So I had this crazy idea about creating a Q&A site for reef community.
Something along the lines of StackOverflow.com (if you are into coding and such - you know how great that site is)
The idea is that forums are great for chit-chatting, but if there's a question in the 1st post - it's very hard to find and answer even a week later. Major problems is that people just post, threads get polluted with opinions, etc. Which is great for a community, but can't get reused. You probably understand what I'm talking about if you ever tried to find a clear answer on RC (for example). Pages and pages and pages and no structure to the data.
So I found the open source clone of stackoveflow-type Q&A site. The main advantages:
- Each question can have 1 ONE answer. If the question you are asking was already answered - you'll see the answer, no need to go thru pages of text.
- Community driven: moderated by community
- You get points for asking/answering, more points you have - more right you have.
- Data will be licensed wikipedia style - free to reuse with attribution. This is big since I could not find a single site who was allowing it's knowledge database to be reused.
- Questions are searchable and tagged, you can set your favorite tags, follow friends, etc. Very sociable.
I have a pilot version running here: http://reefoverflow.vova.org/questions
Let's try it as an experiment for a month or so, and then we'll decide if this can fly.
Something along the lines of StackOverflow.com (if you are into coding and such - you know how great that site is)
The idea is that forums are great for chit-chatting, but if there's a question in the 1st post - it's very hard to find and answer even a week later. Major problems is that people just post, threads get polluted with opinions, etc. Which is great for a community, but can't get reused. You probably understand what I'm talking about if you ever tried to find a clear answer on RC (for example). Pages and pages and pages and no structure to the data.
So I found the open source clone of stackoveflow-type Q&A site. The main advantages:
- Each question can have 1 ONE answer. If the question you are asking was already answered - you'll see the answer, no need to go thru pages of text.
- Community driven: moderated by community
- You get points for asking/answering, more points you have - more right you have.
- Data will be licensed wikipedia style - free to reuse with attribution. This is big since I could not find a single site who was allowing it's knowledge database to be reused.
- Questions are searchable and tagged, you can set your favorite tags, follow friends, etc. Very sociable.
I have a pilot version running here: http://reefoverflow.vova.org/questions
Let's try it as an experiment for a month or so, and then we'll decide if this can fly.