Re: OSQA -Open Source Question and Answering System

[Ivan Vučica]

On 16. 7. 2012., at 11:00, Riccardo Mottola wrote:

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The problem is that "someone" doesn't exist, thus things get outdated.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.

What about simply searching for old discussions and answers?

For example:

http://www.google.com/search?q=nsopenglview+inurl:+lists.gnu.org/archive/html/discuss-gnustep/

or, even better:

https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topicsearchin/gnu.gnustep.discuss/group:gnu.gnustep.discuss$20AND$20nsopenglview

:-)

Also, since being subscribed to the lists, I haven't exactly seen a flood of duplicate questions that would actually require a FAQ.

So, generally, if someone wishes a question answered, I'd suggest it's posted here, answered, and (if repeated) we can refer the person to the post in the archives. Only if a set of questions gets repeated too often, we can set up an FAQ document filled with these.

So, as I said, setting up an entire StackOverflow-like site seems like an overkill, especially considering that most questions are probably applicable to Cocoa too, and thus would find a nice home on StackOverflow. If they are GNUstep-specific, mailing list is a nice place to ask, and StackOverflow might be a good place, too.

--

Ivan Vučica

ivan@vucica.net - http://ivan.vucica.net/