[wp-hackers] Wordpress StackExchange is ready.

[Dougal Campbell]

On Jun 2 2010 2:27 PM, eric at eamann.com wrote:
> [...]
> I've had much more success using Google to search for information ... and 9
> times out of 10 I find the answer on either Stack Overflow or a miscellaneous
> user's personal tutorial than on wordpress.org.
>    

That's been my experience as well. It's rare that a search turns up a 
link to an answer in the support forums. Whether this is a matter of 
poor content or just poor search indexing, I don't know.

> What I'm trying to say, though, is that there's a need for both.  We need a
> question/answer site and we need a community forum.  Trying to fill both needs
> with one solution is a flawed strategy from the get-go, and you'll always end up
> with people in both camps claiming the others' efforts are misguided.

I agree. How can it be bad to have multiple high quality sources of 
information? (okay, "high quality" is subjective)

But I think there can be synergy between multiple support venues. 
Posters on the StackExchange site can point to existing answers in the 
support forums, and vice versa.

Otto doesn't like the Stack Overflow UX. Okay, fine. Personally, I *do* 
like it better than the current WP forums. We're both entitled to our 
opinions, and it doesn't make either one of us "wrong". And it doesn't 
make either resource "better" than the other. It just serves as an 
example that some people will respond more positively to one interface 
than the other.

Where I *do* agree with Otto and Jane is that I don't think there's any 
call for pointing an "official" wordpress.org link at the WordPress 
Answers site. Neither the WordPress Foundation nor Automattic has any 
involvement with that project, and it would be dumb to suggest otherwise.

There have been discussions about revamping them for a long time, so I 
think people should not view the forum activity as a knee-jerk reaction 
to the WordPress Answers StackExchange activity (or vice versa). I'm 
really looking forward to seeing what improvements come along in the 
"official" support forums. But I also don't view the two sites as 
"competitors".

Consider: why do we have both email lists and web-based support forums? 
As far as I know, it's because some people prefer one format over the 
other. Why should it be any different for two different web sites which 
provide such different user experiences?

-- 
Dougal Campbell <dougal at gunters.org>
http://dougal.gunters.org/
http://twitter.com/dougal
http://twitual.com/