Re: OSQA -Open Source Question and Answering System

[Riccardo Mottola]

Hi,

On 07/16/12 10:20, Dr. H. Nikolaus Schaller wrote:

Am 16.07.2012 um 10:14 schrieb Ivan Vučica:

I'm wondering if it isn't better if people just used StackOverflow and tagged GNUstep-specific questions with "gnustep". We simply don't have the user base that would make a Q&A system useful, and would instead probably linger empty and unused. (You know the sight: three year old forums with a total of 50 posts.)

I totally agree from experiences in other projects. There, we run a mailing list and every now and then someone asks for a Forum. We have installed that but even those who asked don't subscribe and use it...

that is my feeling too. The opposite exists too: very active forums and little used mailing lists. It depends on the user base.

Most of the more "seasoned" or "experienced" developers and users dwell on the mailing lists... In a small community migrating to a different system might mean it will not be used much, or that answers given will be potentially incorrect without others reading them.

Of course, this just a hypothesis.

Mailing lists are also a nice and traditional way of getting attention of GNUstep developers. Even now we have more communication channels and mailing lists than we can use well; discuss-gnustep ends up being the most active one, and it's used for all purposes (development decisions, announcements...), even in cases where other special-purpose mailing lists exist.

Setting up a Q&A system is probably a good way to ensure questions posted there remain unnoticed and unanswered.

The traditional way for Q&A is/was that someone collects a FAQ document and posts it every month to the mailing list.

The problem is that "someone" doesn't exist, thus things get outdated. Abram's idea is thus a system that is more collaboratively based where the answers get collected automatically.

Riccardo