On 30-11-15 05:16, EuanM wrote:
A link to Stack Overflow is valuable in lots of ways:
1) It is a very good code facility for questions and answers, which is exceptionally searchable via Google Bing et al.
That is not valuable if we cannot provide the answers. On StackOverflow we often cannot provide the answers needed. The amount of time I had to spend getting closed questions reopened makes it a bad platform for us. And remember, SO is not about giving the right answers, it is about giving popular answers.
2) Why does it matter who hosts the data?
It is freely and publically available, and Stack Exchange are well-funded to keep it that way over the long haul.
Because we need to think longer term. I regularly need 15 and 20year old information. StackOverflow doesn't look to be making much money and is not owned by a non-profit. That makes it vulnerable to new ownership shutting it down. I agree that for SO the availability of the data is not much of an issue. Ownership is, as we can not publish a digest of interesting questions and answers.
What benefit does owning the data provide? (My general experience is that trying to control and own data leads to greater data losses over time, compared to putting them in a well-funded public repository.
There is a difference between a private and a public repository. Data losses arise from using proprietary formats that can no longer be reconstructed. Mail, irc and netnews archives are easy to read and keep over time. We already know how to avoid data losses: use peer-to-peer distribution, bittorrent style.
Does the rest of the world use github, or does it builld its own facilities? We don't own the github data. Github is not our community.
That makes depending on github only a bad move. The nice thing about git is that it is properly distributed.
Do we use Slack, or have we built our own? We don't own the Slack data. Slack is not our community.
And that already creates problems. Valuable design discussions are not properly preserved.
3) We certainly *do* have the possibility to influence the answers. If we cannot influence answers to Pharo-specific questions on a public Q&A site, who can?
1000 times as many clueless non-smalltalkers.
4) Why Stack Overflow? Going to where there are valuable resources is a good idea. For us, the most valuable resource is developers. People who develop the Pharo platform and developers who *use* the Pharo platform.
No, it is not. Paid smalltalk projects is much more valuable. We won't get them from answering tech-only questions of new smalltalkers. And let's take a look at what actually is on SO. What message does looking at the smalltalk or pharo tag on SO send to these developers? Who should that convince that developing in Pharo is a smart idea?
At Stack Overflow, we have the opportunity to access the hearts and minds of a *very* large group of developers.
No we don't. At SO we can answer stupid questions requiring no discussion or trade-offs. Everything else is closed. That makes it very difficult to show the advantages of smalltalk.
Stack Overflow is a good way to help us encourage people to express interest, and possibly even join us.
Not really. The first year or so we were able to provide interesting information on SO, and even then we had enormous problems with the clueless majority. Just take a look at questions on OODBs vs relational. Already at that time it was clear that people using popular technology gained reputation much faster than those using non-mainstream/hyped technology. Thereafter, the closing down of everything that required a little thought and discussion and the enormous amount of clueless closers made SO a dying platform. The number of views and answers/question is going down.
Stronger, wider, deeper awareness of the benefits of our platform can only help interest in using it.
SO is not a platform that allows us to do that. Stephan