a proposal to move forwards. 5) Propose an ASF site for SEI at their area51 site. Again we miss out on the existing community of people answering questions for us. For me, the big value to SO is that existing community of smart people answering questions. Personally I find the SO interface better for some question types, and a mailing list better for others, it's the community that interests me! I agree, but most people will not relish the idea of monitoring yet another channel. Furthermore making another channel "official" in this way means that we are diluting our support solutions. Like Nick I'm interested in the community StackOverflow surfaces. How do we get them more engaged with official support channels? What should those official support channels be? [I'm bringing over points from the overlapping thread below] On 12/05/2011 15:03, Nick Burch wrote: Before a project might list its stackoverflow tag as something to use from its website (as we currently do for our mailing lists, and in some cases things like nabble), what's needed? PMC approval. That's it. This is not an ASF wide decision, a PMC can adopt Stack Overflow now if they want to. User support need not be governed by our IP policies. However, what I don't want to see is developer support moving off ASF lists. One thing that springs to mind is the licensing. Can we get SO to dual license content on our tags? As I say above, not our concern. This is a legal@ issue. There's no point in asking legal@ to explore it unless we have a plan to make StackOverflow a useful part of one or more Apache projects. Next up is probably visibility. Could we get the feather logo shown? Is that worth having? Can we get an aggregation point of all our tags? If SO becomes an official channel then these points become very important. If it is an unnofficial channel for some projects, who cares? The only way I would want to see it becoming an official channel is if we can tightly integrate it with our current channels. For example, a daily mail to the user list saying "these questions were asked on SO" and, after a week of inactivity, the question and highest scored answer are mailed to our list. The problem is can we do that (does SO have an API) and will someone write and maintain the necessary code? The content itself on our tags would need backing up. That way, if SO ever went under, we wouldn't loose the content. (Even if we couldn't immediately read it...). Can we use the API to do that? Can we make it work in a way that infra can easily support? I think my suggestion above covers this (although it only gives a partial backup of highest rated answers) What about cross polination between the mailing list and SO? Do we post the list of questions to the mailing list, or simply require that interested people sign up to both? Pros, cons? Covered by my answer above. How about existing committers coming to SO. How can we ensure they have enough rep to quickly take part in the tag for their project? And what about moderation of the tag, should we push for extra access? I'd want committers to be recognised with an automatic rep making them stand out. They've earned their merit here, if SO were an official channel then that merit should count. If it is an unofficial channel then this is less of a problem. As for moderation - no idea since I don't know how this works at present. I have noticed very little bad content on SO so it sounds good. Anything else? Nick
Re: Stackoverflow
On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 4:46 PM, Ross Gardler wrote: > On 12/05/2011 15:09, Nick Burch wrote: >> >> On Thu, 12 May 2011, Benson Margulies wrote: >>> >>> No discussion at the ASF is complete until we have had it twice. >> >> Or maybe three times, looks like our emails were sent at the same >> time, doh! > > Can we merge these two threads. I'm going to respond here for both > threads. Please keep all responses here. > >>> 1) Some of us observe that many people are posting questions about >>> Apache projects on stackoverflow.com. Some of them are getting >>> good answers, some less so. Some TLPs have taken note of this and >>> made some effort to provide support there. Some haven't. >> >> And some TLPs are enjoying the good answers being supplied by people >> not in their existing community :) > > A *very* important point. As far as possible we need to limit the > dilution of our projects support efforts, but we can't (and shouldn't) > control the world. Things will happen outside, we should seek to be > inclusive. > > >>> 4) Talk to the SEI management about their choice of license. >> >> We'd probably be asking them to dual license code (but probably not >> text) in answers to our tags. Not sure how they'd take that, but it >> presumably isn't too big a deal. In the mean time, some people >> recommend just asking people posting code that they want to push >> upstream to agree to re-license. > > I don't believe we (ComDev) should be addressing this issue, this one > belongs to legal@ We can ask them to look into it if we have a proposal > to move forwards. > >>> 5) Propose an ASF site for SEI at their area51 site. >> >> Again we miss out on the existing community of people answering >> questions for us. For me, the big value to SO is that existing >> community of smart people answering questions. Personally I find the >> SO interface better for some question types, and a mailing list >> better for others, it's the community that interests me! > > I agree, but most people will not relish the idea of monitoring yet > another channel. Furthermore making another channel "official" in this > way means that we are diluting our support solutions. > > Like Nick I'm interested in the community StackOverflow surfaces. How do > we get them more engaged with official support channels? What should > those official support channels be? > > [I'm bringing over points from the overlapping thread below] > > On 12/05/2011 15:03, Nick Burch wrote: >> >> Before a project might list its stackoverflow tag as something to >> use from its website (as we currently do for our mailing lists, and >> in some cases things like nabble), what's needed? > > PMC approval. That's it. > > This is not an ASF wide decision, a PMC can adopt Stack Overflow now if they > want to. User support need not be governed by our IP policies. > > However, what I don't want to see is developer support moving off ASF lists. > >> One thing that springs to mind is the licensing. Can we get SO to >> dual license content on our tags? > > As I say above, not our concern. This is a legal@ issue. There's no point in > asking legal@ to explore it unless we have a plan to make StackOverflow a > useful part of one or more Apache projects. > >> Next up is probably visibility. Could we get the feather logo shown? >> Is that worth having? Can we get an aggregation point of all our >> tags? > > If SO becomes an official channel then these points become very important. > If it is an unnofficial channel for some projects, who cares? > > The only way I would want to see it becoming an official channel is if we > can tightly integrate it with our current channels. For example, a daily > mail to the user list saying "these questions were asked on SO" and, after a > week of inactivity, the question and highest scored answer are mailed to our > list. > > The problem is can we do that (does SO have an API) and will someone write > and maintain the necessary code? I was exactly looking into the same idea, but in a simpler way as a start and assuming that SO is not an official channel but it is something that it is nice to have and exposes what is going on on SO inside Apache projects' mailing lists. The idea is we can have configurable bot(s)/service which can be configured to monitor questions asked on certain tags and their related answers, and this bot can then send these questions, either one question per e-mail or a digest of questions and answers, committers then can login with their own SO account and answer the question of interest which also will be sent to the mailing list as an answer. This is only as an initial integration, which has an advantage of being listed and archived in the mailing list like any other e-mail that can be sent directly to the ML. For the tags used when asking a question each Apache project can add some information about that on their own site like they do when adding information about ML(s) and IRC channels, so users can know about these tags.
Re: Stackoverflow
On 12/05/2011 19:34, Mohammad Nour El-Din wrote: On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 4:46 PM, Ross Gardler wrote: On 12/05/2011 15:09, Nick Burch wrote: ... Next up is probably visibility. Could we get the feather logo shown? Is that worth having? Can we get an aggregation point of all our tags? If SO becomes an official channel then these points become very important. If it is an unnofficial channel for some projects, who cares? The only way I would want to see it becoming an official channel is if we can tightly integrate it with our current channels. For example, a daily mail to the user list saying "these questions were asked on SO" and, after a week of inactivity, the question and highest scored answer are mailed to our list. The problem is can we do that (does SO have an API) and will someone write and maintain the necessary code? I was exactly looking into the same idea, but in a simpler way as a start and assuming that SO is not an official channel but it is something that it is nice to have and exposes what is going on on SO inside Apache projects' mailing lists. The idea is we can have configurable bot(s)/service which can be configured to monitor questions asked on certain tags and their related answers, and this bot can then send these questions, either one question per e-mail or a digest of questions and answers, committers then can login with their own SO account and answer the question of interest which also will be sent to the mailing list as an answer. I'm not sure this is a good idea. It invisibly merges activity in one place with activity in another. The reason I suggested a digest and a summary answer was to: a) differentiate the source b) avoid flooding user lists c) avoid triggering a discussion on the official channel that is not received on SO This is only as an initial integration, which has an advantage of being listed and archived in the mailing list like any other e-mail that can be sent directly to the ML. There's the problem (at least for me) it is not "any other e-mail". The communication was not sent to the mail list. We can't treat it the same without causing confusion. For the tags used when asking a question each Apache project can add some information about that on their own site like they do when adding information about ML(s) and IRC channels, so users can know about these tags. And this is going to be optional as the service will be available and configurable by committers who have access to it, just like what is done now with CI services, like Hudson/Jenkins for example. I thought you said this was unofficial? What you describe above is "a service configurable by committers... just like what is done with CI services". Who is running this service? Who is maintaining it? The moment this "service" is maintained by the ASF on ASF infrastructure it becomes official and we need to maintain it. I'm not saying that is impossible but infra@ will, quite rightly, resist anything that is not fully supported and demanded by a significant number of projects. Now, if you want to provide this as a codebase (perhaps on apache-extras?) that projects can opt to install on their zone or some third party server that's fine. This would be an unofficial service that does not require infra@ to expend resources maintaining. If it's taken up by many projects and a community emerges maybe it can become official. [NOTE: I'm ignoring the question of whether we can do this legally for now. This will need to be answered before anyone used such a solution] I found a place where they describe how to use the Stack Exchange API [1], which I can play with on my machine and I can comeback with a feedback by the end of next week. Sounds great. Also I found this [2] which I am not sure what it is yet, but it seems that you can build queries which we can publish some statistics using it, I am not sure yet but I have to make sure of that. Like Nick I'm interested in the "unknown community" that exists in SO. I'm particularly interested in bringing that community into our own communities. One way is to adopt their tools in some way, as you describe. Another is to figure out who these people are and point our communities at their good work. If [2] can help in doing this then I'd be very interested in anything you can do with it. It seems, on the surface, to be much easier, legally sound and provides a quicker "win". Ross Thoughts ? The content itself on our tags would need backing up. That way, if SO ever went under, we wouldn't loose the content. (Even if we couldn't immediately read it...). Can we use the API to do that? Can we make it work in a way that infra can easily support? I think my suggestion above covers this (although it only gives a partial backup of highest rated answers) What about cross polination between the mailing list and SO? Do we post the list of questions to the mailing list, or simply require that interested people si
Stackoverflow discussion...
Just joined the list. Looks like I missed the start of the discussion. I see it in the archive, but if someone could bump one of the threads so I can jump in that'd be great. (and, yes, that's one of the things I like about SO)
Re: Stackoverflow
> Like Nick I'm interested in the "unknown community" that exists in SO. I'm > particularly interested in bringing that community into our own communities. Do you really think you will adobe the SO community into the ASF community? I doubt. SO will absorb the ASF user community. At the point of time when people have the choice to use a fancy web ui instead of email, they will choose the web ui. More and more users will move to the UI until there is no activity on the users ML. At one day incubator podlings will ask for a SO tag instead of a user ml. Then you have SO absorbed us. Then they are our provider. I don't think we can get a good level of control except on the API level. And since everything works well with SO, who would maintain custom API stuff? There is no need to write any code, it will soon RIP off. SO as our user provider? Its not open enough for me. Call me an idiot. I agree email is lost and oldschool. But a company providing us closed source tools for such an important topic - no, thanks. The user mailing list has been used to announce several important messages. Updates, security holes etc. How would you inform your users on SO? How can you, as a user, make sure you'll get this information? What is with "community over code"? How can one earn committership? Is the new criteria to join the number of upvotes in SO? Having one of these fancy badges? There are thousands of people active on SO - I doubt I will remember a name from there. In a mailinglist I have learned already lots of names. A ml is a smaller usergroup. I prefer that instead of this mass production. My 2 cents. From the previous discussions I have already seen there are many people excited about SO. I am not. For sure my user support will end, when people have started to use SO more than our mailinglists. I cannot effort another tool for answering questions except my gmail client, which organizes everything so well. After all I am not paid for asf support - i will not go and check my tags for new questions each hour or something. Cheers, Christian > One way is to adopt their tools in some way, as you describe. Another is to > figure out who these people are and point our communities at their good > work. > > If [2] can help in doing this then I'd be very interested in anything you > can do with it. It seems, on the surface, to be much easier, legally sound > and provides a quicker "win". > > Ross > >> >> Thoughts ? >> >>> The content itself on our tags would need backing up. That way, if SO ever went under, we wouldn't loose the content. (Even if we couldn't immediately read it...). Can we use the API to do that? Can we make it work in a way that infra can easily support? >>> >>> I think my suggestion above covers this (although it only gives a partial >>> backup of highest rated answers) >>> What about cross polination between the mailing list and SO? Do we post the list of questions to the mailing list, or simply require that interested people sign up to both? Pros, cons? >>> >>> Covered by my answer above. >>> How about existing committers coming to SO. How can we ensure they have enough rep to quickly take part in the tag for their project? And what about moderation of the tag, should we push for extra access? >>> >>> I'd want committers to be recognised with an automatic rep making them >>> stand >>> out. They've earned their merit here, if SO were an official channel then >>> that merit should count. If it is an unofficial channel then this is less >>> of >>> a problem. >>> >>> As for moderation - no idea since I don't know how this works at present. >>> I >>> have noticed very little bad content on SO so it sounds good. >>> Anything else? Nick >>> >>> >> >> [1] - http://stackapps.com/ >> [2] - http://data.stackexchange.com/ >> > > -- http://www.grobmeier.de
Re: Stackoverflow
On 12/05/2011 21:27, Christian Grobmeier wrote: Like Nick I'm interested in the "unknown community" that exists in SO. I'm particularly interested in bringing that community into our own communities. Do you really think you will adobe the SO community into the ASF community? No, of course not. I'm referring to the few people who are clearly knowledgeable about ASF products. Helping others on SO but are not, for whatever reason, engaging with the ASF projects in question. These people deserve merit in the ASF and right now they are not getting it. SO as our user provider? Its not open enough for me. Call me an idiot. I agree email is lost and oldschool. But a company providing us closed source tools for such an important topic - no, thanks. Nobody is suggesting that, at least not in this thread. Ross
Re: Stackoverflow
>> Do you really think you will adobe the SO community into the ASF >> community? > > No, of course not. > I'm referring to the few people who are clearly knowledgeable about ASF > products. Helping others on SO but are not, for whatever reason, engaging > with the ASF projects in question. These people deserve merit in the ASF and > right now they are not getting it. OK, but how can they earn merit within the ASF? With using the offical Apache-SO-tags? Sorry, but can you explain how this might work. I have no imagination (this is not polemic, i really would like to know) >> SO as our user provider? Its not open enough for me. Call me an idiot. >> I agree email is lost and oldschool. But a company providing us closed >> source tools for such an important topic - no, thanks. > > Nobody is suggesting that, at least not in this thread. In my understanding it was proposed to "allow" PMCs to use SO as official communication channel. Am I wrong? Once projects are doing that, people will use SO more and more and migrate from the lists. Even when nobody has suggested to replace the ML with SO, it will finally happen. Or might happen. Cheers, Christian
Re: Stackoverflow
On 12/05/2011 22:46, Christian Grobmeier wrote: Do you really think you will adobe the SO community into the ASF community? No, of course not. I'm referring to the few people who are clearly knowledgeable about ASF products. Helping others on SO but are not, for whatever reason, engaging with the ASF projects in question. These people deserve merit in the ASF and right now they are not getting it. OK, but how can they earn merit within the ASF? With using the offical Apache-SO-tags? Sorry, but can you explain how this might work. I have no imagination (this is not polemic, i really would like to know) Two possibilities (there are probably many more). We send an email or SO comment and invite them in so they can work amongst us and earn merit. Don't assume that they know they can do this, in my experience most people do not understand this. See Nicks first email as an example, he reports it has worked for him (patches, bug reports etc.) This is my personal preference at this point. The hard part is not inviting them in, the hard part is identifying them in the first place. The second approach would be to provide an SO like service or integrate SO in our processes in some way. There are huge technical, legal an cultural barriers to this (like your concerns for example). However, that does not mean it is impossible. This thread, as I interpret it, is exploring this possibility. SO as our user provider? Its not open enough for me. Call me an idiot. I agree email is lost and oldschool. But a company providing us closed source tools for such an important topic - no, thanks. Nobody is suggesting that, at least not in this thread. In my understanding it was proposed to "allow" PMCs to use SO as official communication channel. Am I wrong? That's not how I've interpreted things here. I see people asking "what if" and "how" questions, but I see no proposals yet. My comment above was only intended to reassure you that I don't think we are anywhere near having to address a concrete proposal yet. Perhaps I should have said "Nobody is suggesting that, at least not in this thread. If they do I would expect that proposal to address all concerns raised in this thread, including yours and those previously expressed on members@. " Ross
Re: Stackoverflow
In my opinion, it's completely wrong-headed to imagine that there's any barrier to any PMC choosing to open a simple beachhead on SO and posting a link like http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/caliper on their web presence. The arguments here are reasons why a PMC might choose to put more or less (or no) emphasis on it. If this here PMC decides to consider something else, it will open a hailing frequency to SEI and see whether there's any meeting of the minds about licensing and branding and all that stuff. The QA format, in my opinion, is a very powerful tool for some kinds of collaborative assistance, and a completely useless tool for others. It's much easier to find a question with answers than to find a mailing list thread. It's on the other hand pretty silly to engage in any sort of extended interactive assistance on it.
Re: Stackoverflow
On May 12, 2011, at 3:54 PM, Benson Margulies wrote: > The QA format, in my opinion, is a very powerful tool for some kinds > of collaborative assistance, and a completely useless tool for others. > It's much easier to find a question with answers than to find a > mailing list thread. It's on the other hand pretty silly to engage in > any sort of extended interactive assistance on it. That's been my experience as well. The QA format is pretty great for some stuff, but breaks down fast when I have to ask for log files and things of that nature. Another thought. Sometimes I wonder how hard it would be to just allow tagging and voting on top of a plain mailing list emails. A simple DB with the messageId as the key for tags and vote count then a slightly fancier archive view than we have now. And hey, markdown happens to look nice as plain email. I've actually been indenting code snippets for years. I admit I like getting SO points and badges but they do not factor in at all when looking for the right answer. The tags and votes though are definitely the two critical tools that help me find what i'm looking for. -David
Re: Stackoverflow
There is another factor that comes into play. QA sites like SO also blend in wiki and trust mechanisms. Thus, highly rated users can and do rewrite questions to be more answerable/understandable. They can also rewrite answers if necessary. Without automated karma, the moderation function has to be granted manually which is a process that doesn't scale as easily and is subject to attack by cabals. That way lies wikipedia's dictatorship of the editor proletariat and associated drop in user participation. That is fine for a largely static knowledge base, but SO addresses much more dynamic topics in a way that engages the readership much more strongly. Moreover, the feedback cycle essentially guarantees that the moderators reflect the interests of the voting public. On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 5:47 PM, David Blevins wrote: > Another thought. Sometimes I wonder how hard it would be to just allow > tagging and voting on top of a plain mailing list emails. A simple DB with > the messageId as the key for tags and vote count then a slightly fancier > archive view than we have now. And hey, markdown happens to look nice as > plain email. I've actually been indenting code snippets for years. > > I admit I like getting SO points and badges but they do not factor in at > all when looking for the right answer. >
Re: Stackoverflow
I don't think it's the tagging and voting. It's the ease of finding and tracking unanswered questions. When someone posts a message to one of the busy user(s)@ lists, they have only so much chance of snagging the attention of someone qualified to answer. If they get lost in the wash, the question is probably lost for good. Some very lightweight system for allowing users to open 'tickets' asking for some sort of specific assistance might help here. Or it, too, might wash away in the tide. On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 8:47 PM, David Blevins wrote: > > On May 12, 2011, at 3:54 PM, Benson Margulies wrote: > >> The QA format, in my opinion, is a very powerful tool for some kinds >> of collaborative assistance, and a completely useless tool for others. >> It's much easier to find a question with answers than to find a >> mailing list thread. It's on the other hand pretty silly to engage in >> any sort of extended interactive assistance on it. > > That's been my experience as well. The QA format is pretty great for some > stuff, but breaks down fast when I have to ask for log files and things of > that nature. > > Another thought. Sometimes I wonder how hard it would be to just allow > tagging and voting on top of a plain mailing list emails. A simple DB with > the messageId as the key for tags and vote count then a slightly fancier > archive view than we have now. And hey, markdown happens to look nice as > plain email. I've actually been indenting code snippets for years. > > I admit I like getting SO points and badges but they do not factor in at all > when looking for the right answer. > > The tags and votes though are definitely the two critical tools that help me > find what i'm looking for. > > > -David > >
Re: Stackoverflow
I guess I'd ignore the 'edit' part and avoid the issue completely. It would also make it hard to do as simple metadata around a plain email. For me tagging and voting and (i forgot) the marking the question answered (thanks, Benson) are the parts I would love. I write some really good responses sometimes and even *I* have a hard time finding some of my old responses in the list archive haystack. And to avoid the "tag names can be spam" issue having so that only committers can introduce new tags would be fine for me. It could be a file in svn or something else equally lame but functional. -David On May 12, 2011, at 6:04 PM, Ted Dunning wrote: > There is another factor that comes into play. QA sites like SO also blend > in wiki and trust mechanisms. Thus, highly rated users can and do rewrite > questions to be more answerable/understandable. They can also rewrite > answers if necessary. > > Without automated karma, the moderation function has to be granted manually > which is a process that doesn't scale as easily and is subject to attack by > cabals. That way lies wikipedia's dictatorship of the editor proletariat > and associated drop in user participation. That is fine for a largely > static knowledge base, but SO addresses much more dynamic topics in a way > that engages the readership much more strongly. Moreover, the feedback > cycle essentially guarantees that the moderators reflect the interests of > the voting public. > > On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 5:47 PM, David Blevins wrote: > >> Another thought. Sometimes I wonder how hard it would be to just allow >> tagging and voting on top of a plain mailing list emails. A simple DB with >> the messageId as the key for tags and vote count then a slightly fancier >> archive view than we have now. And hey, markdown happens to look nice as >> plain email. I've actually been indenting code snippets for years. >> >> I admit I like getting SO points and badges but they do not factor in at >> all when looking for the right answer. >>
Re: Stackoverflow
Good point on the marking of closed. Critical part. If we wanted to be really lame, closed could be a tag. But right, something like that is critical. What sucks is sometimes I read mailing list mails from users, but don't have time to answer them just then and then of course I forget about them... and well .. as you point out that doesn't end well for anyone. -David On May 12, 2011, at 5:56 PM, Benson Margulies wrote: > I don't think it's the tagging and voting. It's the ease of finding > and tracking unanswered questions. > > When someone posts a message to one of the busy user(s)@ lists, they > have only so much chance of snagging the attention of someone > qualified to answer. If they get lost in the wash, the question is > probably lost for good. > > Some very lightweight system for allowing users to open 'tickets' > asking for some sort of specific assistance might help here. Or it, > too, might wash away in the tide. > > > On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 8:47 PM, David Blevins > wrote: >> >> On May 12, 2011, at 3:54 PM, Benson Margulies wrote: >> >>> The QA format, in my opinion, is a very powerful tool for some kinds >>> of collaborative assistance, and a completely useless tool for others. >>> It's much easier to find a question with answers than to find a >>> mailing list thread. It's on the other hand pretty silly to engage in >>> any sort of extended interactive assistance on it. >> >> That's been my experience as well. The QA format is pretty great for some >> stuff, but breaks down fast when I have to ask for log files and things of >> that nature. >> >> Another thought. Sometimes I wonder how hard it would be to just allow >> tagging and voting on top of a plain mailing list emails. A simple DB with >> the messageId as the key for tags and vote count then a slightly fancier >> archive view than we have now. And hey, markdown happens to look nice as >> plain email. I've actually been indenting code snippets for years. >> >> I admit I like getting SO points and badges but they do not factor in at all >> when looking for the right answer. >> >> The tags and votes though are definitely the two critical tools that help me >> find what i'm looking for. >> >> >> -David >> >>
