[yt-dev] Asking questions on StackOverflow

[Matthew Turk]

Hi Elizabeth,

On Sun, Nov 17, 2013 at 6:48 AM, Elizabeth Tasker
<tasker at astro1.sci.hokudai.ac.jp> wrote:
> Hi Nathan and Matt,
>
> I've never used SO (or indeed heard of it until I saw the twitter thread)
> and I'm very open to being convinced of its merits.
>
> However, I'm also a bit concerned about fragmenting our Q&A.

(Me too!)

> For example, if
> I have a problem with yt, one of the first things I do is hit the "search
> the mailing list" box on the doc page.
>
> e.g.
> http://www.google.com/cse?cx=010428198273461986377%3Axyfd9ztykqm&ie=UTF-8&q=elizabeth+has+a+problem&sa=Search&siteurl=yt-project.org%2Fdocs%2F2.5%2F&ref=yt-project.org%2Fcommunity.html&ss=5151j1127787j37#gsc.tab=0&gsc.q=elizabeth%20has%20a%20problem&gsc.page=1
>
> Now that is pretty simple. What is SO offering that beats that?
>

The answers can be updated over time -- which can't happen with a
linear system like the mailing list.  So you might turn up an old
answer on the mailing list, but on SO it would then be updated over
time to match the current SOP.

-Matt

> Elizabeth
>
>
> On Nov 17, 2013, at 10:40 PM, Matthew Turk <matthewturk at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi Nathan,
>
> On Sun, Nov 17, 2013 at 12:01 AM, Nathan Goldbaum <nathan12343 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>
> I recently subscribed to the [yt] tag on StackExchange.  Now, whenever a
> question is asked using this tag on any StackExchange site, I will get an
> e-mail about it, just like if a question is asked on the users or dev list.
> Currently (as far as I can tell) zero questions have been asked using this
> tag...
>
> If there are a few others who are interested in subscribing to the tag, I
> think it might be worthwhile to add StackOverflow to the website and docs
> where we describe how to get help and also announce on the user’s list that
> StackOverflow is an alternate place to ask questions.
>
> While this might split the community somewhat - not everyone will be
> subscribed to StackOverflow and thus might miss useful info - I think moving
> some helpful suggestions to StackOverflow will massively improve
> googleability of common yt issues, allowing us to avoid answering the same
> questions over and over again.
>
> It might also be worthwhile to ask and answer some common yt questions.  Off
> the top of my head, I think we could at least answer how to load various
> types of datasets into yt.
>
>
> In principle, I'm okay with this.  But I have a few concerns --
>
> 1) I don't think the tag "yt" can be created unless someone with high
> reputation does so.  (
> http://stackoverflow.com/help/privileges/create-tags )
> 2) We have well-defined usage metrics that we can quantify based on
> mailing list activity, so this may fragment that.
> 3) Many of the existing contributors and users don't want another inbox.
>
> *However*.  SO is really quite good for evolving questions and for an
> updateable reference.  I do really like that aspect.  But I think we
> may find ourselves getting a bit fragmented -- in fact, what I see as
> being a possible outcome is that if yt does end up growing into an
> interdisciplinary space, we'd see people from non-Astro disciplines
> using it, but retaining our original core audience here.  All your
> points really are good ones.
>
> I don't know.  Could be awesome.  And, I'd like to see us embrace more
> modern and useful methods of communication and outreach.  So ... I
> guess the experiment could be a good one!
>
> -Matt
>
>
> -Nathan
>
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